In an age of shrinking enrollment and financial difficulties, budget planning for higher education has become more important than ever. Getting the university budget process right can go a long way toward ensuring a healthy fiscal plan even while being able to achieve your institutional priorities.
Budgeting, of course, comes with its own challenges that university leadership must contend with. A variety of stakeholders have a vested interest in the process; for example, academic units fear cuts to their fiscal year funds at a time when some academic programs are receiving less support. Shrinking state appropriations can make annual budget decisions more complex than ever, making it more difficult to scale your strategic admissions and recruitment efforts.
In that environment, the Responsibility Center Management (RCM) budget model has become increasingly popular at private and public universities around the nation. As a relatively new budget model, it’s both a philosophy and a tool that can help your institution make better financial decisions for your annual resource allocation.
What Is the RCM Budget Model?
In higher education, most financial allocation methodologies begin with the assumption of a central budget system. Tuition revenues and expenditures alike are calculated on a university-wide level, with support units only coming in after the fact as financial resources are distributed each year.
The RCM budget model flips that assumption around. Unlike more central models like incremental budgeting, the RCM budget model is essentially a unit-centered management philosophy that assigns deans and other individual unit leaders more autonomy over their own budgets.
The model designates every revenue-generating unit as a responsibility center and receives the revenue it generates annually. Each unit also receives a portion of annual state appropriations. At the same time, each responsibility center has to account for its own expenses and a share of the institution-wide expenses that support non-revenue-generating initiatives and cross-functional strategic priorities.
Key Principles of the RCM Budget Model
The RCM budget model is just beginning to gain popularity, in part because of its complexity. For it to work well, the planning and execution must include five fundamental principles that everyone across the institution follows.
Aligned Revenue and Expenses
At its core, this is a budget model in which every responsibility center controls the revenue it generates and the expenses it incurs. The idea is that any financial decisions made at the unit level will directly impact the unit’s outcomes. This instills sustainability in budget planning at the level where revenue and expenses are most directly experienced and felt.
Transparency and Accountability
The RCM model only works if financial information at every level is clear and readily available to all core stakeholders. Responsibility centers have to understand their financial standing and the impact of their choices, including anything from the revenue created from the credit hours taught to fundraising income directly related to their unit. That level of transparency fosters a sense of ownership, creating true accountability within each unit.
Incentivizing Efficiency and Growth
Because of the direct expense and revenue connection, each unit is motivated to make financially sound decisions. It’s up to each unit to keep surplus funds generated through cost-saving measures or increased revenue streams, incentivizing them to navigate toward both. That, in turn, can cause unit leads to:
- Seek out alternative revenue sources
- Manage their resources better
- Prioritize revenue-driving activities for the institution
Balancing Priorities
Crucially, RCM is a management philosophy as much as a budgeting model. It cannot succeed when focusing solely on profit, which could lead to neglecting initiatives that are crucial despite not driving revenues. For this model to succeed, both unit and institutional leaders have to balance revenue priorities with the institutional mission, strategic plan, and strategic goals. It’s why, at institutions like Kent State, KPIs for successful RCM go far beyond financial performance.
Simplicity and Predictability
Finally, RCM is not necessarily intuitive for university leaders who are used to more centralized, incremental budget models. Any implemented system should be easy to understand and operate. The budget allocation needs to be predictable, making it easier for units to gain buy-in while fostering stability and enabling everyone involved to plan ahead.
How Does the RCM Budget Model Work?
An RCM budget model built on the above principles has a solid foundation for success. From there, it’s about implementing the model correctly using these six steps.
1. Revenue Allocation
Before the beginning of each fiscal year, revenue goes to each unit in two buckets:
- Direct revenue: Each unit earns revenue based on its activities. Academic departments generate money through tuition for courses in their department, research departments receive grant funding, schools receive school-specific fundraising results, and so on.
- Indirect revenue: Certain criteria span the institution. So the revenue is distributed to all units accordingly. For example, enrollment numbers, institution-wide research activities, or federal and state allocations could be redistributed to units across the university.
