Use of Activity based Costing and Value Chain Approaches at Iraqi Public Universities to Improve Educational Service

Abstract

The current research aims to measure the cost of educational service in Iraqi public universities using two important tools of management accounting, namely activity-based cost and value chain, which are used to manage and reduce the cost. The applied methodology was used in the research, as the cost of the educational service was calculated by applying cost based on activity and value chain on the sample of the research data which is Technical College of Management. Thus, more accurate and management-oriented information is available than the traditional systems currently in place. The research has reached several conclusions, the most important of which are: that cost-based accounting can be applied in the government higher education units, thus providing more accurate and management-oriented information than the traditional systems currently applied. On the other hand, for the purpose of evaluating and improving the educational service, the value chain can be applied in these units and based on ABC information in calculating this cost, which produces abundant information useful for management in evaluating and improving the service enabling it to provide high quality educational service increase of student-citizen confidence and dependence on public universities, which is the last requirement of government units and measures the extent to which they achieve and accomplish their mission.