WSCH: Weekly Student Contact Hours are based on the first census week of a Fall term or Fall quarter. They do not include second census week data, but they do include all positive attendance data for the term (converted to WSCH) including classes which start after the first census.

FTE: The Full-Time Equivalent faculty count is determined by a set of rules provided to each college at the time the data are requested. Generally, the figures are the decimal fraction of the teaching hours or units (whichever is standard at a given college) ascribed to the faculty member for teaching work done. Non-teaching time is specifically excluded so that it dose not affect the value of the data. Work done by non-certificated personnel is not to be included.

Load: Teaching Load is taken ad the ratio of WSCH to FTE.

ILCI: Inverted Load Cost Index is a ratio of a reference Load to the Load entry in the particular line, multiplied by 100. For a line in the table which reports an individual college, the reference Load for the ILCI is the average Load for the whole college. For a group of colleges the reference Load is the average Load for all the colleges in the group. ILCI values less than 100 represent relatively low cost disciplines and values greater than 100 index relatively high cost disciplines.

When a teaching Load is low, the corresponding ILCI will be high. Thus, this indicator can be used to quickly identify relatively high cost disciplines in individual schools. For most colleges the personnel related costs exceed 85% of the total budget, thus the ILCI can be a close estimator of the real cost of instruction in an individual discipline or group of disciplines. A low value of ILCI may indicate that the real cost in the discipline is correspondingly low. If costs for equipment, supplies and non-certificated personnel are "average" then the validity of the inverted load as a cost index is good. The ILCI values at different colleges which have the same teaching load in a given discipline will be the same only if each college has the same average teaching load for the colleges as a whole.