Introduction
The Budget allocation of an institute tells us where an institute places its priorities in its policies and philosophies. By closely examining the budget allocations of an institute, one can clarify the directions toward which the institute has been and will be heading. It is argued that the Korea Air and Correspondence University (KACU) has tried to allocate its budget, which comes from two sources--the government and KACU revenues-- according to its future development plans as an open and life-long educational system. As we will soon enter the 21st century, it is imperative that we carefully analyze the trends of our budget allocations in the past, identify problems that have arisen, and suggest future directions for better use of our resources.
The purposes of this paper are to analyze the past 10 years' budget allocations of KACU, identify major investment areas, clarify the economics of KACU's budget allocations as a distance education system, and suggest fundamental principles for future budget allocations to enable KACU to become a leading open distance teaching university. A framework for analyzing the budget allocations of a distance education system will first be developed. Then trends that show how the budget has been allocated over the past 10 years will be identified and explained according to the framework. Finally, suggestions will be made on how to improve the economics of budget allocation to foster an open learning institute which provides quality higher education to the people.
Framework for Analysis
It has been recognized that differences exist between distance teaching universities and conventional universities in various aspects. The differences between these two types of universities seem to be found not in the kinds of work they are performing but in the degree of emphasis they are putting into a certain kind of work. For example, even though distance teaching universities and conventional universities both utilize the media for instructional purposes, the former makes greater efforts to utilize the media more effectively and efficiently in their teaching-learning process.
For the purposes of this paper, the kinds of work that are important in educational settings are categorized into the following three areas: 1) educational activities, 2) administrative system /infra structure, and 3) student support system.
Educational activities are those which are essential in maintaining and managing the teaching-learning processes of an educational system. The budget which covers educational activities include funds for or development of course materials and delivery (Radio/TV programs, face-to-face instruction, laboratory work, supplementary handouts, etc.); research and training for the academic staff; evaluation for students' performances; and book purchases. Distance teaching universities put more emphasis on course material development, mass delivery systems and research related to the educational use of the media.
In a distance teaching university, an effective, efficient administration and infrastructure are more important than they are in a conventional university because of the number of students it serves and the various teaching methods it adopts. The budget for administration or infrastructure cover personnel, facilities, and the computer system, including the networking structure among university-related places. Especially the computer system is given more attention by distance education universities than by ordinary universities.
The student support system is important in any university. In distance teaching universities, the management of study centers and counselling services are more important than any other student support services.
These three categories are applied in identifying trends of KACU's budget allocations over the past 10 years. Major limitations in this work are as follows: 1) The categorization of items used in this study may not be identical with that used in official university budget allocation documents. Some of the items found in the university documents are not included in this study because of their irrelevance to the study purposes and other items have been combined for the analysis. 2) The budget for printed text development can not be included in this analysis because printed text are developed by an independent printing company under a separate budget from the university budget. 3) Even though the university newspaper is playing an important role in educational activities at KACU, its budget cannot be included in the analysis because of the same reason stated in 2).
Analysis of Budget Allocation (1984–1993)
Categorization
Under the three categories, several items are included. The following list shows the categorization for the analysis of budget allocations at KACU.
- Educational Activities: Research, Book purchases, Training Course material development and delivery(TV/Radio/supplementary/materials/newmedia/schooling/laboratory work), Evaluation
- Administration or Infrastrue: Personnel Facilities, Computer system
- Student Support: Study centers, Counselling, Scholarships
Overview of trends in budget allocations
The KACU budget comes from two sources—the government and students' fees. Table 1 shows the expenditures by source of revenue since 1984 to 1993.
| Table 1: Expenditures by source of revenue |
| Year | Gov't subsidy | Students' fees |
| 1984 | $6,705,349 (40.8%) | $9,748,2'75 (59.2%) |
| 1985 | $8,131,802 (40.2%) | $12,079,468 (59.8%) |
| 1986 | $8,060,065 (40.6%) | $11,673,397 (59.4%) |
| 1987 | $8,792,573 (41.7%) | $12,282,337 (58.3%) |
| 1988 | $10,001,514 (43.3%) | $13,101,178 (56.7%) |
| 1989 | $12,062,216 (51.6%) | $11,298,837 (48.4%) |
| 1990 | $13,681,835 (50.3%) | $13,516,231 (49.7%) |
| 1991 | $12445,008 (44.9%) | $15,282,191 (55.1%) |
| 1992 | $13,789,000 (40.8%) | $19,983,000 (59.2%) |
| 1993 | $15,455,202 (37.9%) | $25,348,150 (62.1%) |
Note that the proportion of students' fees has increased to over 62% in 1993, which indicates that a more flexible budget allocation can be achieved at the university level.
The ten year trend in budget allocations on educational activities are shown in Figure 1.
From the figure, it can be noticed that from 1990, the budget allocation for educational activities have been drastically decreased (30.4% in 1994, 16.2% in 1990, and 15.4% in 1993). From the year 1990, no funds for TV and Radio program productions were needed from KACU because KACU's production function was assigned to the Educational Broadcasting System (EBS) and thus EBS has been responsible for procuring the necessary fund for KACU program productions since 1990.
