Complying with federal mandates probably costs Barton Community College $1-2 million a year, college officials learned recently.Mike Johnson, chairman of the BCC Board of Trustees, asked for information on the true cost of compliance, which includes adding personnel for record keeping and paying for unnecessary audits. The answer was found in a report presented in February 2015 by the Task Force on Government Regulation of Higher Education.Thirteen higher learning institutions across the United States were assessed in a study, which found the cost of federal compliance varied from 3 to 11 percent of total operating expenditures at each institution. The median was 6.4 percent.Based on that information, the cost of compliance at Barton was $800,591 at the 3 percent level or $1.88 million at the 6.4 percent level, based on 2014-2015 operating expenditures of $29.4 million.Barton officials can easily find costly examples of compliance costs.