Examining Drivers of Instructional Cost

Instructional costs account for nearly half of institutional expenses and are a critical lever in the academic planning process. Yet many institutions have incomplete, inaccurate data that prevent departments from managing expenses, evaluating returns on investments, and allocating resources effectively.

Academic Performance Solutions’ (APS) discipline-level benchmarks of instructional costs help institutions confront this challenge by providing data-informed diagnostics of academic resource allocation to complement institutional mission and priorities. This brief examines drivers of departmental instructional costs per attempted student credit hour to help academic leaders detect unexpected financial outliers at the discipline level and identify factors that contribute to those outliers.