In this article, the authors present the results of a research study in which they used two national datasets to construct and examine a model that estimates relative faculty instructional costs for specific undergraduate degree programs and also identifies differences in these costs by region and institutional type. They conducted this research study for three reasons. First, as the price of tuition increases, innovative pricing models--some of which attempt to identify unique costs associated with specific degree programs--have attracted attention in the higher education public arena (Kurz and Scannell, 2004; Hebel, 2005). Second, they believe a resource cost model--the approach they used here--can make a great contribution to the literature on higher education costs because it addresses several of the limitations of the accounting method approach used more commonly by colleges and universities to estimate their costs. Finally (and perhaps best illuminated by the study), they believe their analysis presents an illustrative study of the possibilities and limitations of using national datasets to conduct applied research of this type. Here, the authors outline the background of the study and describe the rationale and method in using two NCES datasets to model faculty instructional costs. (Contains 6 tables and 6 footnotes.)