How comprehensive activity-based models can help university leaders and faculty reshape their institutions through better resource management.
Resources in higher education steer colleges and universities both strategically and tactically. They drive incentives and accountability for faculty and staff while providing academics with the infrastructure they need in order to perform effectively. In this audacious book, William F. Massy writes that resource allocation in colleges and universities needs to become more responsive to academic mission, marketplace realities, and the requirements of financial sustainability.
“We can actually understand the full cost of our instructional programs…We’ve never had anything close to that kind of information in the past…This is the first time we can honestly understand how much they should cost and how we should resource them. Because this university has worked on a historical budget model for many years, this is revolutionary.”
From Whoa to Go in 7 weeks – an Analytic Model Implementation Case Study
In May 2018 the Australian Department of Education’s ‘Transparency in Higher Education’ submission was released and Central Queensland University (CQU) had to calculate and report their cost of teaching.
CQU had no Activity-Based Cost model in place to address this reporting requirement and they had limited availability of key resources to complete the Department’s costing exercise. Given the impending deadline they determined that if they were going to do this, then they had to complete it within six weeks and prior to the 2018 end of financial year.
The importance of understanding when, where and how each course is taught. Just because a course has low student numbers doesn’t mean it’s running at a loss
The current pandemic is having a major impact on Higher Ed. The challenge is to navigate the current crisis but also plan for post-crisis recovery by minimizing staff cuts.
