Colleges To Spend Less On Faculty Travel

The report also details their policies on a broad range of critical higher education purchasing issues, including: use of credit and purchasing cards, reimbursement and arrangement of faculty & staff travel, level of involvement in supplier selection of the purchasing department for a broad range of goods and services, use of consortiums, use of auction sites, thresh holds for bid requirements, size and remuneration of purchasing department staff, warehouse logistics, sale of surplus or used materials, green purchasing policies, and trends in purchasing in many areas.

Just a few of the report’s many finding are that:

Mean spending on salaries for the colleges in the sample was $550,642 while the median was $307,500. Colleges with more than 25,000 students averaged $1.23 million in purchasing department salaries, and one college spent $2.3 million.

Mean annual earnings from the sale of surplus or used materials, furniture, computers and other items was $159,111.

Nearly 69% of the colleges sampled say that they will spend less on faculty travel to conferences in the current academic year (2009-09) compared to last year. Close to 44% said that they will spend a little less while 25% said that they would spend a lot less.

Close to 39% of the colleges in the sample observe a percentage limit beyond which they will not reimburse for tips.

A mean of 37.1% of travel paid for by the college is contracted through travel agents; the spread was enormous, from 0 to 100%, and the median was 27.5%.

For more than 54% of the colleges in the sample revenues from sales of surplus or used items by the purchasing department went into a general college fund

54.55% of the colleges in the sample maintain vehicles that they make available to faculty, staff or both for business use.

The mean number of cards issued for the public colleges in the sample was an astounding 1680.

More than half of the purchasing departments in the sample are significantly involved in the selection of shipping and transportation services. More than a fifth of public colleges often make the actual supplier selection while only 10% of private college purchasing departments do so.

The 115-page report is available for $144.00 from Primary Research Group Inc. For a list of participants and complete table of contents, or to order, visit our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com or call us at 212-736-2316.