Cost and Financing in Open Schooling/Some basic Concepts of Cost Analysis/Introduction

Introduction
Any expenditure of money on materials, labour, equipment or services is referred to as a cost. Costs may be either notional or actual.

Like any education institution, open schools must spend money on a variety of things in order to provide courses to their learners. However, when compared to conventional education, the pattern of expenditure in ODL institutions is quite distinct. This unit looks at some of these differences and introduces a basic vocabulary for categorising and analysing costs incurred by open schools.