Helping colleges and universities find solutions to their challenges

Your focus on providing a quality education never changes, but the challenges do. If you are like many institutions you are working on a tight budget or may even be facing a deficit at the same time you have to respond to increased competition for enrollment and higher expectations for student services.

Where can you turn for help? The multidisciplinary higher education team at Plante & Moran has experience serving more than 165 educational institutions, including public and private community colleges and universities with budgets ranging from $10 million to more than $2 billion.

Cost-saving opportunities; improving operations

Because of their experience, our operations improvement/cost containment specialists on the higher education team can quickly offer solutions when you ask about reducing costs. They recently partnered with another consulting group and within 60 days were able to help a college find $13 million in cost-saving opportunities. Our specialists can draw on staffing benchmarks, best practices, and experience, but they will also collaborate with your staff to identify cost savings opportunities that fit the specific needs of your institution, its culture, and its values.
You can depend on them to help you with new organizational models, suggest ways to reengineer current processes, and leverage your institution’s technology capabilities.

Besides saving money, the efficiencies our operations team recommends can result in improved student services and enhanced revenue opportunities.

Good record keeping has its rewards

In this era of increased transparency, the auditors on our higher education team can help you better communicate with stakeholders and funders. You will appreciate their thoroughness when they conduct internal audits, financial statement audits, and single audits (A-133). It is a firm tradition to think of audits as more than compliance work. Throughout the audit process our staff will look for opportunities for improvements and cost saving.

If you have received stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), you can also depend on the experience of our single audit team to help you respond to the unprecedented requirements for reporting. Because of the number of single audits it does each year, the team is ranked second in the nation.

Increasing the value of technology; ensuring information safety

Our consultants can help you leverage technology. Because of their experience in higher education, you can depend on them to assess your needs, select the best solutions, and manage the implementation. You will appreciate their independence as they help you make decisions on the many options available. Many times they can help you find added value in your current systems; they always ensure that you are getting a maximum return on your IT investment.

They can also help with security assurance issues including compliance with the payment card industry’s (PCI DSS) regulations and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).