Improvement concepts and applications

Accounting - Corporate Finance

How this finance and budgeting course has made an impact on you as a professional and describe the most valuable learning you will take with you.

Finance and budgeting are two of the most ethically difficult yet necessary areas for a university to address. No matter how high the ideas of an academic institution, these ideals must be paid for, and translated into real, financial terms through the budgetary process. Negotiating a budget is difficult because economics is the science of scarcity -- to finance a new program almost inevitably requires cutbacks in other areas, and sacrifices of time as well as money. Making budgeting decisions requires difficult moral choices that will hurt some people and reduce the effectiveness of the institution in some areas. For example, cutting the funding for under-utilized departments may make tuition more affordable, but can hamper the university's academic excellence and reputation for providing a well-rounded education, make current majors in those disciplines unhappy, and frustrate the faculty in the slashed departments.

The budgeting process requires the university to have a clear sense of its core values: What is more important -- a new athletic facility or maintaining high salaries for faculty? The way that a university education is transmitted to students will also be impacted by the budgetary process. Providing more online courses may cut facilities expenditures, but students will be deprived of the benefits of peer and professor interaction. These classes may be taught by adjuncts and non-tenured faculty -- is it right to create a culture of poorly paid teachers who do not receive benefits?