Full-time Equivalent - FTEs in Education

FTEs in Education

Full Time Equivalent students is one of the key metrics for measuring the contribution of academics in third level education, number of supported students. Academics in some universities are nominally expected to contribute 20FTEs (or in other terms to support the education of 20 full-time students) in any one year. This is typically achieved through a combination of teaching and research supervision.

Academics can increase contribution by adopting a number of strategies: (a) increase class size; (b) teach new classes; (c) supervise more projects; (d) supervise more researchers. The latter strategy has the advantage of contributing to another key metric in Universities – creating new knowledge and in particular publishing papers in highly ranked academic journals. It's also linked to another key metric – research funding that is often required to attract researchers.

Example

A professor teaches two undergraduate courses, supervises two undergraduate projects and supervises four researchers by thesis only (i.e. researchers do not take any courses). Each undergraduate course is worth 1/10 of all credits for the undergraduate programme (i.e. 0.1 FTE). An undergraduate project is worth 2/10ths of all credits for the undergraduate programme (i.e. 0.2 FTE). A research thesis is worth all of the credits for the graduate programme (i.e. 1 FTE). The professor's contribution is 29.4 FTEs:

To encourage more research some universities offer 2 FTEs or even 3 FTEs for each full-time researcher.

In Australia, the equivalent to FTE for students is EFTSU (Equivalent Full-Time Student Unit).