Academic support – Activities that support instruction, research, and public service, including libraries, academic computing, museums, central academic administration (deans’ offices), and central personnel for curriculum and course development.
Appropriations – Funding received by public institutions of higher education from state and local governments.
Auxiliary enterprises – An auxiliary enterprise is an entity that exists to furnish goods or services to students, faculty, or staff, and that charges a fee directly related to, although not necessarily equal to, the cost of the goods or services. This also includes Division I Intercollegiate Athletics.
Contingent Faculty Positions (from the AAUP) – Depending on the institution, they can be known as adjuncts, postdocs, TAs, non-tenure-track faculty, clinical faculty, part-timers, lecturers, instructors, or nonsenate faculty. What they all have in common: they are insecure, unsupported positions with little job security and few protections for academic freedom.
Cost Disease (or the Baumol effect) – The rise of salaries in jobs that have experienced no or low increase of labor productivity, in response to rising salaries in other jobs that have experienced higher labor productivity growth.
Institutional support – General administrative services, executive management, legal and fiscal operations, public relations, and central operations for physical operation.
Instructional Expenses – Activities directly related to instruction, including faculty salaries and benefits, office supplies, the administration of academic departments, and the proportion of faculty salaries going to departmental research and public service.
IPEDS – IPEDS is the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. It is a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). IPEDS gathers information from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs. The Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, requires that institutions that participate in federal student aid programs report data on enrollments, program completions, graduation rates, faculty and staff, finances, institutional prices, and student financial aid. These data are made available to students and parents through the College Navigator college search Web site and to researchers and others through the IPEDS Data Center.
NCES – The National Center for Education Statistics is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations. NCES is located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences. NCES fulfills a Congressional mandate to collect, collate, analyze, and report complete statistics on the condition of American education; conduct and publish reports; and review and report on education activities internationally.
Plant operation and maintenance – Service and maintenance of the physical plant, grounds and buildings maintenance, utilities, property insurance, and similar items.
Public Service – Expenditures for all non-credit instruction (except preparatory/remedial instruction) and for activities that are established primarily to provide services beneficial to individuals and groups external to the institution. These activities include community service programs (including non-credit instructional activities) and cooperative extension services. Included in this category are conferences, institutes, general advisory services, reference bureaus, radio and television, consulting, and similar services to particular sectors of the community.
Student services – Non-instructional student-related activities, such as admissions, registrar services, career counseling, financial aid administration, student organizations, and intramural athletics. Costs of recruitment, for example, are typically embedded within student services.