State policymakers wrestle with long-standing questions and concerns about how to best provide additional fiscal support to rural school districts to ensure their students have access to adequate educational opportunities. In this study, we describe how one state developed empirically based estimates for the additional cost of operating rural…

In the past decade, controversies about public spending on education have grown as states adopted performance standards pledging that every child will learn enough to become an independent productive citizen and as "No Child Left Behind" ("NCLB") has put teeth into those expectations. Educators say that meeting higher standards requires more…

Indirect costs of sponsored research projects and educational programs are as necessary as are the direct costs. This report demonstrates that they are real costs and that sponsors such as the Federal Government receive more than equitable treatment in the computation and application of indirect costs. The areas discussed include: the computation…

The Standards and Goals Project has undertaken cost analysis of halfway houses in order to analyze and estimate the costs of implementing correctional standards, and to provide cost guidelines and cost estimation techniques for use by jurisdictions. The first volume: (1) provides a brief background on the Corrections Standards relating to halfway…

This paper reconceptualizes the purposes of education's budget envelope. Citing numerous examples of how policymakers consider resource allocations apart from the main concerns of individual programs, the people reallocations affect, and education's most important programs, it suggests that policymakers and finance officers reemphasize program and…

The document reports an audit review made of educational activities within the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) area offices in Anadarko and Muskogee, Oklahoma; Gallup, New Mexico; Juneau, Alaska; and Phonenix, Arizona. The field work, completed in 1967, was designed to (1) compile financial information to correlate with measures of output, (2)…

The development of a cost allocation model at Ohio State University is discussed. The model was designed to measure the direct, indirect, and total operating costs of university operations and to recover general fund overhead costs associated with unrestricted general fund support of auxiliary enterprises and revenue-generating activities. The…

Policy recommendations regarding free tuition for the City University of New York (CUNY) as proposed by the Committee for Public Higher Education, (CPHE), and a research report by Richard Rothbard, are presented. Based on Rothbard's investigation, "The Cost of Tuition: A Study of the City University of New York," CPHE recommends the…

A budgeting handbook for academic administrators and faculty is presented. Economic and political influences on budgeting are considered, along with sources of funds for public and private colleges, and the chronology of the budget process. Multiyear summaries of the budget process in different types of colleges are included. Some major policy…