Cost and Financing in Open Schooling/Effiency and Effectiveness of ODL/ Efficiency/Exercise 9.2

Efficiency & Cost-Effectiveness Ratios

A community college in Canada offers its programmes through both conventional, face-to-face classes and paper-based distance education materials. Information for 2004 on total student enrolments, total graduates and total costs for both modes in relation to the Certificate in Cost Accounting programme are given in the table below:

Programme	Delivery Mode	Total Student Enrolments	Total Graduates	Success Rate (percent)	Total Costs (Cdn.$)	Average Costs per Student (Cdn.$)	Average Cost per Graduate (Cdn.$)
Cert in Cost Accounting	ODL	131	43		34,977
Cert in Cost Accounting	Conventional	954	886		712,433
Programme as a Whole	Combined	1,085	929		747,410

Activity

Exercise 9.2: Efficiency Calculate the Average Cost per Student for the ODL and conventional modes of delivering this course, as well as for the programme as a whole. Insert your answers in the blank cells of the above table. Now calculate the Efficiency Ratio for the ODL versus conventional modes of this programme, using the average costs per student.

EQUATION

ER = AC_a ÷ AC_b

Where:

ER = efficiency ratio

AC_a = average cost per FTE student for programme/institution A

AC_b = average cost per FTE student for programme/institution B