Top Risks in Higher Education and Why Leaders Must Have ERM Programs:

Changing Higher Ed® podcast 247 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Justin Kollinger

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed Podcast 247

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

David: Welcome to Changing Higher Ed®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Introduction

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.

My guest today is Justin Kollinger, Senior Risk Management Consultant at United Educators, an education-owned liability insurance carrier serving over 1500 institutions across the country. In his role, Justin advises college and university leaders as they develop strategic risk initiatives, prioritize risk management goals, and launch or refresh enterprise risk management initiatives.

Justin coauthored the book Risk Management: An Accountability Guide for University and College Boards, and he creates reports and tools that help UE’s members address their top risks, including risks relating to enrollment and student life. UE and Justin just completed their annual Top 10 Risks Report. Justin joins me today to talk about these risks and how instituting an enterprise risk management program can not only help them anticipate changes but can also save them dollars.

Justin, welcome to the program.

Justin Kollinger: Hi, Drumm, happy to be here.

Drumm McNaughton: My pleasure. Hey. I am really looking forward to this. I don’t get a chance to talk with folks too much about risk management and that type of thing. And that’s your business at United Educators. So, if you would just give us a little bit of background, I’m fascinated.

[00:01:43] Justin’s Background and United Educators

Drumm McNaughton: How did you get into risk management?

Justin Kollinger: Well, a lot of us joke in risk management that we fell into it, and I’m no exception to that. My story goes all the way back to undergrad when I fell into admissions first, and then through time at two colleges in the mid-Atlantic, I worked my way into consulting in higher ed strategy. Since then, I have transitioned over into risk management at United Educators.

Drumm McNaughton: Fascinating. And how long has United Educators been around?

Justin Kollinger: We were founded in the late 80s, I think 37 or 38 years ago.

Drumm McNaughton: Wow. And you’re self-insured. You do liability insurance for colleges and universities. Tell us a little bit about it.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah, United Educators is what we call a risk retention group. We were founded during an insurance crisis back in the 80s, and we provide legal liability coverage to schools, colleges, and universities around the country. As a risk retention group, we are fully owned by the colleges, universities, and schools we insure. And as a result, we’re deeply invested in helping them manage their risks. I should note that since we are going to be talking about risk, that today’s discussion isn’t going to be a commentary on UB’s coverage or legal advice.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. That’s important to know. And then I’m going to ask you a whole bunch of questions about that. No, I’m just kidding.

[00:03:05] Current Liability Landscape

Drumm McNaughton: So you talked about liability and risk. There are a lot of things going on right now, including a lot of third-party lawsuits. Low trust in higher education. Settlements are higher awards or settlements higher than they’ve ever been. And then, of course, you’ve got fires going on. We just saw the huge fires in L.A. The Palisades fires destroyed multiple things, and colleges and universities are concerned because students no longer have homes. It’s affected colleges. Give us a little background on how this might work with UE

Justin Kollinger: Yeah, there’s a lot in there. I think a good place to start is what the liability landscape looks like today. You talked about the growing higher awards and settlements that we’re seeing over time, and this is a trend that goes back several years now. We at United Educators and many in the insurance industry call this social inflation. And you can think of that as the increase in insurance costs above regular inflation.

And I’m glad you touched on some of those things because that social inflation. We see it as being driven by many things, but three in particular. First, we’re seeing an increase in third-party litigation financing. And what I mean by that is essentially recruitment of plaintiffs to bring cases. These are often funded either by law firms or even venture capital-type organizations that are trying to turn a profit. And I’m sure you’ve seen the billboards as you’re driving down the highway. If you’ve been injured, call this attorney. That’s the kind of thing we’re talking about here. And as a result, that’s contributing to increasing defense costs as well, which, of course, then raises the cost of the lawsuit, the settlement, and the award at the end of the day.

Drumm McNaughton: And the premiums to those folks who are having to pay in. You’ve got what, about 1500 members.

Justin Kollinger: That’s right. The increased premiums are a reflection of those increasing settlements and awards. We at United Educators, as an insurance company that’s owned by the schools and colleges that we insure, are trying hard to keep those premium increases lower. And so when we do raise the premium, it’s a reflection of the market.

You also mentioned trust, and insurance and lawsuits are a direct reflection of trust. I know you spoke with Dr Courtney Brown from Lumina Foundation, Sophie Nguyen, and Kevin Carey from New America about the drivers of changing trust in higher education and institutions more broadly. Liability is an indirect outcome of declining trust, but it is a measurable and financial outcome of declining trust.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, it’s also interesting in the highly politicized environment we are living in. Would a lawsuit against a college or university about having a DEI program come under the liability policies and umbrella that you give universities?

