[1] FTE is often used to measure a worker's or student's involvement in a project, or to track cost reductions in an organization.
[2] According to the federal government of the United States, FTE is defined by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) as the number of total hours worked divided by the maximum number of compensable hours in a full-time schedule as defined by law.
[4] Although the generally accepted human-resources meaning for the "E" in FTE is "equivalent", the term is often overloaded in colloquial usage to indicate a "direct, as opposed to contract, full-time employee".
[6] In the United Kingdom, full time equivalent equates to the standard 40-hour work week: eight hours per day, five days per week and is the total amount of hours that a single full-time employee has worked over any period.
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.