This study was designed to contribute to the development
of internal allocation models by selecting basic concepts from
external allocation models and examining for the presence of
these concepts in the actual internal allocation activity of
public two-year colleges.
First, this study examined whether there was a significant
difference in the way that public two-year colleges with
declining, steady, or increasing budgets apportioned their funds
in each of six major expenditure categories during the period of
1977-78 through 1985-86. The six major expenditure categories
are instruction, academic support, libraries, student services,
institutional support, and operation and maintenance of plant.
The source of institutional data was the Higher Education
General Information Survey conducted by the National Center for
Education Statistics.
The 460 colleges in the sample were assigned to groups
according to budget change: growth, stasis, or decline. The
following dependent variables were identified for each of the
six major expenditure categories: (a) category expenditures
(b) percentage of educational and general (E&G) expenditures
apportioned to the category, and (c) category expenditures per
full-time-equivalent student (FTES). A two-factor analysis of
variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures on one factor was used
to test for differences in the mean expenditure measures among
budget groups, across years, and for the interaction of group
and year.
Concepts derived from external allocation models then were
used to explore the results of the data analysis. Application
of these concepts suggested that, regardless of budget group,
funds were allocated to both instruction and academic support
through use of a model incorporating a percentage of E&G
expenditures for variable cost. Student services and operation
and maintenance of plant appeared to be operating under a model
with a per-FTES component for variable cost. Libraries and
institutional support, however, appeared to be operating under
models that were not examined in this study or for which techniques used herein were not adequate.
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