Birkbeck finances: our income and how we spend it
Introduction
Birkbeck is an educational charity, which makes us legally obliged to spend any income we receive in certain ways. We take great care to ensure that our money is used to provide life-changing education for our students and research for the communities we serve. Our work ensures that your course is of high quality whether you are studying online or on campus, part-time or full-time, and that the qualification you receive will maintain its value over time.
The fees that you pay as a student contribute to everything in that year of study and to your lifetime association with Birkbeck and the University of London. We always use our income for the benefit of students and on things students care most about, such as our learning resources and facilities, ensuring assessments are fair and providing academic and other types of support. You can find more information about how we spend our income in our annual accounts.
The graphics below show how we spend the income we receive, starting first with the money we receive as income.
Birkbeck's income
Figure 1: Analysis of income 2024-25
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Tuition fees
Most of Birkbeck's income comes from tuition fees and almost all of the money we spend is concerned with delivering and supporting the learning and teaching associated with those fees.
The chart shows that in 2024-25, 61% of our income came from tuition fees; 26% of fee income came from home full-time students; 21% from part-time students and 14% from international students.
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Grants for teaching and research
The next largest area of income is from grants for teaching and research, a total of 20% of our income. The government contributes 2% in grants towards teaching our students, we receive a further 11% from government funds for research, and a further 7% is received from other types of research grant or contract.
Our research income enables Birkbeck staff to carry out ground-breaking research which informs our teaching, ensuring that our students learn from experts about issues at the cutting edge of knowledge. For example, throughout the year, we continued our research at the Baby and Toddler Labs which give insight into how the brains of babies and young children develop; and our space research around cognitive function in space and zero gravity.
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Other sources of income
Around 5% of our income comes from our investments and donations. During the year, donations came from individuals, trusts, foundations and corporates, reflecting the breadth of confidence in Birkbeck's mission. Notable new gifts included: Funding of £470,000 for a Cryo-FIB laboratory to enable new, ground-breaking research in structural and molecular biology and a £300,000 commitment to student employability initiatives, supporting a programme of micro-placements to help students develop workplace skills and experience.
How we spend our income
Figure 2: Total staff costs and other expenses (excluding pension provision) by activity 2024-25
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Academic and related services
The majority of our income (63% in the chart above) from tuition fees is spent on supporting teaching and research in our schools and research centres. This includes providing specialist facilities and infrastructure such as HyFlex-enabled and collaborative learning spaces, the Library, our laboratories and software; the salaries of academic staff, as well as support staff, such as programme administrators and learning development tutors. Being taught by research-active academic leaders with a curriculum that has been informed by the latest thinking, is key to Birkbeck’s mission.
In 2024-25, we hit a major milestone in our HyFlex programme with the installation of the technology into our 80th teaching space, enabling students to join classes remotely and participate in them fully alongside those on campus.
We also continued with our work to open the Immersive Learning Centre in Autumn 2025, to provide a dedicated space that brings together the latest virtual reality, augmented reality and 3D technologies, so that they can be incorporated into teaching, learning and research.
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Administration and professional services
Our next largest area of expenditure is on the central professional services and administrative staff (20%), such as Human Resources, Estates and Facilities, and Admissions services. Our block grant of £471,500 to the Students' Union (SU) is included in this, even though the SU is a separate entity, to enable them to deliver services and activities to enhance your time with Birkbeck.
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Premises, buildings and IT infrastructure
Like any organisation, we have the day-to-day costs of keeping our buildings heated, lit, cleaned and maintained and in 2024-25, we spent 11% of our income for the year on this.
We also completed a number of building projects, which included spending over £2 million dramatically improving and creating new student spaces in our Birkbeck Central and Malet Street buildings. Together, these projects included the completion of the HyFlex project with the addition of 73 classrooms and seven lecture theatres, the creation of new student meeting, study and wellbeing spaces, a replacement of the lift at Birkbeck Central, new Students' Union offices and new restaurant facilities.
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Research grants and contracts
Around 5% of our expenditure is connected to research grants and contracts for research. Some of these contracts pay for PhD studentships and internships and some support additional training for doctoral students.
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Other expenditure
Other expenditure of 1% includes catering and conference costs.