Identifying “comparable” institutions

To be most useful in the resource acquisition and resource allocation processes, cost studies require the collection of detailed information from “comparable” institutions. This investigation reports the rationale, procedures, and outcomes of an attempt to identify institutions that were comparable to specific universities operating under the Kansas Board of Regents. The three-phase study involved (1) selecting states that were similar to Kansas on several key variables, (2) using information about breadth of academic programs and locale to identify public universities in those states that resembled a given Kansas institution on these features, and (3) using detailed information about enrollment, expenditure pattern, and academic emphases to measure the similarity of universities in each pool to a given Regents university. The system produced results that proved to be credible by three different tests and responded effectively to some issues involving the Kansas formula funding process. It is sufficiently flexible that it could be adapted to other states or universities whose rationale or assumptions differed from those employed in Kansas.