Cost accounting

The initial model distinguished only three activities: teaching, research and other activities, and confused all sources of funding. The CUS then entrusted the coordination of the implementation of this model to a steering committee outside the Federal Statistical Office. The first report concerns the 2002 financial year.

The 2002 results were so deficient that they were not published. The results for 2003 were deemed insufficiently coherent to be published, but sufficiently informative to be forwarded to university policy bodies and to serve as a provisional working basis for the development of the new university funding system.

The figures for the 2004 and 2007 financial years have been published and will be used to adjust the amounts per student that will be used for the Confederation's funding of universities and for the renewal of the Intercantonal Agreement.

The importance of the UNIL-EPFL collaboration means that these two institutions cannot calculate the full costs of their study orientations without proceeding to mutual data transfers. A first attempt to exchange data relating to pre-graduate education was made for 2003 data and has been improved for subsequent years.

UNIL has also included data from the cantonal Hospices in its cost accounting. The strict administrative separation between UNIL and the university clinics makes this integration necessary.

UNIL does not just want to satisfy the requirements of national university policy bodies. It wants to develop an internal version of the analytical model that is useful for its management. In particular, this model will make it possible to calculate staff/student ratios that take account of teaching on duty.

The term analytical accounting is unfortunate and barbaric in the university environment. The model is not just an accounting one, it is a linking of personnel, financial and student statistics.

The term "cost accounting" is unfortunate and rhetorical in a university environment.

To make the model useful for internal management, we need to develop a version that follows the CUS guidelines to some extent:

• The aggregation of data is not done according to the domains of the Swiss University Information System (SIUS), but according to our structures and study orientations grouped into around twenty entities.
• The internal version makes a distinction between postgraduate teaching and doctoral supervision.
• The internal version takes into account all the types of expense and does not introduce calculated infrastructure costs, which replace a number of types of expense in the national version.

The aim of these adaptations to the financial model is to remain close to quantities that are known internally.

The main difficulties encountered by the project are the lack of interest and certain fears about how the results will be used. An IT specialist was appointed in October 2006 to create data files. These data records relating to students, staff and finances will form the basis of an automated analytical accounting system.

To identify the costs attributable to the various activities, the model is based on a breakdown of staff occupancy rates by task. All lecturers and assistants at UNIL will receive a questionnaire in February asking them to break down their activity, in %, between the following tasks:

Please note that this questionnaire is only available in French.

• Pre-graduate education;
• Postgraduate teaching
• Supervision of doctoral students
• Research and development
• General administration

In 2008, pre-graduate education was subdivided into:

• Learning at bachelor and EFLE level
• Teaching at masters and former bachelors/diplôme level

The category "administration générale" was introduced because respondents found it difficult to allocate administration tasks between the different main activities. This rate of administration is then distributed among the other activities in proportion to their importance.

The entire model (relative importance of the various activities) is based on the rates recorded in February. An alternative approach would be to use specifications, but these would have to be integrated into the central IT system and updated periodically in line with the person's actual activity.

The number of full-time equivalent staff devoted to the various activities makes it possible to allocate a unit's expenses according to the relative importance of these tasks.

To the expenses recorded in the unit's accounts, we add a share of central services costs and, in some faculties, a share of the expenses charged to the department's accounts. This gives the costs of the various services provided by the Unit.

Pending a solution based on the specifications, the Statistics Office plans to carry out the 2008 survey (in early 2009) using an Intranet forms procedure.

The teaching services provided by a unit are then distributed among the recipients of the teaching (study guidance). Different methods have been used for this, depending on the faculty: questionnaire to all Theology lecturers, examination data for HEC, data on student enrolments for GSE courses, data on budget allocations for teaching tasks in the FBM, and old estimates by unit, collected two years ago, for the other faculties.

The only objective and automatic method of determining the recipients of teaching should be based on the management of students and the implementation of the federated student statistics project in terms of ECTS credits.

According to this project, students are enrolled in courses or modules offered by units at UNIL or a partner institution, which can earn them a certain number of ECTS credits. By linking these enrolees to the various courses or modules offered by a given unit, it is possible to allocate ECTS credits between the various study options. Statistical data on students in terms of ECTS credits is due to be delivered to the SFSO in the 2010-2011 academic year.

It will be necessary to prepare for this federal requirement by managing the computerised registration of students for courses and by structuring the descriptive data for study plans accordingly.