Studying Public Sector Budgets at Under-graduate Level

Abstract

Europe demands that its people be culturally and intellectually equipped in ways that are suitable for their present and future. Only in this way will they be able to live meaningful lives in person and together. Higher education institutions play a key role in developing appropriate strategies. Higher education institutions are responsible for preparing their students for viable career development and citizenship development. Universities and other higher education institutions are increasingly realizing that their movement is a moving target and their leadership in the field of knowledge and understanding development and transfer means a new sensitivity to a society change. They are increasingly consulting their customers. Education inspires societal progress, but at the same time, it must respond with discernment to society by developing appropriate strategies for future study programs. Graduate studies in human resources management and national security programs prepare students for independent national budget evaluation (acting as the public finance specialists) which requires high qualifications. The managers of human resources in the public sector are in charge of public finance expenditures accounting and budget matters in the institution, and besides typical budget knowledge must demonstrate deep knowledge of public finance and the ability to combine human resource management and public expenditure issues. In order to achieve this goal, the national security master degree graduate program at Lithuania’s Military Academy partially provides the study of specialized subjects in the fields of public finance and budget planning. One of the most important subjects is the national budget which requires from the students a lot of prior knowledge in the field of budgeting and taxation systems. Estimating that the main purpose of the governmental sector’s human resources management could be the public finance, it is useful to show students the differences in the approach of national budget operations and tax revenues purposes. The teaching process should be based on accurately selected cases, so that it could be obvious for students. From a didactic point of view, the properly selected case is the one that contains a lot of differences between national budget, government budget, municipal budget and their records in the national law system. One of the examples that meets the above criteria is revenues collected from different taxes. Settled income from taxes is one of the most important revenues for the national budget. Moreover, principles of the government and municipal budgets diversification could be clearly understandable for graduate students. The paper presents the advantages and disadvantages of choosing the different taxes for the national, state and municipal budget concerning tax burden for different groups of society. Furthermore, purposes of teaching students subjects of public budgeting and principles of 38 taxation are discussed. Amid the many preferences the most important could be a pattern that clearly shows different approaches to budget expenditures and tax diversification as the interrelated issue, that is the amount of budget expenditures strictly correlate with taxable and non taxable income in the public finance and it depends on the budget legislation. Certainly, the indication of such relations is the essence of the public finance budgeting. Practical applications constructed on years of practice in teaching public finance, national and municipal budgets along with taxation theories were also indicated by the results of a survey carried out in a group of students studying the subject of public finance in the last academic year.