Education cost is the social labor consumed by cultivating students. Including materialized labor and living labor. Its monetary expression is all the expenses paid directly and indirectly by the society and the educated individuals for cultivating students. Education needs certain social labor, and the direct result of education is to cultivate all kinds of skilled workers and specialized talents. The law of saving labor time requires more educational output with less educational labor input, which requires studying and accounting educational cost. Education funds refer to the expenditures actually used for education in the financial budgets of the central and local financial departments. Education funds include education funds (that is, personnel funds and public funds of various schools at all levels) and education capital investment (the cost of building school buildings and purchasing large-scale teaching equipment).

Education cost is full cost, and education cost accounting is full cost accounting, which includes not only the cost of materials and wages consumed by education services, but also the management expenses incurred for organizing and managing education service activities. Compared with the manufacturing cost of products in industrial enterprises, educational cost accounting is a complete cost accounting, and their management activities are difficult to be completely separated from educational service activities. The cost accounting of industrial products is manufacturing cost accounting.

The object of cost calculation of educational cost accounting is the per capita cost, that is, the recipient of educational services. The various expenses it consumes for the service recipients should of course be borne by the education service recipients.

Educational cost accounting refers to the work of auditing, summarizing and accounting the amount of educational expenses in a certain period and calculating the educational cost. It includes two basic links: (1) collecting education expenses according to the specified cost range and calculating the actual amount of education expenses; (2) According to the object of education cost accounting, the total cost and unit cost of education are calculated by appropriate methods.

Education cost accounting can be classified according to different standards. According to the subject of cost burden, it can be divided into social cost and personal cost; According to the basis of cost occurrence, it can be divided into direct cost and indirect cost; According to the form of cost, it can be divided into monetary cost and non-monetary cost; According to the connotation of cost, it can be divided into comprehensive cost and single cost; According to the time when the cost occurs, it can be divided into school year cost and school period cost, and so on.