Comparative Analysis of Unit Cost of Higher Education in State Universities of Punjab

Abstract

Due to pressure of student unions the fees structure in many of the universities has hardly been revised in the last three decades even to take care of inflation. Although connotation towards cost recovery system is being discussed at many fronts, full-cost reinstatement is considered neither practicable nor desirable. Practically calculating the unit cost of education is very easy: add up the total cost direct and indirect and divide it by number of students and resultant figure will be average cost per student or per unit cost of education. But in practice there are issues related with collection of financial figures and calculation of per unit cost. University cost of education is higher in all the cases and fee charged is more. University needs to cut its non-productive expenses so as to cover up the deficiency. It is recommended to raise the fee structure in tune with cost being incurred by university. University is not even able to cover its variable cost from the course fee. The alternative way out is to increase the number of enrollments so as to cover its cost form revenue. Both of the universities are not working on break-even point analysis.

Keywords: Unit Cost of education, university cost recovery