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Category: Governance

Honorary Degrees

[the_ad id=”12142″] I can’t quite get my head around Alberta these days. You’ve got a left-wing government banging on about accessibility while providing proportionately the fewest need/income-based grants of any provincial government.  You’ve got a right-wing opposition which is just mad as hell that the federal government doesn’t have a national policy to force Eastern Canada to buy Canadian oil instead of foreign oil (a policy which used to go by the name “National Energy Program”).  And, at the University

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April 26, 2018 3 Comments

Risk (Conclusion)

[the_ad id=”12142″] Just to recap the last few blogs: First, ensuring that institutions are managing risk is pretty much the most important responsibility Boards of Governors have. They need the tools to understand how it is being done and where things need to improve Second, the most important risk to any institution is prestige. Yet few institutions bother to think clearly about how they are viewed by their key constituencies and why, particularly when it comes to the quality of

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April 20, 2018 2 Comments

Risk (Income)

Over the course of the last three days we’ve been talking about all kinds of risks: today, I want to talk about financial risks and particularly how institutions generate income. Greater institutional income is a panacea for problems facing institutional boards: the more income you have, the better position one is in to deal with all those risks we’ve been talking about all week .  A rich institution can pay to attract good staff (both academics and key non-academic positions, like

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April 19, 2018 No Comments

Risks (Operational)

Ok, so we’ve been through all the prestige/reputational risk stuff (here and here), and tomorrow we will deal with financial risk.  But today, there’s the issue of straight-up operational risk: that is, the possibility that an institution (or part thereof) might not be able to open tomorrow. The obvious risks here relate to disaster planning: fire, earthquakes, environmental protection, etc.  This is the stuff the insurance companies really care about and with justification: these can really affect property values.  But with modern construction

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April 18, 2018 2 Comments

Risk (Reputation and Relationships)

When institutions talk about risk management, they primarily mean two things: operational risks (i.e. things which might prevent the institution from going about its usual business, which we’ll deal with tomorrow), and reputational risks.  This latter is not generally seen as relating to the actual quality of teaching and research (that has more to do with prestige, which we dealt with yesterday); rather, it has to do with “issues management” or worse, “crisis management”.  Risks to prestige are slow moving; risks

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April 17, 2018 4 Comments

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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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