Figure 2 shows the trends in the budget allocation for KACU's infrastructure over the past 10 years. In 1993, about 65% of KACU's total budget was allocated for this category. From 1991, a greater number of academic staff members has been recruited than before. And especially in 1993, a large amount of funds was saved to purchase broadcasting and computer facilities.
Figure 3 indicates the ten year trends in the budget allocation for the student support system. Compared to the funds for maintaining the infra- structure of the university, the funds allocated for the student support system has been found to be moderately small. Except for 1992, less than 10% of the total budget has been allocated for student support each year. In 1992, the fund for managing study centers was almost doubled compared to the other years (3.8% in 1991, 6.9% in 1992) because of the expansion of their functions.
Major investment areas
Under the category of educational activities, there has been a tendency for more money to be spent in research book purchase, student evaluation and supplementary text materials since 1990 (Figures 4 and 5). In the year 1993, a significant amount of funds was allocated for the research and development of new media system such as computer-mediated communication and a multi-media production system. These figures show that KACU has begun to pay more attention to media-related research and experimental development.
The budget for maintaining the infrastructure of a social system is comprized mostly with fixed costs. In a distance teaching university, fixed costs are usually higher than variable costs. Of the total budget 45–65% has been allocated in maintaining the infrastructure of KACU for the past 10 years (See Figure 2). As was pointed out before, since 1991 a larger budget has been allocated to support the personnel of KACU because new academic staff members and technical professionals with more experiences have been recruited. Except for the increase in budget for Personnel and facility purchases in 1993, no significant investment areas to economize the infrastructure of the university are found (Figure 6).
The student support system is the key element in distance education and it is the interface between a university and its students. Since distance education is based on a self-learning system, it is important for a distance education institution to provide learning support services to its students. As mentioned above, not much funds have been provided to support the 12 regional study centers and 27 local study centers which have been responsible for direct teaching-learning services to KACU students (Figure 7). However, it is anticipated that more fund will be allocated to support those study centers since the university is implementing decentralized management policies from 1993.
Discussions and Suggestions
KACU has aimed at establishing a flexible open higher learning institute through distance teaching methods. Reddy (1992) argues that 'open learning systems aim to redress social or educational inequality and to offer opportunities not provided by conventional colleges or universities. In this system, restrictions on learning are fewer than those in formal educational institutions.' Major characteristics of an open distance teaching university include separation of the teacher and learner, development of student support services, the use of a variety of media, the provision of interaction between teacher and learner, and the emphasis on individualized interactive media system would improve the economics autonomous learning. Because of these characteristics, the cost structures of conventional and distance teaching universities become quite different from each other. In distance teaching institutes, costs such as salaries of course developers, managers, and counsellers; computing costs; production equipm
ent costs; and maintenance costs are higher than those for conventional universities because labor-centered direct face-to-face learning is replaced by capital-centered distance learning.
When examining the budget allocations for the educational activities, the infrastructure, and the student support services of KACU, no clear evidence is found to support the idea that more funds have been spent in establishing strong media structure to support distance teaching. Rather, costs for personnel have been increased. This indicates increases in the labor-centers activities of the university.
A decrease in schooling sessions has led to a decrease in budget allocations for schooling activities. But no indications of any major fund increase in supporting interactions between teacher and learner or in stengthening media system of the university to compensate schooling functions are noticed.
As a system is decentralized, more support has to go to its subsystems. Since KACU has tried to establish a decentralized system in implementing teaching-learning activities, managing administrative functions, and evaluating students' performances; more investments are necessary to link networks between headquarters and study centers via computer systems. In addition, more funds have to go to student support services in regional and local study centers.
From the above discussions, several suggestions to improve the economics of budget allocations for an open distance teaching university can be made. First of all, investments in advanced technology-based facilities such as a computer network system is needed to cope with the huge number of students more effectively and efficiently. In addition, facilities for of materials development and delivery need to be well-maintained and up-dated each year since teaching and learning take place through materials in distance education.
Secondly, more funds have to be allocated to supporting students' self learning activities rather than providing students with direct teaching services. Counselling and tutoring systems which can provide quality services to many students in study centers at a low cost would be an important area of investment.
Thirdly, investments for the introduction of an interactive media system would improve the economics of budget allocation in distance education. New media system such as computer-mediated communication or DBS has proven to be cost effective if a large number of users are involved. It is also argued that new media can provide students with learning opportunities similar to face-to-face interaction.
Finally, in addition to the investments for teaching and learning activities, investments for research and development—especially in the fields of media use, self-learning mechanisms, and performance evaluation—are required.
References
Kim S.H. (1992). Distance education in Korea. UNESCO AND NIME research report. Seoul.
Korea Air and Correspondence University brochure (1993).
Reddy, R. (Ed.)(1992). Open universities; the ivory towers thrown open. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited.
Rowntree, D. (1992). Exploring open and distance learning. London: Kogan Page Limited.
KACU budget allocation documents between 1984-1993, Seoul: Institute of Distance Education.
1992 KACU yearbook: 20 yrs' anniversary, Seoul: Institute of Distance Education.
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