Summer Session Incentive Base

The dean's office has been looking at how to reconstruct net tuition income and expenses from summer 2002 in order to establish a baseline for the incentive program.

Main issues are:

Obtaining net tuition income per course

Matching instructional expenses with each course

Combining A&S data with CECE data

Decisions regarding missing data

Using an integrative problem solving approach to establishing the Summer Session 2002 baseline for the undergraduate summer incentive, Cheryl Green and Pat Woods reached a solution. The process of establishing the baseline included merging of A&S courses and CECE courses even though the two colleges operated independently for that summer. The next step was to identify courses that should be excluded such as graduate courses and Resident Credit Center courses. The course count at this point was 654 courses. From there, the next step was matching salary, fringe benefit and supply costs for each course. For a limited number of courses only income could be identified and the salary expense was missing. Without the salary and fringe benefit expense the net tuition income is overstated. The solution was to delete the course income for which an expense could not be matched from the baseline calculation. About 30 courses were excluded.

With this compromise, the modified baseline (net income) for summer 2002 is $996,100. To establish the summer 2003 baseline the net tuition was inflated 9.5% to correspond with the tuition increase. Salary and fringes were inflated for the respective employee groups. In order to be comparable with summer 2002, certain courses were excluded from the calculation process. With these adjustments, the modified baseline (net income) for summer 2003 is $1,218,352. This is the amount A&S needed to earn in net income to equal the amount earned for summer 2002.

The actual income for summer 2003 for A&S is $1,450,215. The amount earned over the baseline = $231,863. Per the universtiy incentive policy the college receives 50% and the university retains 50%. A&S received $115,931 as their incentive payment for summer 2003.

The college summer session incentive policy is to keep 25% and distribute the remaining 75% to department which exceeded their target income. The target income for summer 2003 was established using the same methodology was described in establishing the baseline. Each data element was inflated and a target set to equal the net tuition income equal to the prior summer.

Pat Woods is in the process of distributing those funds to units which exceed their summer 2003 target.