INTRO
 

LaGuardia Institutional Research

Education Finance

Higher Education “Output Costing” 
In this paper we demonstrate a methodology for finding the cost for each type of college “output”: graduate, early transfer, and drop-out. The methodology uses average total Educational and General cost per credit for each year in a student’s academic career and applies that cost to each credit attempted in all the years before the student leaves (“becomes an output”). Each graduate produced during academic year 2010-11 cost $35,519 on average over their entire academic career, while 2010-11 dropouts cost on average $19,107. A comparative analysis of national figures is also included.

Community College Financial Projection Model 
This downloadable Excel workbook produces a basic financial projection based on enrollment projections, employment levels, benefit growth and salary projections. Enrollments are broken into credit and non-credit, include a special high school category and are differentiated between part- and full-time. Many of the variables depend on constant or varying ratios.