There is increasing pressure on colleges and universities to develop measures of accountability. The objective is to specify goals and objectives and to develop performance measures to assess the achievement of those goals and objectives. Form a group of four to six students to be a consulting team to the accounting department at your college or university. (If you are not using this book as part of a course in an accounting department, select any department at a local college or university.) Based on your collective knowledge of the department, its mission and its activities, formulate a statement of goals for the department. From that statement, develop several specific objectives, each of which can be measured. Then, develop one or more measure of performance for each objective.

An optional second step in this exercise is to meet with a faculty member from the department and ask them to critique your objectives and performance measures. To the department member, do the objectives make sense? Are the proposed measures feasible and will they correctly measure attainment of the objectives? Will they provide proper incentives to the faculty? If the department has created objectives and performance measures, compare them to those your group developed.