Canadian universities continue to navigate an era of unprecedented change. They are experiencing significant shifts in their funding models due to declining government grants and increasing reliance on tuition and alternative revenue sources. Concurrently, expenditure patterns have been altered due to changing societal expectations of the role of universities and the services that they should provide.
As a result, benchmarking has become an increasingly important tool to identify such trends, as well as areas of strength and opportunities for improved efficiencies.
CAUBO has developed a series of financial landscape analyses, focusing on critical areas within Canadian universities. Building on the national and provincial landscape analyses that are currently available to members, CAUBO is launching a new service for members that will support a data-driven approach to assessing institutional finances. For a nominal fee, members can receive an institution-specific financial landscape that provides analysis on their institution’s unique financial trends and situation.
The institutional landscape provides a high-level analysis of key financial trends as identified and explored through CAUBO’s data-rich analytical tools. It leverages national and provincial level data from a number of sources in order to identify areas of strength and opportunities to improve efficiencies at the institutional level.
The landscapes provide an overview of the key components of an institution’s finances as compared to peer institutions and national and provincial trends. Institutions can select and customize the peer comparator group based on a number of criteria.
Is your institution interested in answering any of the following?
- How does the funding landscape at your institution compare to national or provincial trends or to those seen at peer institutions?
- Is the performance and asset allocation of your institution’s investment pool comparable to peer institutions?
- Does your institution’s rate of operating spending vary from provincial trends or that of peer institutions? Are there underlying trends within certain expense types such as academic salaries and benefit?
- Is your institution’s deferred maintenance liability in-line with the average level of deferred maintenance in your region or among peer institutions or does it have a relatively higher proportion of DM that needs to be addressed in the pending years?
- Overall, is your institution showing any signs of weakness compared to peers regarding its financial health, based on key metrics like the Primary Reserve Ratio and Interest Burden Ratio?
If so, request an Institutional Landscape tailored to your institution by completing the form available here.
A financial landscape has been developed to provide an example of the valuable information contained in the report, and can be accessed by clicking here.
The standard fee for an Institutional Landscape is $1,500. The final fee will be confirmed with the institution prior to the commencement of the report and will be based on the level of complexity requested.