The use of Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) data and a software program to compare public university expenditures is discussed. Financial expenditures at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, (UNC) and other public universities were compared using 1981-1982 and 1982-1983 HEGIS data for public university members of the Association of American Universities (AAU) Data Exchange Group. For 24 universities, data are included on full- and part-time enrollments and full-time-equivalent (FTE) enrollments; expenditures for instruction, research, and public service; expenditures for specific activities; and research and instructional expenditures per full-time faculty and FTE student. The NPL Report Writer software was used with "The Chronicle of Higher Education's" machine readable data sets. The peer group consisted of the 24 institutions of the AAU data exchange group. A comparison group was constructed based on criteria such as student full-time-equivalency, faculty size, and total educational expenditures. Commands for the software program to generate different kinds of information are identified. Examples of NPL generated tables are also included. It is noted that while NPL quickly provides different categories of data, it offers virtually no statistical analysis procedures. (SW)