The three pie charts show how a college budget was apportioned in 1990, 2000, and 2010. Overall, the largest expense is for staff, and insurance and technology spending has consistently increased, while spending on other resources has declined or fluctuated.
In terms of human resources, paying staff took up the majority of the college budget, with teacher salaries dominating this category, increasing initially from 40% to 50% before declining to 45%. However, in each decade, an increasingly smaller proportion was allocated to other staff pay, which fell from 28% in 1990 to 15% in 2010.
With other expenses, in 1990, almost as much was spent on furniture and equipment as on books, at 15% and 14% respectively. However, while book spending increased to 20% in 2000, furniture and equipment fell sharply to only 2% and, in 2010, remained the lowest cost at 3%. By the same year, book spending had fallen to 9%, almost half of its initial level. In contrast, technology and insurance were the lowest costs in 1990, at only 1% and 2%, but rose in each decade, with the largest increases occurring in 2010, when insurance reached 8% and technology 20%. Notably, in the final decade, a larger proportion of the budget was spent on technology than on books.