Unit cost is an anticipated offspring of the pressing notions of accountability, efficiency, and comparability, coupled with the decreasing availability of both public and private resources for higher education, and the increasing cost of deliverance of higher education in general. The two most widely used measures of unit cost in higher education…

The Education Reform Act 1988 obliges the Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to delegate budgets to the colleges within their control by means of a formula, but does not say what should happen within colleges once the delegated budget has been received. This paper reports some of the outcomes of an action learning and training program, carried out…

A program cost study was conducted at a large midwestern university to determine department-level expenses and revenues associated with the mission-critical activities of instruction, research, and service. The study (or program) is based on a model for allocating costs, called responsibility centered management, that has been used for nearly a…

This paper represents a backdrop from which to consider the development of a planning and budgeting model for local education agencies. The first part of the presentation describes the demands and external pressures that affect resource allocation decisions in school districts. The ability of local school officials to link the cost consequences…

Current budgeting techniques are reviewed in relation to their application to higher education, including (1) incremental budgeting, where decisions are based primarily upon former levels of expenditures, (2) zero-based budgeting, involving the establishment and ranking of "decision packages", (3) Planning and Programming Budgeting…

The purpose of this seminar was to give members of the Canadian Teachers' Federation a better understanding of the educational budgetary process. The proceedings of the seminar included welcoming remarks by Russell D. Mosher followed by two addresses--"The Political Context of Budgeting" by Dr. Peter Atherton and "Resource…

Materials from Southwestern College, the Chancellor's Office of the California Community Colleges, and the California Research Bureau (CRB) are presented to help community college practitioners calculate curricular costs. First, a set of charts and forms from Southwestern College include the college's definition of curriculum efficiency,…

This plan for outcome-based budgeting (OBB) is the result of growing demands for increased fiscal accountability, measurable outcomes, strengthened assessment processes, and more meaningful performance indicators as mandated by many State and Federal legislators. OBB focuses on linking funding with outputs and outcomes. Higher education…

The concept of traditional planning, programming, and budgeting systems (PPBS) is defined and compared with imperative planning, a term used to refer to whatever procedures higher education officials use to integrate program planning and budgeting. The University of Wisconsin system is described as an example of emerging budgetary practice in…