Since university governance falls under the purview of all interested parties (i.e. you have people from all units involved in decision-making), then it's important for administration to maintain standards. This is why it's done using similar methods. As I wrote in an earlier post, however, I think the losses are almost always understated in order to hide them from the customers really footing the bill: parents and students.
Here's U. Michigan's expenditure-per-student:
Michigan gets much less subsidy from the state (14%) than Florida does (30%), which explains the very high tuition:
General Fund Budget Snapshot | U-M Public Affairs
In order to figure out the expenditure per student, I would look at how much tuition contributes to the budget. Tuition at Michigan accounts for 73% of the budget. That means that expenditure per student is tuition + 27% of the budget. At Florida, it is only 18% of the budget. This is an enormous difference.
Using my method for Florida, I take the average tuition paid by both OOS students (16% of total) and IS (84%), and I get an average tuition per student of $9,945. This means you're almost at $50k expenditure, but then you take financial aid into account. It's 4% of the total budget at Florida, so remove $2k from expenditure.
At Michigan, 50% of the students are out of state. So the average tuition is $32,300. 3x as much as U. Florida's. But it's 73% of the budget. So the total expenditure per student would be $45,000. But financial aid is 12%, so the actual expenditure is reduced to $39,600. That's $10k less than the charge for out of state tuition.
The big difference between both schools is that 50% of Michigan students are OOS, while only 16% of Florida students are. This accounts for the wide disparity in the fiscal health of both schools.
Michigan also spends a ridiculous 14% of its budget on administration. 30 years ago the national average was 1% at state universities.
The sweet spot for a discerning parent would be to find out the expenditure for instruction (ie. remove administration and the other perks). You can do this by looking at each school's reports to the US Dept. of Ed. It tells you exactly how much is spent in each area. I looked at this a while ago as we were sizing up schools. It's enlightening if you believe that your kid will get a better education at schools that spend more on instruction. You do have to account for how scientific research tends to cause administrative bloat, but by and large, I would want more resources in instruction for an undergraduate student.
