Update: How do universities spend money?
- Written by Kim Moore
- Published in Education
- 4 comments
A breakdown of the percentages Oregon public universities spend on instruction and non-instructional items.
High tuition is making it increasingly challenging for Americans to pursue higher education. As costs continue to increase, the amount of money universities spend on different services is under the microscope.
To see how universities spend their money, I looked at what three of the largest public universities in Oregon —Oregon State University, Portland State University and University of Oregon — spend on instruction and research versus other functions, including non-instructional items, as a percentage of their total expenses. (Data comes from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System from 2015, the most recent data available.)
As a percentage of total expenses, Oregon State University spent the smallest portion on pure instruction (28%) in 2015. The largest portion of its expenses (31%) were for the combination of research and public service (such as expenses for public broadcasting and community service.) Portland State and University of Oregon both allocated 14% of total expenditures to research and public service.
Portland State University spent the most on instruction as a percentage of its total expenses (36%). Its second largest expense was the combination of student services, academic support, and institutional support (21%), which includes expenses for non-instructional items, such as admissions, administrative and executive activities. As a proportion of total expenditures, Oregon State University spent the least of the three public universities on this category.
It should be noted that Oregon State University does a lot more research than Portland State and University of Oregon, and for this reason cannot be compared on a level playing field with the other public institutions, said Steve Clark, vice president of university relations and marketing at Oregon State University. And in many cases, research and instruction overlap.
“In Oregon State’s case, the university last year did $441 million in total research – more than all of Oregon’s other six public comprehensive universities combined (UO, PSU, OIT, EOU, SOU and Western). And more than OHSU. If you divided total university revenue by the amount spent on instruction (including $441 million in research grants), of course OSU’s percentage of instruction would be less than UO and PSU,” said Clark in an email.
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Another category of expenditures is auxiliary enterprises, which include what universities spend on residence halls, food services, intercollegiate athletics and college unions. One quarter of University of Oregon’s 2015 expenses comprised these so-called auxiliary programs. Portland State spent 20% of its total expenditures of this category; Oregon State spent 18%.
Clarification: This article has been amended to reflect the fact that research and instruction categories often overlap.
Kim Moore
Kim Moore is the editor for Oregon Business magazine.
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4 comments
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C. Stehr Wednesday, 25 October 2017 17:27 Comment LinkIt would be more meaningful to look at the real $'s spent per student (broken down by grad and undergrad) on instruction vs administration. And $'s per student on room and board provisions. And to look at the allocation of tuition income instruction vs. administration. This article raises many interesting questions and issues, but answers virtually none of them.
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A. Wolf Wednesday, 25 October 2017 09:32 Comment LinkThis is much too simplistic a comparison, and makes implications about the perceived importance of instruction that simply are not true. OSU, for example, is a land grant school, which means a critical component of its mission is to partner with the people of the state in its educational mission. That’s why OSU has an office in every county in the state, where the needs of the people of the state are brought to the university and the work of the university is brought to the people. Moreover, its massive research program *is* instruction, in that students are brought in to all aspects of research endeavors and are thus exposed to the cutting edge of the field they are studying. In a land grant, research institution, it is impossible and unwise to separate out what one considers “instruction.” That’s not how education is done.
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Skip Rung Wednesday, 25 October 2017 08:50 Comment LinkWhether intentionally or not, this article perpetuates a common misunderstanding. Does the author not realize that research "expenditures" are, for the most part, the same as research *revenues*, chiefly from the federal government? Reducing these would not take pressure off of tuition, but would degrade the level of faculty expertise and opportunity available to students.
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Jj Wednesday, 25 October 2017 08:15 Comment LinkRegarding your last sentence: “The percentages of total expenditures the three public universities allocate to non-instructional items show there is room to reduce what many see as unnecessary expenses.” How has anything in this article shown that there is “room to reduce” non-instructional expenses? There is no evidence whatsoever for this claim in the article, and this conclusion is not logical.