The service that is cut first

Because its output is invisible in every report.

Student support is disproportionately casualised, disproportionately cut in tight years, and disproportionately expected to absorb growth without additional staffing. That pattern follows directly from the measurement problem rather than from any view about its importance.

The financial argument that does land is retention, because withdrawal has a direct and calculable revenue consequence. An institution losing a defined number of students annually can price what a percentage point of retention is worth, and it is usually a substantial figure.

Making that argument requires the data described above, collected before it is needed rather than assembled during a budget round. A service that starts recording flags and outcomes this year has an argument next year and none this year.

It is also worth costing what happens without it, in staff terms. Where support is unavailable, the work does not disappear; it is absorbed by teaching staff who are less equipped and more expensive, and the cost simply moves somewhere it is not counted.

None of which is an argument that support services should be justified purely commercially. It is an observation that the commercial argument is available, is strong, and is usually not made.