Category: Pilbara Insights

What is your University doing to combat Climate Change?

This is a rewrite of an old blog post with a specific focus on Higher Ed. At the end of the article is a link to a whitepaper discussing the prototype Carbon Accounting model implemented at Weber State University. Managing Environmental Issues and Mission The Problem – Every institution’s operations have an environmental impact.  There […]

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Academic Burnout – Can you measure or predict it?

I just read this article by Kevin R. McClure, associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington on Academic Burnout. To quote the article “The pandemic has introduced unique challenges for faculty and staff in higher education that may make burnout even likelier to occur…Summer is normally a time of […]

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Testing the New Higher Ed Funding Model

By Lea Patterson, Michelle Brooke, Andrew Faulkner and Professor Alan Pettigrew BSc (Hons) PhD FAICD On the 19th June 2020, Dan Tehan – Minister for Education, announced a proposed new funding model for Australian Universities.  The objective of the change is to shift student attention to jobs of national importance, such as teaching, nursing and […]

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Turn Away or Enrol? It’s not that simple!

A really interesting article was published in the Australian Financial Review today by Robert Bolton … “Universities set to turn away hundreds of thousands of students”.   Robert outlines how admission centres across many states are reporting massive increases in applications to start university next year – NSW alone has had a jump of 88% compared […]

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Activity-Based Costing Software Top 4 ‘Must Haves’

I can’t believe it has been nearly 10 years since this I wrote this article and that very little has changed with respect to my top 3 costing ‘must haves’! The article has been refreshed where needed and due to changes in technology, I’ve added a 4th point….so welcome to my ‘Top 4 Costing Requirements’. […]

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COVID-19: Higher Ed Crisis Management – Part 2: 2020 Deep Dive

Using the Pilbara predictive model to test crisis management options for university leadership. By Lea Patterson, Michelle Brooke, Andrew Faulkner and Professor Alan Pettigrew BSc (Hons) PhD FAICD Preface This article has taken a little longer to write than usual because we have been busy running a wide range of different scenarios. Rather than creating […]

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COVID-19: Higher Ed Crisis Management

Using the Pilbara predictive model to test crisis management options for university leadership. By Michelle Brooke, Lea Patterson, Andrew Faulkner and Professor Alan Pettigrew BSc (Hons) PhD FAICD Introduction Although they are no longer run, the LH Martin Institute (University of Melbourne) used to offer courses for aspiring University Vice-Chancellors (VCs) covering a range of […]

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COVID-19 : Course Consolidation

A common theme across the Higher Education news articles over the past couple of weeks has been about the urgent need for universities to save costs. A quick peek at any institution’s financial statements will reveal that, not surprisingly, salaries are the biggest single line item.  While Pilbara Group will be releasing a newsletter next […]

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Finance + Faculty: Management Accounting in Higher Ed

Management accounting, as a discipline, is going through a resurgence.  Primarily driven by the huge increase in the amount of data available for analysis, financial professionals are needing to look beyond traditional business metrics and recognize the potential of embracing a wider set of data. Management accounting has been around for 100 years, so it’s […]

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From Whoa to Go in 7 weeks – an Analytic Model Implementation Case Study

Last year NACUBO released the results of their survey to understand the current status of analytics, where Business Officers would like to use analytics and barriers that institutional leaders face within the Education sector. As the results show below, Operational Analysis and Cost of Instruction top the list of areas that are in need of […]

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