38th Annual Maintenance & Operations Cost Study for Colleges
Apr 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Joe Agron (jagron@asumag.com)
The nation's colleges are feeling the pinch of the economic downturn, and maintenance and operations (M&O) budgets especially are under pressure.
According to American School & University's 38th annual Maintenance & Operations Cost Study, the median college allocates 10 percent of its total budget to M&O, down from 11 percent the year before. While lower energy costs helped colleges' bottom lines, rising payroll and benefits costs strained budgets.
Like school districts, custodial and maintenance staff are being required to do more. The amount of square feet maintained per full-time custodian increased by 16 percent; the amount of square feet maintained per full-time maintenance worker increased by 13 percent.
The following pages include data from the latest M&O Cost Study that can help you in benchmarking expenditures at your institution. Data provided only targets two-year and four-year colleges with no significant graduate programs. This is done to provide more useful comparative data. Larger four-year universities with significant graduate programs are not surveyed because their costs and activities are so varied that results would be less useful.
In addition, data provided reflect actual spending by colleges on M&O and are not intended to be "ideal" amounts. Numerous factors — such as age and overall condition of buildings, the labor market in your area, climate, etc. — will affect your costs when compared with the national medians.
For those looking for additional data, select the links below the Web Exclusive icon that will direct you to exclusive data not found in the print version on M&O expenditures and operations at our nation's colleges.
Agron, editor-in-chief, can be reached at JAgron@ASUmag.com. Research conducted by Elinor Rice, senior research manager, Penton Media.
Data from the 38th Annual Maintenance & Operations Cost Study for Colleges
- Methodology
- Type of institution
- Number of buildings at institution
- Maintenance & Operations Costs per FTE student or per square foot
- Total grounds acreage maintained
- Total gross area maintained of all buildings
- Number of buildings on campus
- FTE enrollment
- Percentage of colleges contracting out M&O services
- Green Cleaning in Colleges
- Maintenance & Operations Budget
- How the M&O budget is split
- Median amount of square feet and acreage maintained
- M&O expenditures over the past 10 years
- M&O salaries and number of employees
- Median square footage of building maintained per FTE student
- More Colleges M&O data
Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus
