Budgetary planning for self-financing open and flexible education

This paper illustrates the issues and implications of involving stakeholders in budgetary planning in a self-financing university which provides open and flexible education – The Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK). The budgetary planning mechanism of the OUHK is characterised by having multiple administrative levels and involves multiple stakeholders. The heads of academic units are invited to identify new programmes or the expansion of existing ones and project student number for the coming academic year; and the heads of administrative units are required to estimate the expected expenditure for each financial year. It is demonstrated that the involvement of stakeholders in the budgetary process facilitates the development of a realistic budget for meeting operational needs and sustaining the growth of the university.