
Higher Education & Private Schools
Higher Education faces many unique challenges due to declines in endowment values, budget deficits, state education cuts, and restrictions on tuition increases to name a few.
Marcum’s education practice understands these challenges and works with colleges, universities and academic medical centers to improve operations and performance.
Our Process
Marcum provides comprehensive services that meet the specific financial, operational and technical needs of higher education in the following areas:
Project Management Office (PMO)
We have the certified and experienced project managers to help you assess and implement project management practices as well as determine methodologies for repeatable processes and project success.
Business Process Assessments
We analyze your current business processes, identify cost reduction opportunities and recommend practical solutions to support your strategic goals.
Strategic Services
We analyze your current business processes, identify cost reduction opportunities and recommend practical solutions to support your strategic goals.
Administrative Services
Higher Education Administration focuses on the administrative service components. When strategically managed, these components work together to recruit and retain students for the institution and provide seamless support from matriculation to graduation and beyond.
Components of this administration can include recruitment and admissions, financial aid and scholarships, market and institutional research, records and registration, academic advising and support services, student accounts, housing, finance administration/budgeting, student/institutional employment, and alumni affairs.
While programs are tailored to meet the unique needs of each institution, the basic need to manage institutional enrollment from the point of initial contact through graduation has become increasingly apparent. Declining enrollments are second only to declining appropriations as the reason for institutions’ financial problems. Enrollment management is an important factor in assisting institutions to attain their objectives and remain financially viable.
Marcum’s professionals are unique to other consulting firms as we have been previously employed at institutions of higher learning and have experience and success in implementing changes across all divisions of institutions that affect administrative tasks. We can meet your needs with experts who deliver value to your administration – on site, on time and on budget.
Finance, Tax and Accounting Services
Higher Education must address many financial and tax obligations to ensure efficiency, reduce risk and meet regulations.
Marcum’s Higher Education professionals have helped institutions meet these needs in the following areas:
- GAAP audits, A-133 audits.
- Tax-Form 990, State and Local, UBIT, financial aid.
- Accounting operations.
- Budgeting.
- Accounting outsourcing.
- Sponsored program compliance.
- Endowment spend and analysis.
- Financial risk assessment.

Information Technology
As technological advances are introduced to the world of higher education, institutions, colleges and universities are more attracted by the promise of potential technology for enhancing procedures such as administrative reporting, data access and efficient day to day administrative operations.
As institutions move into an increasingly connected, globalized and digital environment there is a need to ensure the success of higher education information technology ventures, from implementation through execution. Many IT projects fail not only costing the institution considerable monetary investment but also compromising key strategic initiatives for which the new technology was critical.
Marcum’s consultants have extensive knowledge in various administrative systems that averages over 20 years of experience, stemming from all areas of an institution. For example, if your need is to plan, design and deploy an ERP implementation and/or integrate to other systems, our experienced team can enable your project to be successful.
Marcum offers a full suite of services in the area of information technology:
- Assessment and selection of technologies.
- Conversions and upgrades.
- Systems integration and interfaces.
- Enterprise Software Revitalization.
- Packaged software enhancements.
Institutional Risk Services
Risk is inevitable. Institutions in higher education are facing a heightened demand for accountability, transparency, performance and integrity from various stakeholders, such as students, regulators, state officials, litigators, the media, faculty, trustees, management, employees and alumni.
Successful governance and oversight require an effective plan and subsequent execution as a strong first step to create and maintain a healthy, safe and compliant institution. A risk assessment is a proactive approach for identifying, prioritizing and monitoring risk to improve internal controls, compliance and accountability.
Marcum’s higher education professionals assist colleges and universities in complex areas of risk, then work with the institution to meet numerous government and organization requirements. Our team has the knowledge and experience to research complex issues and provide workable recommendations that enhance governance, compliance and organizational programs and structures.
Institutional Risk Service Offerings
- Risk profile assessments.
- Compliance education and training.
- Risk management and remediation.
- Governance and organization review.
- Cultural transformation.
- HR policies and procedures.
Key Institutional Risk Areas
- Physical.
- Personnel.
- Financial.
- Privacy.
- Legal.
- Regulatory.
- Contracts.
- Reputation.
- Culture.
- Organizational structure.
Risk Assessment Benefits
- Improve governance and controls.
- Enhance reporting.
- Increase stakeholder confidence and trust.
- Enhance health and safety.
- Establish solid foundation for decision making.
- Allocate resources to mitigate risk.
- Physical.
- Personnel.
- Financial.
- Privacy.
- Legal.
Reporting Services
Are you challenged with having too many reports and not enough information? Are you troubled with understanding which reports would meet the institution’s needs? Are you dealing with contradictory reports? Do you have problems accessing information, tools, and metrics to improve your institution’s performance? Can you view key performance indicators?
To meet these challenges, administrators and trustees are increasingly reliant on timely and accurate institutional information, which is paramount to strategic decision making. Let Marcum help you to transform how information is leveraged at your institution.
Marcum’s higher education reporting team consists of individuals with deep reporting and data warehouse implementation experience. Our background includes many years working for higher education institutions. We bring with us best practice functional and process expertise, technical skills and seasoned project and change management capabilities.
Assessing and measuring key institutional objectives and strategies with the right and timely information presented in the appropriate format for the user is what Marcum can bring to an institution. From daily production and operational reports to executive dashboards and alerts, we can assist in creating and implementing a reporting strategy that involves both the technical infrastructure required as well as the skills needed to keep institutional staff provided with accurate and reliable information to make better decisions.
Insights & News
Upcoming Events
Contacts
Select the region to view contacts.