Activity-Based Costing (ABC) and its applicability in autonomous public universities in Vietnam

Under current budgetary regulations, traditional accounting systems fail to provide accurate cost information for individual training programs, resulting in imprecise tuition pricing and challenges in meeting accountability requirements. Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is recognized as an advanced management tool that allocates indirect costs according to activity consumption, thereby facilitating the determination of actual costs, activity-based budgeting, and more efficient resource allocation. Despite its potential benefits, the application of ABC remains limited due to legal constraints, misaligned information objectives, and the absence of an integrated data system. This study examines these constraints and presents an integrated ABC-based model for autonomous universities, emphasizing the need for system-level alignment to enhance cost transparency and managerial effectiveness.