Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to create comparable time series data on university income in Australia and the UK that might be used as a resource for those seeking to understand the changing funding profile of universities in the two countries and for those seeking to investigate how such data were produced and utilised. Design/methodology/approach: A statistical analysis of university income from all sources in the UK and Australia. Findings: The article produces a new time series for Australia and a comparable time series for the UK. It suggests some of the ways these data related to broader patterns of economic change, sketches the possibility of strategic influence, and outlines some of their limitations. Originality/value: This is the first study to systematically create a time series on Australian university income across the twentieth century and present it alongside a comparable dataset for the UK.