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Category: Governance

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

Risk (Prestige)

For the next few days I want to take everyone through universities the way a Board of Governors sees them – or at least, the way a good governing Board should see them (some but not all of it applies to colleges as well; I’ll try to highlight both where possible), and that is through the lens of risk. It is the role of the Board of Governors (again, good ones) to ask the question, over and over, “what could go

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April 16, 2018 5 Comments

Alberta PSE News

It’s been awhile since we’ve taken a policy tour out west, but it’s time I think to take a look at what’s going on in Alberta, where the NDP government is past its midpoint and starting to work towards an election in 2019. One day, someone is going to write a fantastic political book about the Alberta NDP.  This is a party that went from (essentially) nothing to government in the space of a few crazy weeks in 2015.  They

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January 15, 2018 1 Comment

Growth of Presidential Compensation

Let’s do another blog on this topic because everyone loves talking executive compensation. Yesterday we looked at Presidential pay in international comparison and saw that Canadian university Presidents have fairly low pay compared to equivalents in other English-speaking countries.  But, one might argue, that’s the wrong metric.  Maybe the real problem isn’t high pay so much as a relatively quick rise in pay over the past few years. That’s a fair argument.  But let’s see what the data says. My data source

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September 19, 2017 No 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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