2. Expense Responsibility
In the RCM budget model, every unit is responsible for managing its own expenses. That responsibility is outlined early on. Salaries, equipment purchases, maintenance, and other operational costs belong to each unit, with the idea that this responsibility will lead to more efficient expense planning.
3. Cost Services (Cost Allocation)
Each unit is also assigned a share of services that apply to the entire university. For example, central services provided by the administration, including IT support, facilities management, and central administration, all have to be accounted for.
Depending on the implementation, this cost allocation may be based on actual usage or a fixed fee structure. While actual usage can be more complex to implement, it also encourages units to use central resources wisely and avoid excessive use.
4. Subsidies and Incentives
No university can function with a system where every unit is self-sustaining. Essential services are not always viable on their own. For example, consider academic departments that are mission-critical despite not being among the most popular majors or student support services like counseling and DEI. Moreover, indirect costs can include strategic initiatives that benefit the entire institution.
These units receive funding through subsidies from the central administration. At the same time, RCM may also include a model in which units with surplus revenue have incentives to continue being productive through budget increases or less stringent financial controls. This structure can ensure productivity without neglecting essential non-revenue activities.
5. Decision-Making Autonomy
The next step involves putting decision-making autonomy in place for all units managing their own budgets. Choices about hiring, technology investments, and new programs and services development should be up to each unit. But they should also have limited oversight to ensure mission alignment. The idea is that those closest to the operational front lines are in the best position to make effective decisions about using their resources, ultimately benefiting the entire institution.
6. Financial Accountability
Finally, RCM puts guardrails in place that require regular financial reporting from each unit to central administration. As this recent five-year review example from Rutgers University shows, accountability helps to ensure that financial practices and outcomes remain sound and transparent. It enables the institution to monitor financial health and make adjustments as needed.
Benefits of the RCM Budget Model for Higher Ed
It might be more complex than some of its more traditional counterparts. But when implemented correctly, the RCM budget model can significantly benefit both individual units and the whole university.
Enhanced Accountability and Transparency
Because each unit is responsible for its own budget, the RCM model promotes clearer financial reporting and decision-making visibility. That applies to anyone from academic departments to schools and administrative offices. For example, admissions offices can become more transparent in their efforts to build more efficient recruitment strategies with smart investments into anything from counselor travel to digital ad campaigns.
Incentives for Efficiency and Innovation Within Units
Units that can optimize their resources and become entrepreneurial in finding alternative revenue streams will see direct benefits under this budget model. Linking their budget directly to their performance encourages them to:
- Keep pushing forward
- Build new digital recruitment strategies
- Find new ways to enhance their budget over time
Greater Financial Autonomy and Decision-Making Power at the Unit Level
Direct control over your unit’s finances can significantly enhance decision-making power and flexibility. Each unit can determine where investments make the most sense in the moment. Then they can each reap the rewards (as well as the risks) of the decision on their own. That, in turn, enables them to respond more effectively to challenges and opportunities as they seek to accomplish both their own and larger institutional goals.
RCM Budget Template for Universities
The RCM budget model is so effective in part because of its flexibility. That flexibility enables the model to be adjusted for each institution depending on its units, revenue sources, and strategic initiatives. At the same time, it can also make a comprehensive template difficult to build. The University of Pennsylvania, where RCM for universities first originated in the 1970s, comes the closest, providing a set of RCM templates for different institutional units that can easily be adapted to private and state universities according to their needs.
Utilize Your Budget Strategically to Maximize Student Engagement With Concept3D
At a time when responsible budget management has become more important than ever in higher education, the RCM model offers a way to increase accountability and flexibility. By empowering individual institutional units, it also creates a sense of ownership. This can result in more effective budget and strategic planning efforts.
Consider student engagement as an example. We know about the importance of strategically managing campus events for enhanced student engagement. But in centralized budget models, finding the money to make these events successful can be difficult. When the units hosting the event can also benefit from their financial impact, on the other hand, building better campus events becomes much more realistic and reasonable.
Through the RCM model, in other words, you can begin to maximize your dollars in student engagement. Investments like Localist, designed to enhance your event management and promotion, become much more reasonable. Learn about Localist to get started on optimizing your student engagement today.