Activity Based Costing of Educational Services in Faculty of Medicine in Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Iran, 2015

Background and purpose: Educational services are highly expensive, so, accurate financial information could be of great benefit for optimized management of training organizations. Activity-based costing (ABC) is of particular importance for authorities. Materials and methods: In this cross-sectional study, the cost of all educational services was evaluated in the faculty of medicine in Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Iran 2015, using the ABC method. After identifying activity centers, costing, including direct and indirect costs, and depreciation and construction costs were determined for each activity according to financial documents obtained from the financial office. Results: The total cost for each student was found to be more than 300 million Rial in 2015. Also, the cost of conducting each class per hour and the cost of each unit of the modules were almost 50 million and 800 million Rial, respectively. Conclusion: Current findings confirmed that medical education is expensive which requires recruiting effective educational staff and optimized management of financial resources to overcome the financial burden. The ABC method is an accurate method that could help the authorities to design and implement a reliable educational financial program.