Non financial factors before decision to discontinue course

As the course used to be popular, there must be certain amount of students have joined for this course. Thus, if Mawar College wants to discontinue this course, they must place their first priority to these students. As what they expected, students will have tons of questions and of course they will feel frustrated and angry. They could even come out with the petition with the hopes that the college could continue running this course before they graduate. Even if the college has decided to discontinue this course, they also have to consider on where they should place these students as they only halfway studying for this course. They have to understand that all these students will absolutely feel unhappy and discontent if the college place them in another course that is not as famous as the course they are studying now. This issue could possibly bother the students and could affect their emotions making them hardly to concentrate well on their studies. (Olejnik and Holschuh 2007)

These grievance students will also raise this issue to their parents and again, their parents will call or even pay a visit to Mawar College to identify the reasons and details that halt the course from continuing. However, the college has to remember that not every of these parents are understanding and willing to listen the explanation by management. As being customers, most of them only concern on how much they have already paid and where their children will be placed to. Even some of these parents might argue and quarrel with the college management. When these parents concerns are not being addressed, they might carry out some conducts which could possibly spoil the reputation of the college. For example, these disgruntled parents will start spreading their dissatisfaction about the college because of its failure to meet and satisfy their suspense. (The Associated Press 2010)

Recapping above, the image and reputation of Mawar College will be affected and people will start losing confident to the college. Other students might reluctantly register to any courses that run by this college as they worry the same incident might be happening again. Even their parents may discourage them from studying under this college and request them to further their studies in another more reliable college. This has clearly showed that their good impression to the established Mawar College has dashed out and people will hardly believe this college anymore. The Mawar College rankings among other colleges can come to a deep fall and they might face difficulties to gain back their credibility and again be competitive advantage among its competitors. (The Indian Express Limited 2010)

Besides of affecting the reputation of the college, the reputation of the well-known University will also be affected. People around the world will start doubting whether the University is having any problems that lead to the discontinuing of the course. University will definitely feel displeasure and will not allow any accusation that will influence its goodwill. This would certainly be a hard job for the college to run any courses under this University in the future since they have break their promises. The University could possibly sue the college if the college breaches the contracts. Hence, the college has to bear the risk of facing legal suits from the University if they have decided to end the course. The college might lose huge amount of money for the purpose to compensate the University because of their doings and this would be a loss to Mawar College. (The Times of India 2010)

As the college has already employed a large group of full-time lecturer for this course, thus every of this lecturer will be affected too if the college discontinue the course. They could be appointed in teaching another course and subjects or even discharged by the colleges that will definitely reduce their level of income. Their motivation and enthusiasm in teaching will also decrease due to their dissatisfaction to the college. This could also affect the rest of the college employees and their level of production will start decreasing once they have lost faith to Mawar College. (Race 1999)

Other than above, there are still many factors that the college has to realize and take into account before making their decision. As the course used to be famous, I can assume that certain scholarships and loans have been given to some students to further up their studies on this course. Therefore, it would be a tough and complicated task that these students have to gone through for the cancellation of loans or transferring their scholarships if this course has to be stopped. Certain welfare organizations such as Genting Malaysia and Hong Leong Group that provide free scholarships to Mawar College on this course will also feel discontent because it will burden up their works when the students have more enquiries regards on their transferring or cancellation of scholarships. (Sunway University College nd) People that do not understand the reason of why they discontinue the course might also claim that the only intention for the college is to make profits and ignore the future of the students.

Thus, all these will trouble the college and they hardly to survive in the market as people and other Universities have lost their reliability to this college. The college might face problems when they have to search and look for other Universities and running their courses because these Universities also dread the same case will be happening again and affects their reputations. Mawar College will also face difficulties in employing high qualification lecturers due to their spoilt image and have no choice but to employ new lecturers without much teaching experiences. As they are new, most of them still could not master the lectures and issues such as the failing of students in exam could possibly occur because they do not know the correct ways of teaching the students. When the students are unable to show their achievements, again the reputation of the college will be affected. (BNET nd)

All these clearly show that there are different non financial factors that the college has to consider and it is pertinent to make a correct decision in order to prevent any unforeseen circumstances from happening that could lead them into a deep fall and hardly for them to bounce back in the education industry.

