Several years before a global pandemic disrupted higher education, Temple University, a large public research university based in Philadelphia, was already feeling pressure to reduce their costs and operate more efficiently. Although the university is state supported, only about 14% of their yearly budget comes from state appropriated funds. For the rest, they rely heavily on enrollment.
To ensure they were making financial decisions that would positively impact their mission, Temple partnered with HelioCampus Benchmarking. Read the case study to learn more about how Temple was able to benchmark their spending against peer institutions to track effectiveness and satisfaction.
"For Temple, the data were critical for strategically addressing resource allocation and avoiding across the- board approaches to both budget cuts and investments."
Ken Kaiser
Vice President, CFO and Treasurer, Temple University
With their benchmarked data, Temple leadership could see how their spending compared with other large public universities in a wide variety of categories including student support services, facilities management, HR, research administration, and more.
In general, Kaiser knew Temple was operating relatively efficiently compared to similar universities. Of their total labor spend, only 31% is administrative. But Temple wanted to dive even deeper.
