ACTIVITY BASED COSTING IN UNIVERSITIES - A CALCULATION OF TEACHING COSTS

From a point of view of the demand to the managerial information, needs of higher education institutions aren’t differing significantly from requirements entered by enterprises. The growth of being interested in tools supporting taking managerial decisions at universities is resulted not only by necessity to change their functioning (caused by continuously growing competition in recruiting students and getting funds to finance research projects). They have occurred also legal regulations, which demand universities to document their activity on the faith of readable cost effectiveness indicators.

It is obvious that the internal needs and the external regulations impose on universities search for better, improved systems of managerial information. The question is very complicated, academic centers are one of the biggest institutions which realize public mission (taking into consideration employment and financial amounts). Compound of university activity causes difficulties in the organization of costs record and unlimited needs for cost information.

In accordance of above-mentioned requirements it is important to use in universities tools helping management, tools like activity based costing (ABC). The purpose of the article is to present the model of teaching cost calculation based on ABC, which was created for one of the departments of the Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland). The elaboration describes steps taken of works, indicates problems met and presents their discussion and recommended solutions.