Higher Education

Inspired to Serve Higher Education Institutions

Transform your institution with a team of knowledgeable and experienced advisors who know and understand your challenges. Our strong financial foundation, continued growth and commitment to the education industry ensures our clients that we can maintain a long-term relationship with them. Clients will work with a team of professionals who are highly qualified, experienced and who truly understand their challenges and issues.

In these complex times, it’s especially important to remain up to date with standards and requirements, as well as continue to operate efficiently and productively. In order to teach safely and prevent the spread of the coronavirus, new methods of instruction have been established, which presents additional challenges. No matter which type of higher education institution you operate, there are certainly areas that could benefit from guidance and improvement.

Maintain Focus on Students

Whether you operate a community college, government or nonprofit college, or university, your students thrive when provided access to the best resources. When you have a team of accounting advisors specializing in the higher education industry on your team, you will be able to make more educated decisions and better support your students.

Government standards are challenging to manage. You don’t have to carry this burden alone—we’re here to support you each step of the way. Our team of advisors is comprised of collaborators and innovators. Culture is at the heart of everything we do. You will benefit from our open and honest, ongoing communication to develop trust and rapport and to strategically guide you.

Professional Advisory Services for Higher Education

It’s important that you maximize your resources in order to provide the best education for your students. We can help. In addition to a comprehensive array of professional advisory services, we can help guide you through other common challenges that higher education institutions face. We assist our clients with higher education training, internal audit, performance audit, state and local government consulting, exempt organization tax and unrelated business income and consulting services, audit and assurance, campus analytics, cybersecurity, fraud and forensic advisory, as well as system implementation and technology review. The following professional services we provide are specific to higher education institutions.

Higher Education Training

Staying up to date on current accounting issues relevant to higher education is important to ensure your staff are meeting technical requirements and utilizing best practices. Financial professionals are tasked with many different responsibilities and need to consider the areas that not only impact day-to-day operations, but those areas that could significantly impact the organization. We provide our higher education clients with in-depth, customizable financial training.

We have developed a higher education training program that addresses multiple areas of risk and opportunities that impact financial managers and others in your organization. We can customize this program to address the issues most relevant to your organization. In addition, our training programs allow for cost-effective CPE without having to travel, because we can conduct the training on site or via video conference.

Higher education training services include:

• Topics that address both finance and other areas of potential impact for finance professionals
• A customizable approach to focus on topics that will have the greatest impact
• In-person or video training that offers great flexibility
• Updates on the latest or upcoming standards issued by FASB or GASB that may impact you and your organization
• Updates on tax codes that may impact your form 990 or 990T

Our specialized higher education team can help your staff be prepared to address regulatory and other compliance issues and teach them about other issues that could potentially have financial implications on your institution.

Internal Audit

Reduce risk and improve operational performance in your higher education institution with an internal audit. By strategically evaluating and managing risk, it can decrease your stress and improve:

• Effective business and operational controls
• Compliance monitoring
• Strategic planning
• New business opportunities

Internal audit is a vital component of governance and strategic risk management in education. It provides an additional element to risk assessment across your organization, facilitates improved processes and controls, address regulatory or other compliance issues, and ensure processes are efficient through the COSO framework.

Our internal audit professionals bring strong process, procedure, internal control and risk management experience to your organization. We bridge these skills with specialized insight related to risk and compliance and specific industry knowledge, to help your organization reduce risk and improve operational efficiency. We can function as your internal audit department or simply provide support and fill the gaps in your existing internal audit department.

Performance Audit

Get unparalleled results, tailored to your needs with a performance audit. Performance audits are complex in scope and nature, and unique to the programs they are examining. Engaging the right team is critical to creating objectives that will help you improve program performance and operations, reduce costs, facilitate decision-making and contribute to public accountability.

When you work with Eide Bailly, you’ll get an experienced team who concentrates on performance audit engagements. You’ll get results tailored to your needs and objectives, from professionals who understand your unique situation.

Our approach is different than many others. We utilize a wealth of performance audit methodologies to profile and assess the performance of your programs and operations. In addition, we believe frequent communication is the key to delivering the best results, on-time and within budget. We communicate proactively and constructively regarding the status of the project and any noted issues, problems, or concerns. We want to ensure you receive value‐driven results.

State and Local Government Consulting

Our industry advisors can help you understand government standards, best practices and risks for improved operational efficiency. State and local governments are continually evolving due to new GASB standards, budgetary constraints, fiscal sustainability pressures, technology and transparency and the aging population.

Your higher education institution can better navigate these challenges with the help of an experienced professional. Through training, internal audit, forensics, internal controls analysis and testing, GASB implementation consulting, audit finding resolution, GFOA review, performance analysis and other specialized engagements, your institution can stay on top of changes.  

Exempt Organization Returns and Unrelated Business Income & Consulting

We can help you manage complexity related to tax obligations. As an institution of higher education, you generate and receive funding from a variety of sources. Some of these may not be directly associated with your mission like facility rentals, catering, advertising, royalties, investment income and more.

Generating income from these sources may result in unexpected tax consequences. If your institution has non-educational revenue streams, you could benefit from an unrelated business income analysis. Utilizing professionals who specialize in tax issues for governmental universities and tax-exempt organizations can help ensure you maintain compliance and peace of mind. Services include:

• Form 990-T preparation
• Unrelated business income tax studies including analyzing revenue streams, applying current technical guidance and developing reporting positions or planning alternatives
• Evaluating and identifying various trades or businesses
• Developing expense allocation methodologies

Eide Bailly’s nonprofit professionals can help your institution worry less about unrelated business income and ensure proper tax reporting. We understand the complexities associated with unrelated business income and will work closely with your organization to develop a strategy to ensure all activities are identified and analyzed. Our nonprofit experience, combined with our knowledge of higher education, will help ensure you can feel confident your tax risks are minimized.

We Can Help

Maximize your resources to promote the success of your students and institution. Our team of professionals will take the time to understand your unique challenges to help you overcome them.