Abstract: The article presents the results of studying the peculiarities of the standardization of the mechanism of planning and accounting for the wage costs of employees of different categories of institutions of higher education. The interconnection of the categories of employees of institutions of higher education with the mechanism of accounting for wage costs is established, which will ensure the reliability and objectivity of the order of formation of the cost of educational services. It is determined that wage costs make a significant cost impact on the cost of educational services, which affects the volume of budget financing in the training of personnel at the expense of state financial resources. The key problem of wage costs planning is determined by the lack of sectoral norms for the formation of the states of institutions of higher education for most categories of staff, which results in «inflating» the staffing and overvaling the use of budget funds. It is substantiated that the main manager of budget funds would be expedient to determine the sectoral norms of the number of relevant categories of employees, or legislatively establish the ratio of scientific and pedagogical personnel to other staff. This will ensure the ordering of the states of higher education institutions and will help to optimize wage costs, establish the relationship between funding volumes and performance indicators for providing high-quality public services, and ensure the effective and rational use of public financial resources for the provision of educational services, rather than the maintenance of institutions of higher education, which is provided by the conditions of implementation of the program-target method in the budget process.