Justin Kollinger: It’s really hard to answer that in a specific or hypothetical situation because every incident is different. And as you mentioned, every state is different as well. It’s certainly possible when we see increased political questioning of the role of. Institutions, higher ed institutions, and we see institutions reacting in different ways, which creates the opportunity for risk. But again, it’s going to be very dependent on the exact situation.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay. Well, thank you. I don’t want to go into the prescription perspective, but it seems to me that with all the October 7th demonstrations, free Palestine, et cetera, et cetera, that could be an area of risk for UE. I’m just speculating. You don’t need to make a comment, but that’s one of my prerogatives; being the host, I can speculate a lot. It reminds me of a quote from a movie.

You may think that, but I couldn’t possibly say it.

Justin Kollinger: Well, if you want to think about it this way, when it comes to civil rights on campus and Title VI, is civil rights law and regulation. Certainly, there can be instances where a student could allege that an institution violated their civil rights related to their shared ancestry, sex, gender, nationality, the list goes on. And so certainly as this, you could say, instability or disruption on campus as it continues, yeah, it can create exposure. Still, again, it’s going to depend on the exact specifics of any given allegation or instance.

Drumm McNaughton: Of course. And ADA things along those lines as well.

[00:07:52] Top 10 Risks in Higher Education

Drumm McNaughton: I’m really curious because you do this annual survey on the top 10 risks to higher ed. You started it in 2017. Why did you start this? There are a lot of other surveys out, but the top 10 risks, that sounds like something that would come out of Fitch or one of the financial sector-type things.

Justin Kollinger: Well, I’m in a really lucky spot here. I get to work with colleges and universities on helping them to resolve and solve some of their risks. But as a result, I get to see the insights that they’re working on and then share them back with colleges and universities. to help them address those risks. And this survey is one of those instances where I get to do that.

As you said, it is an annual survey and as a result, we can track trends over time, too. You mentioned your Fitches and your Moodies of the world, but as somebody who works with risk managers, this is the day-to-day of a risk manager’s life, and they’re thinking about these topics all the time.

Drumm McNaughton: And if they’re not thinking about them, and unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of institutions out there. We had a conversation about this last week about risk management and ERM, Enterprise Risk Management programs, which I’d like to get into at the end, because I would say probably 5 percent of all institutions have a formalized risk management program.

Justin Kollinger: I think that reflects my experience. Certainly, many institutions dabble, but if it’s sustainable and there’s a deep framework and history of ERM, it’s pretty rare.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, we’ve done many different programs and presentations on risk management and, frankly, I’ve only seen one or two institutions who really have done a good job in risk management programming, doing heat maps and all those other things.

Justin Kollinger: Well, that’s why I like this survey too. It is an opportunity to be one of those inputs into an enterprise risk management program. And even if you don’t have that fully developed program, there’s still value to bringing a list of risks to your cabinet meeting, to your board, and say, here’s what we’re thinking about.

A, what are we missing, and B, what can we do about these?

Drumm McNaughton: So let’s jump into those top ten risks, if we may. Obviously, the first one has got to be enrollment.

Justin Kollinger: Absolutely. And that is number one on the risk. And as we go through this list, I think we’re going to see enrollment reappear in many different ways. What we do in this survey is we give our respondents an opportunity to choose from a list of risks, but they can also write their own in. And if they write their own in, I see it and I have the opportunity to recategorize that into something that is consistent with the other responses.

When we say enrollment, we’re just talking about the people who said the words enrollment, admissions, or something similar, but we’re going to talk about other risks too that are very directly related to enrollment as well.

Drumm McNaughton: As they should be, because every institution is tuition-driven, that’s your main source of revenue. It may be coming in through title four, maybe coming in through state grants, et cetera, research dollars. But the bottom line, is if you don’t have the enrollment, then everything else is going to follow. Everything negative is going to follow.

Justin Kollinger: Absolutely. And back in my admissions days, I mentioned that at the beginning, we all talked about the story of everybody on campus is working in admissions in some way, shape or form. I think that’s shown here throughout all university operations as well.

Drumm McNaughton: Absolutely. So what’s the second risk?

Justin Kollinger: The second risk was data security. I don’t think there’s any surprise there either. It’s something that’s not going away. It is getting harder. There is more at stake and with AI we have a new layer of operational data security risks that some institutions, I think are more prepared for than others.