Part C

Investment appraisal methods are act as a tool for planning an investment and decide whether or not to accept the projects. (Gotze et al 2008) There are a few different investment appraisal methods can be used, including discounted cash flow (DCF), payback, (Smith 2007) and Accounting Rate of Return (ARR) whereby DCF includes the methods of Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). The NPV under DCF has been recognized as the sound of all the investment appraisal methods due to its consideration on the time value of money. This time value of money refers to the amount of money that the business need to be compensated for forgoing the use of the money for a period of time if it has to be invested in a project. (Evans et al 2003)

NPV is a method of including all the cash inflows and outflows that will be earned and used in a project at a chosen acceptable rate of return and taking the net total. (Evans et al 2003) Even though there are many advantages in using NPV, but payback method and ARR are still widely used and adopted by many businesses due to the limitations brought by NPV and benefits of payback and ARR methods. (Fabozzi and Peterson 2003)

The weaknesses that business normally face when using this NPV approach is they hardly to make accurate long-term forecast of cash flows they can receive in the future. No company can predict the future cash flows as factors such as future sales, costs of labor, interest rate, and government policies can affect the estimated cash flows. Overestimation or underestimation can sometimes bring uncountable loss to the business. (Siddiqui and Siddiqui 2005)

Further, in reality it is difficult for business to determine the discount rate, which is cost of finance or cost of capital. It is not an easy job to calculate various costs of finance such as share capital and loans. (Coombs et al 2005) They also have to take the bank interest rate, risk and future inflation into account when deciding the cost of capital because the money value of RM1 in the future will be lesser than its today value. (Bowhill 2008)

Moreover, NPV method will assume that the discount rate will remain the same throughout the project running periods. But in fact, these discount rates are easily swayed from year to year. Business has to prognosis the future discount rate which sometimes might be a big differences compared to their forecast with the real situation. (Groppelli and Nikbakht 2006)

Besides that, NPV also not suitable to be used in the situation when comparing projects with different lives times. (Siddiqui and Siddiqui 2005) They also have a weakness whereby they never take the size or capital invested into account but only look at the higher yield of NPV. (Moyer et al 2009) This can be shown by the example where a project with size RM1 million that yield NPV RM1500 will be recommended compare to other project with capital RM 1000 with a NPV of RM800. (Coombs 2005) Calculation of NPV which is expressed in money form is not favorable by most of the companies compared to percentage form. (Fabozzi and Peterson 2003)

Payback method also has been called as payout method (Belkaoui 2001) and it refers to the number of years a project or investment will take to pay back the initial cash outlay. This is only done when the cumulative cash inflows equally same with the cash outflows. (Bowhill 2008) Payback method is still widely used because it offers information regard to the risk of the investment. Risk analysis can be made depends on the payback period of the investment. (Moyer et al 2009) Risks will be dwindled by using this payback method because it focuses on earlier cash flows and not the later cash flows which are hardly to predict especially in this fast pace world. (Walker 2009) The business will face less risk with the shorter payback period and vice versa. (Moyer et al 2009)

Furthermore, payback method will clearly show the liquidity of the investment because it measure the net cash earned by the investment in shorter term. (Bowhill 2008) For company that always concern the liquidity of their businesses will definitely adopt this helpful method so they could know whether their businesses are in strong or weak liquidity to perform or carry out any plans or activities. (Moyer et al 2009)

This simple to use and easy to understand method (Walker 2009) can be applied especially to small projects where only a simple decision is needed without consider other cash flow implications. (Bowhill 2008) There is no complicated calculation needed and thus many companies find it is the best way to check whether the money invested can be generated back in reasonable period of time. (Groppelli and Nikbakht 2006)

Last but not least, ARR is the average annual profits divided by the initial investment and it also known as Return on Investment (ROI) that used for performance appraisal. (Walker 2009) The investment will only be accepted and applied if the ARR was the same or higher than the target rate set by the company. (Bowhill 2008)

This percentage form of ARR is easy to compute and understand especially to business people because it sounds familiar as return on capital employed that mostly applied by companies. (Coombs 2005) ARR is always been used due to its consideration on all the returns and whole life of the investment into account. ARR is the only one that is based on the accounting profits and focus on accounting income rather than cash flows. (Belkaoui 2001) The amount and value calculated by ARR also relevant and used for financial statement presentation such as balance sheet. (Shim and Siegel 2004)