Projects & Activities

The Benchmarking Project is being undertaken from 2010 to 2011.  There is a coalition of interest amongst Medical Schools to better understand the business with respect to revenue and cost drivers, structure and the industry.  Australian and New Zealand Medical Schools are unique in the higher education sector.  A key objective of this collaborative benchmarking project is to increase and promote an understanding of medical schools by universities and by State and Federal Governments who have partnerships with universities, through their Health and Education portfolio.

The outcomes sought from this collaborative benchmarking project will be to quantify and compare the following measures:

• Revenue sources
• The resource allocation to each Medical School (eg how much of the revenue earned was available for use by the Medical School)
• Key cost items
• Level of academic and administrative support and costs
• Student load
• Academic staff to student ratios
• Professional staff cost ratios
• The level of pro bono support provided by honorary teachers
• The teaching patterns of each Medical School (eg the undergraduate EFTSL load taught within and outside the medical school)

A pilot benchmarking project was undertaken in 2007/08 and the methodology used in this project builds upon that used in the earlier exercise.