Drumm McNaughton: I know with my own practice or business, I go through an insurer and there’s the standard liability and, making mistakes type insurance, but then they also sell one for data breaches.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah. And as I understand it, those premiums have been going up over the years too. So while I have a really deep picture into liability coverage, I also have to think about where does that sit in an institution’s Insurance portfolio next to their cyber coverage and their property coverage and everything else that they’re doing. It’s not just one line of coverage where the premiums have been increasing. It’s a lot of them and data security and cyber security coverage is certainly one of those. I can even think back to when I worked on campus, there was a time when the I.T. department was trying to centralize a core I. T. function. I won’t get into specifics here, but the school that I worked in said, no, thank you, we’re going to go do our own thing, even though the school didn’t have its own I. T. department. And to me, that’s one of those places where I go, oh, there’s a data security risk there. You have one centralized system, and then you have all these other systems on the periphery that may or may not be being managed well, and those require and deserve a deep, careful look.

Drumm McNaughton: And if you’re not doing that and you have a data breach where personalized information is being stolen, where you may have your, ransomware or whatever. I would guess that’s just a little bit of a disruption.

Justin Kollinger: Just a little. I was thinking back before this conversation today, and I remembered a couple of years ago, if there was a closure following a data breach. Lincoln College, I think in 2022, they had already been facing some other headwinds, but this is just another one of those challenges that can sometimes push a college over the edge.

Drumm McNaughton: And, having a centralized I. T. group that looks at data security as well as keeping the lights on is critical.

Justin Kollinger: Absolutely. And certainly with the addition of AI, we’re starting to see more and more teams put together who are specifically an AI task force. But then the question to me is what’s the connection between the AI task force and your overall information security team or system. You want to make sure those are connected.

Drumm McNaughton: And I don’t think it’s too far off that people will start using AI to hack systems if they aren’t already.

Justin Kollinger: I was going to say I think that’s already happening. If you think about the number one way to hack into a system, it’s through phishing. It’s through accidental disclosure of data, specifically passwords and account credentials. AI just makes it so much easier to send phishing emails, for instance, or text messages. You can mass produce them at a higher quality than before. So that further emphasizes the need for additional security training for every single employee on campus.

Drumm McNaughton: The next area was operational pressures, and this is something that’s near and dear to my heart. New business models. The higher ed business model has been the same for centuries, so

Justin Kollinger: Yeah. And this one, we define it as risks related to financial stability, the institution’s business model and constraints on business processes. Which is a broad way of saying how the institution works, and this to me is a really direct connection back to enrollment because they’re talking revenue model. We’re talking about the ability to control costs and bring in auxiliary revenue streams. This is one of those where, I mentioned, respondents can fill in the answers however they please. And this is one of those ones that turns into a collection of a lot of different things that I think people experience unique to their own institution, but so similar to others that we can see those same pressures across institutions.

Drumm McNaughton: Of course the financial is usually related, almost always related to enrollment, but there are other financial exposures out there as well, are there not?

Justin Kollinger: Oh, absolutely. I think of government funding as one, and that’s actually been a mixed bag. In some cases showing improvement over the years. Following the Great Recession, we had seen government funding for higher ed drop quite a bit. And despite the attacks on higher ed over the years, funding has oftentimes recovered or stayed relatively flat.

And so there is exposure there. But it doesn’t always line up with the bigger picture that we are hearing about in the news media. Of course, other sources of revenue risks include your auxiliary revenues. Those camps that you’re hosting over the summers, your conferences, any other business units that you offer. Athletics, if your institution is big enough. All of these are, they’re constantly at risk, but I think right now is a particularly precarious time.

Drumm McNaughton: No doubt, especially with the change of administration and who knows what’s going to happen with funding there. Another big one, I believe, is recruitment and hiring. We’re getting an awful lot of people into higher education without the experience in higher ed, making decisions that, because they’re in a particular position, it may not be in the best interest of the institution or the students.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah, this one is so deep and it connects across the board, but I think it really connects deeply to the operational pressures we were just talking about.

