A Comparative Study on Cost through ABC and the Traditional Method in the Iranian Education System; a Case Study on Hormozgan Education Department

Abstract

The present paper attempts to test whether there is a significant difference between the results obtained from employing ABC and the traditional method, emphasizing the necessity of using ABC in educational institutions which are developing their activities. Hence, the costs of education for a student at various educational levels during 2003-2011 were calculated based on ABC and the traditional method. By employing ABC, the costs were dedicated through the following stages: apportionment of the costs at Iranian Education Department and the Affiliated Offices, determining the contribution of each educational level in costs of the affiliated offices using appropriate ratios, determining administrative and non-educational costs related to each level, and finally determining the educational costs of each level. For testing the hypotheses and the sub-hypotheses, paired comparison of the means and student’s t distribution were employed, respectively. Concerning the migration of the educated people, i.e. the intellectual capital, the cost of emigration to other countries imposed on the society was measured using the value of exported oil resources over the years under study. It was concluded that over 121 barrels of oil by finishing high school and over 119 barrels at the intermediate technical level have been spent on each student. The total amount of costs equals to roughly 101,296,800 Rials according to the Iranian currency value back in 2000.