Higher Ed Advisor: navigating your institution’s fraud risk landscape

Welcome to Higher Ed Advisor, the Baker Tilly podcast series where we speak with higher education industry leaders about practical and proactive guidance to help colleges and universities protect and enhance their value.

Higher education institutions are experiencing the need to transform at an accelerating rate. This evolving and competitive environment creates opportunities and risks for colleges and universities and opens doors to commit fraud that could harm an institution’s reputation and path towards fiscal resiliency.

In this episode, Jonathan Marks, leader of Baker Tilly’s global fraud and forensic investigations and compliance practice, offers an eye-opening perspective on and “surgical approach” to fraud risk in higher education, including why it happens and frameworks for detecting and preventing fraud. The timely discussion expands on:

• The relationship between fraud and reporting data for an institution’s national rankings
• The ways institutional consolidations and other kinds of transactions increase fraud risks
• How certain pressures leaders face, like making combinations successful, may lead to acts of fraud
• The critical role internal controls, monitoring, reporting and effective governance play
• How proactively engaging with a fraud specialist prepares institutions to better manage risks versus reacting to a crisis

Listen to Jonathan’s key takeaways about the ten “red flags” that can help campus leaders assess and determine fraud risk levels within their institution.