From what I’m hearing you saying, you’re thinking about recruitment and hiring at the more senior levels. If you’re bringing in folks who don’t have that connection to education, who don’t fully and deeply understand the goals of a college or university, you can start to get mixed or confused priorities for what is actually important to pursue. As a risk manager, I actually think about it from the front lines, and vacancies among your front-line staff, your student-facing staff, because a lot of that will turn into vacancies for people who are managing different aspects of compliance, different aspects of safety, different aspects of student success. When you have those vacancies, inevitably something is probably slipping through the cracks. Where nothing is slipping through the cracks, it’s because the rest of the team has picked up the burden often without the additional compensation, creating potentially resentment or burnout that, it’s going to have its own negative effects on the institution. And I don’t think any of this is going to be much of a surprise to your listeners, but it is important to keep in mind that the institution is very little without its staff and faculty. And if you’re not able to fill those gaps, you’re really going to struggle.

Drumm McNaughton: The other one that I’m seeing a lot more of now than I ever used to before is the boards of trustees, especially in public institutions. We just had a debacle here in New Mexico, with Western New Mexico University, where the president was not performing and the board, as a severance package, gave him 1. 9 million dollars. Three to four times the amount he would have made for his annual salary. Obviously that the governor was not pleased, but it goes to show and there’s lawsuits going on, etc it’s a mess, but it goes to show that a lot of times your boards are not really in touch with higher ed, especially when they’re political appointees. And let’s face it, a higher education institution is like being the mayor, the president’s being like the mayor of a small city, depending on how big it is.

 If you take a look at Ohio State, they’ve got over 50,000 students. That’s a pretty good-sized city. It’s not a, Albuquerque. It’s not a Los Angeles or whatever, but you’ve got all of those functions, and a board member comes on, it’s going to take them at least a year, if they’ve not been involved with higher ed, at least a year to get their sea legs under them to understand the way the institution works.

Justin Kollinger: Oh, absolutely. You don’t need to be a public university or a large university to have that challenge as well. At the end of the day, risk management starts at the top, and it is something that’s cultural and set at the top levels. And so if the board isn’t paying attention to risk at the institution, you’re going to have trouble further down the chain.

I’m glad you mentioned some of the big universities that are essentially cities in their own right, and I’ve talked to a number of their boards and their leadership, and a lot of them get it, which is really reassuring. But not all of them, and certainly those where the boards have their own, I’ll say, just dynamics, risk management is often left to the wayside.

Drumm McNaughton: That is distressing because, ultimately, it hurts the students. And that’s what we’re there for.

Justin Kollinger: Indeed.

Drumm McNaughton: The next one that came up on your list was regulatory and legal compliance. We talked a little bit about this. And who knows what you know, Trump II is coming online. If it’s going to be more legal compliance and more regulatory, I would imagine not, but it’s going to change in a significant way.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah. I agree. And I think change is probably the way to focus on it. I don’t know if it’s going to be more or less or how, but this isn’t something that is new to a new administration. We have seen changes to web content accessibility, to hazing, and of course, institutions have been doing compliance related to financial aid and accreditation going back many years, but the compliance expectations continue to grow.

And I should note for our survey, we separate out Title IX compliance and violence against women non-compliance from all of the other kinds of compliance. So, Title IX will show up on its own further down the list. This is just one aspect of compliance here. And you mentioned Title VI as well. This was the first year we started to see Title VI pop up in the results.

Drumm McNaughton: I just did a podcast on that with a gentleman from another firm who gets into the Title VI ADA, and there’s more and more of that coming out, and new deadlines that are being forced on colleges, depending on how many students you have.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah, it’s just changing rapidly. I think about the agreement that, I think it was, Lafayette college came to with the Department of Education around a Title VI investigation, and part of that involved student social media use. That was something that I don’t think we would have thought of before, at least off-campus social media use. I don’t think we would have thought of that before as part of our regulatory or compliance duties, and it just continues to change and get more onerous. We just talked about staffing, and the question becomes, who is going to be doing this compliance on campus?

Drumm McNaughton: Moving right along, we’re halfway through the list and there’s still quite a bit. If we can just touch on these next ones, student mental health. This is becoming more and more an issue, especially post pandemic.

Justin Kollinger: It is, and I’ve been doing this survey long enough to remember watching student mental health climb up the list. I used to look at it and say, I think this is really a problem, and I want to see this on the top 10 list. Well, I do see it on the top 10 list. I don’t want to see it on the list because I want there to be a student mental health problem, but I do want there to be attention to it.

Fortunately, there are a lot of resources out there. I’ve been able to work with the Jed Foundation personally in my capacity with UE, and there has been progress made. I think one, or I’ll give you two examples from the liability insurance side of things. First, this is one of those areas where I think trust is actually really important.

