Question

Kolbec Community College (KCC) has 4,000 full-time students and offers a variety of academic programs in three areas: professional studies, arts, and technology. The professional studies programs prepare students for administrative and clerical jobs in a variety of professional settings, including accounting, medicine, and law. The arts program’s offerings are wide ranging and include graphic design, digital animation, culinary arts, cosmetology, and music arts. The technology programs are also varied, including information technology, medical laboratory technology, electrical engineering technology, pharmacy technology, and natural resources technology.

The chief financial officer of KCC, Lynn Jones, has consistently emphasized to other members of the senior management team the importance of understanding the costs of delivering the various academic programs. To that end, the costing system used at KCC tracks the direct costs of each program, which are shown below on an annual basis, along with the number of full-time students:

Item	Professional Studies			Arts			Technology			Total
Full-time students		2,000			1,000			1,000			4,000
Professors’ salaries	$	1,260,000		$	650,000		$	780,000		$	2,690,000
Administrative salaries		105,000			70,000			70,000			245,000
Supplies		40,000			150,000			50,000			240,000
Teaching support		160,000			100,000			80,000			340,000
Facilities		275,000			150,000			175,000			600,000
Total direct cost	$	1,840,000		$	1,120,000		$	1,155,000		$	4,115,000

It is very important to understand the overhead costs consumed by each academic program at KCC in determining the full cost of operating the programs. Central administration at KCC allocates financial resources to academic programs based on the estimated full cost per student of delivering the program. The overhead costs at KCC are significant, totalling over 60% of direct costs. Total annual overhead costs at KCC are as follows:

	Cost
Administrative salaries	$	900,000
Facility costs		1,300,000
Office expenses		300,000
Total overhead costs	$	2,500,000

Traditionally, KCC has allocated overhead costs to academic programs on the basis of the number of full-time students in each program. This approach was deemed appropriate since Jones reasoned that increasing the number of students at KCC would result in higher overhead costs (e.g., more facilities would be needed, more indirect support costs would be incurred, etc.). However, Jones is beginning to question the accuracy of the traditional approach since it results in a similar full cost per student for the arts and technology programs, which she feels doesn’t make sense. Based on her knowledge of the programs, Jones feels that the technology program is probably more expensive to deliver than the arts program, but this does not come through in the traditional costing approach.

Jones recently attended a seminar on management techniques being used by leading educational institutions that, among other topics, covered the basics of the ABC approach. She likes the idea of being able to assign indirect costs to academic programs on the basis of how much of the support activity resources are consumed by each program. If Jones’s instincts are correct in that some programs consume more resources of certain activities than others, this could have a significant impact on the overhead costs assigned to each under the ABC approach.

Upon returning to KCC, Jones decides to implement ABC. She, along with Assistant CFO James West, begins by identifying the key activities used to support the teaching programs. Rather than getting too detailed with respect to identifying activities in the initial implementation, Jones decides to keep the process manageable and comes up with six key activities. Next, based on a series of interviews with various KCC employees who work in the departments covered by the identified activities, Jones and West estimate the percentage of the total administrative, facility, and office expense resources consumed by each activity. Again, to keep the process efficient, Jones rounds all percentages to the nearest 5%, figuring that a “close enough” approach will suffice for this initial implementation and recognizing that the estimates are subjective to begin with. The results are shown below:

	Resource Distribution across Activities
Activity	Administrative			Facilities			Office
Central administration		20	%		5	%		15	%
Information systems technology		20	%		15	%		15	%
Student counselling services		5	%		5	%		10	%
Human resources		10	%		5	%		10	%
Library operations		20	%		60	%		30	%
Registrar’s office		25	%		10	%		20	%
Total		100	%		100	%		100	%

Working with key personnel from each of the six activities shown above, Jones and West then identify the activity measure and the quantity of that measure used for each teaching program. Fortunately, KCC implemented an enterprise resource planning system a few years ago, which is already tracking much of the information needed regarding the activity measures and the specific quantities for each academic program:

Activity	Measure	Professional			Arts			Technology
Central administration	Hours spent on    program		6,000			7,000			7,000
Information systems technology	Processing hours		6,000			3,000			12,000
Student counselling services	Number of students    counselled		180			115			205
Human resources	Number of admin. staff    and faculty members		21			15			14
Library operations	Number of library    circulations		6,000			3,000			3,000
Registrar’s office	Full-time students		2,000			1,000			1,000

Required:

1. Using the traditional approach to assigning overhead costs to academic programs:

a. Calculate the predetermined overhead rate.

Predetermined overhead rate

?

per student

b. Assign the overhead costs to each academic program using the predetermined rate.

Professional Studies	?
Arts	?
Technology	?

c. Calculate the total cost per student (direct costs plus overhead) of operating each academic program.

	Professional Studies	Arts	Technology
Cost per student	?	?	?

Answer 1