How Public Colleges And Universities Spend Their Money

As budgets shrink and tuitions rise, a recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics shows just how public, private and for-profit institutions are spending their money.

The report offers a range of information on student enrollment, graduation rates, financial aid and institutional spending from fiscal year 2009. Report authors used the financial data of 6,789 Title IV institutions and administrative offices that were collected by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

Below, check out the expense breakdown of four year public institutions in 2009, and compare it with that of two- and less-than-two year institutions. See how private colleges and universities spend their money here.

Are you surprised by these figures? Let us know in the comments section.

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Instruction: 26.7 percent

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2-year: 39.5 percent Less-than-2-year: 54.9 percent

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2-year: 39.5 percent
Less-than-2-year: 54.9 percent

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Comments

[Iceman11]

07:15 AM on 02/28/2011

Where are they hiding Athletics ? Coaches are getting paid Millions now at major schools.

[1differentdrummer]

06:28 AM on 02/28/2011

In the community college where I worked a ton of teaching was done by part-timers. They cost less. Of course, they're tired from working all day but the students are tired, too, so it's a wash. This is not to denigrate the part-timers who bring their professional skills to the students. My beef is with administrations that keep teacher salaries minimal.

[Peter007]

09:16 AM on 02/27/2011

The top ten colleges, in terms of size of endowments, have over $100 billion in investments.
That's ten colleges. We have over 3,000 colleges in the U.S.

$100 billion. That's larger than the GDP wealth of many countries.

Very little of that money goes to students. Less than 3 %.
The education Industry is big business. It reaps big pay checks for those in power.

[Denni]

09:36 PM on 02/26/2011

I continue to hear the argument that administrators in academia have to be paid a competitive wage, or they'll just work in the private sector. That argument doesn't seem to hold for the rank-and-file faculty, who make significantly less. I've read about the explosion of administrative officers (each with six figure salaries).

[CarmenIbanez]

04:29 PM on 02/25/2011

These numbers don't count unless we get to know how the universities classify spending for each category. What expenses do they include in each one?

[RRK70]

09:48 AM on 02/25/2011

all I want to know is where the growth in the cost of tuition is coming from.

[Anaxamenes]

02:15 PM on 02/25/2011

Well the president of the state university I attended makes 900k a year, plus a house and a car. Every few years he would get a 10% raise by the board of regents. He doesn't teach anything either. I think the highest teaching professor wages topped out around 250k a year, and he was actively teaching students.

I have a huge concern about the administration costs, versus how much is spent on student education. Though they do spend a lot of money grant writing, which is how they sustain most research programs.

[CarmenIbanez]

04:30 PM on 02/25/2011

Heads of public universities here in California get houses, or no-interest mortgages financed through the university, as well as cars, travel allowances, etc. It is ridiculous.

[SilentSolidarity]

09:58 PM on 02/27/2011

X2

[yetiwatcher]

05:08 AM on 02/25/2011

this exercise presupposes that the data released by colleges and universities is complete, accurate and that accounting is carried out and reported in good faith... that's hardly the case,
for example:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz/Transparency101.pdf
http://www.cucfa.org/news/2009_oct28.php

[Egghead]

03:52 AM on 02/25/2011

Thank you for thirteen meaningless pictures.

[Lauren Albright]

10:23 PM on 02/24/2011

This information is ridiculously vague, to the point that the info is actually skewed. First off, no figure on athletics? Really? Athletics suck up a huge percentage of higher ed budget. And let's break that "instruction" portion down...how much for tenured professors? How much for adjuncts and grad students to take care of all the intro courses?

If you're going to present a model or graph, please try to make it informative.

[Anaxamenes]

02:16 PM on 02/25/2011

I haven't actually seen the books, but supposedly at my state university, their football team brought in enough money to pay for all of the other athletics. Plus there were residual merchandising rights that benefited other areas.

[krissy310]

04:51 PM on 02/26/2011

I know that happens quite often, actually. My university is very much the same thing. A lot of money is spent on athletics, but it also brings in a lot of money, as well.

[Lohikaarme]

07:04 PM on 02/27/2011

ONLY 14 Division I schools have a football program that is self-sufficient. Thus most likely also very few athletic departments are self-sufficient. The inconvenient truth is that MOST athletics departments are not self-sufficient. I know that is the case at my institution.

[jadedid]

09:39 PM on 02/24/2011

While I agree that this is very vague, I would like to point out that there are no shareholder dividends.

[CarmenIbanez]

04:32 PM on 02/25/2011

Not yet. A few more years probably.

[jackstpaul]

05:03 PM on 02/25/2011

Exactly.

[lisakaz2]

06:00 PM on 02/25/2011

Yep. States will stop supporting universities and something like this may well ensue -- although many private universities are not "for profit" so there are not shareholders there. I could see some existing for-profits taking over state universities.

[TJustice]

08:37 PM on 02/24/2011

The next domino!

[SimianNation]

08:31 PM on 02/24/2011

After reading this piece, I was left confused and with a feeling of complete loss. This did nothing to tell me anything.

[T4]

07:47 PM on 02/24/2011

this report does more to disguise than reveal - the base is so broad as to make the data irrelevant - lumping alabama with idaho and california and then doing data smoothing. Key elements missiing are the functional expenses associated with people and pensions and benefits. this is critical to understand as our taxes increase and unbalanced salaries and benefit plans become issues for taxpayers. The head of secuirty at UC Berkeley makes over $750k in compensation that's right over 750,000 in taxpayer money - this data needs to be culled for useful information to today's probelms in academia

[rog1112]

05:28 PM on 02/24/2011

10 out of 14 for operation and maintenance!?! At UT Austin where it looks like perpetual construction-- I'd say it's a lot closer to the top. Are there any universities where #1 is somewhat lower?

[T4]

07:48 PM on 02/24/2011

the base is so wide and diverse for the data that it is useless for any real world discussion or comparisons. maybe cuts by geography or school size salaries and benefits would provide soemthing useful