June 2023
CAUBO National Office staff and Board members wish all of our members a healthy, happy, and restorative summer!
New Analytical Reports and Resources for Members
We are pleased to share several new resources with our members, some of which are the result of months of work by our team and volunteers.
Leading Practices for Higher Education Recruitment: Report on Consultations
Attracting and recruiting talent is a priority that poses many challenges for the higher education sector. CAUBO member universities across Canada are experiencing recruiting challenges, particularly at the management and executive levels. To support members as they navigate the challenges associated with recruitment, consultation discussions were held in 2023 with four search firms that frequently recruit in the higher education sector to gain insight into the challenges, barriers, best practices, and key opportunities for improvement in the sector. A report summarizing the learnings from these consultations is available for institutional members here.
Provincial Landscapes for Ontario and Nova Scotia
CAUBO has developed a series of financial landscapes focusing on critical areas within Canadian universities. Financial trends in higher education have been explored at the national, provincial, and institutional level. The provincial landscapes provide insight into the significant differences in university funding models between provinces, as identified and explored through CAUBO’s data-rich analytical tools and resources, and support a data-driven approach to assessing institutional finances. A new landscape providing an overview of the unique financial situation of universities in Nova Scotia has been added to the series, and the Ontario landscape has been updated and expanded upon with new insights into key financial trends. Both are now available for members.
Data Insights Series (updates)
CAUBO’s Data Insights series highlights key financial trends in the university sector. The insights provide concise, fact-based analysis of some of the sector’s most pressing risks and challenges. The first two entries in the series, initially released in 2021, address the changing patterns in spendable income and general operating expenditures. They have now been updated to reflect the most recent available data (2020–2021). The updated entries in the series are available for institutional members here.
The third entry in the Data Insights series, Implications of the pandemic on universities’ financial situation, was released in fall 2022 and provides context for the 2020–2021 university financial data, while positioning year-over-year shifts within the trends observed in the last decade and acknowledging the uncertainty that university decision-makers faced at the onset of the pandemic.
Data Governance Framework for Canadian Universities
CAUBO has developed a Data Governance Framework to support members as they build their institutional data governance practices. The framework is based on existing models or standards from other sectors—adapted to higher education—and considers the different institutional structures and invested parties, such as IT, institutional planning, and chief data officers.
The framework connects members with best practices in data stewardship and governance specific to higher education institutions and, more importantly, enables them to build a tailored data governance framework for their unique institutional needs. The Data Governance Framework is available here for institutional members.
In early 2023, CAUBO released a survey to provide an update on members’ plans and practices regarding hybrid work arrangements, as a follow-up to a toolkit of resources developed in 2022 to support members as they developed plans and policies for their post-pandemic workplace.
As restrictions imposed due to the pandemic have ended, member institutions continue to explore new approaches to work models, including whether flexible work arrangements can be adopted, to what extent, and how they can be achieved in a strategic manner. A report summarizing the results of the latest survey, available here for institutional members, will help members situate their institutions with those of peers across the country.
New On-Demand Webinars
Institutional members can explore CAUBO’s extensive archive of on-demand webinars on our website. Recent additions to our webinar library include:
Trends in Group Employee Benefits
University Governance in Canada: Navigating Complexity
Sustainability: Ideas-Action-Success Through Procurement
Tri-agency Financial Monitoring Framework: Pilot Update
Transformative Flexible Workplace Journeys: Where Are We Today?
CAUBO 2023: Annual Conference Wrap-Up
The 2023 CAUBO Annual Conference took place in Toronto from May 8–10. More than 620 attendees were thrilled to finally meet and reconnect in person after two years of virtual events. Futurist Ken Steele kicked off the event with a look at how we can thrive in turbulent times; innovation strategist Shawn Kanungo offered a deep dive into Web3 and the Metaverse; and author and entrepreneur Ron Tite closed the conference with a positive and motivational look at how to prioritize personal and organizational growth to support not only recovery, but reinvention.
Members who attended the conference and those who purchased an on-demand conference pass can view all recorded conference sessions until August 31, 2023, by opening the CAUBO|ACPAU app on your mobile device and using the same credentials that were used to log into the conference app on-site. If an on-demand session does not appear on the PheedLoop app, this means that the recording is not available.
We’re thankful to everyone who joined us in Toronto and made our return to in-person conferencing such a success! We look forward to seeing many of you at CAUBO 2024 in Montreal from June 3–5, 2024.
2023 Q&P and Recognition Award Winners Announced
At the 2023 annual conference in Toronto, we honoured some of our amazing volunteers with the Recognition Awards and celebrated the innovative ideas and best practices demonstrated by the 2023 Quality and Productivity Award winners. You can learn more about this year’s winners by watching the videos created to celebrate the Q&P and Recognition Award winners.
CAUBO 2024 Call for Proposals—Opening Soon!
Share your expertise and experience with your peers and colleagues at CAUBO 2024, taking place from June 3-5, 2024 in Montreal, by submitting a content proposal to be considered for the conference program. The Call for Proposals opens on August 16 and closes on October 18, so keep an eye out for the launch message and visit www.caubo.ca for details and to access the submission form.
2022/2023 CAUBO Highlights Infographic
Once again this year, CAUBO presents its annual Highlights in the form of an interactive infographic, making it easy to see and explore all the resources, information, and networking opportunities that we made available to members in 2022-2023. Check out the highlights of our past year here: https://www.caubo.ca/latest-news/caubo-2022-2023-highlights/