If you’re an institution and you show that you care for your students, including those who are under mental distress, you’re doing a better job of managing your risks. There’s one example from a UE member in the past where the institution did all that they could to support a student, and they documented everything that they did. Unfortunately, the student still died by suicide, but the family really appreciated everything that the college went through to protect their child and ultimately decided to not file a lawsuit. And so I know we often talk about student mental health as a student success issue and a student well-being issue, and we should. The impacts go beyond that, though, and that institution did a really good job of caring for their students.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s really nice to hear because I’ve heard just the opposite tales. One institution, students were complaining, and we were doing a presidential onboarding and getting good background from faculty, students, et cetera. And the student said, we asked him about mental health and he says, “It’s useless here. We call in, we have an issue, and it’s two weeks before we can see anybody”. All it takes is half an hour.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah. And that’s really sad to hear. It does speak to some of the opportunity, though, that telehealth has created to provide much quicker access to those services. We all know that there’s a counselor shortage in the country, but there can be some creative ways to provide that help.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes. The next one on the list was funding. We’ve already touched on this a bit.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah, I don’t know that I have much more to add to it. Enrollment is really the driver here. I’m personally watching international student enrollment as a source of funding, especially after seeing what’s happened in Canada, the UK, Australia. With the new administration in, I think it’s prudent to be creating scenario plans and learning from our neighbors about how they’ve handled changes in the immigration and international student landscape.

Drumm McNaughton: And I think that’s going to be critical. That’s going to be critical.

Here’s one that’s near and dear to my heart. Facilities and deferred maintenance. I remember reading, gosh, this was pre pandemic, that deferred maintenance was up over a trillion dollars. It hasn’t gotten any better.

Justin Kollinger: I was gonna say, I think it’s still there.

Drumm McNaughton: So that’s a huge risk.

Justin Kollinger: It is a huge risk. It’s a mission risk. It’s a strategy risk. If you don’t have the facilities to serve your students, you won’t bring in the enrollments, of course, but your current students are going to struggle to meet the academic goals that you’ve set for them.

It does trickle all the way down to liability risk as well. If you have a building failure, it’s certainly possible somebody’s injured by falling ceiling tiles or a window that doesn’t close correctly or doesn’t close at all. Unfortunately, this is not just a higher ed problem, but anytime when you have buildings that have issues like that, you do run the risk of people, for example, falling through a window that should have been supporting them, a balcony collapse.

I think we saw that at a university a few years ago, a balcony collapse at a party after a football game. We think about, again, deferred maintenance in a lot of different ways, but, this can have human health and safety impacts as well.

Drumm McNaughton: Absolutely. And that ties right into public safety.

Justin Kollinger: Yes, absolutely. When we say public safety in the survey, we’re referring to crime, security, active shooter, the things that your campus safety department is probably working on. This is a risk that interestingly goes up and down a bit over time. Sometimes it’s more prominent in the minds of the survey respondents, sometimes it’s a little bit lower. I think we’ve made a lot of investments in this area as an industry over the past 5, 10 years. And I hope that they’re paying off. I think that we’ve seen some improvements. But it’s certainly a risk that I think we all need to keep front of mind here, especially for our campuses that have more porous boundaries with their communities.

Drumm McNaughton: And then for the first time ever you had a tie. For us, number 10 between general premises safety, Title IX and political and societal pressures. That’s interesting.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah, our top 10 is actually a top 12 this year because of a tie in an inconvenient place for a top 10 list. I think that the general premise of safety fits right in with public safety, and then between 11 and 15, we saw transportation and sexual misconduct. All of those four risks I just listed; they were up from the prior year. And to me, that speaks to an increased attention on well-being and safety. I’m happy to see that. Of course, I think we’re all trying to focus on how do we keep our community safe. It does have a liability risk impact as well as we are able to prevent injuries and keep people well on campus.

So I was happy to see those move up, even if only slightly, but as a group, I think that those four risks have an impact together. Title IX, I’m sure your listeners are very familiar with. So I might set that one aside for now.

But to speak to political and societal pressures, this one, I think was really interesting for us too. I mentioned again, people can type in their own responses, and in prior years, when people talked about external factors, it was very vague. The economy, society, politics would be the kinds of things we would receive, and we grouped them all into one category, but this year, those got much more specific. We were seeing economic-related things like inflation or trade wars. And on politics, we would see adversarial regulation and political attacks, and then societal pressures, we’d see distrust. And as a result, we were able to get more specific this year and add political and societal pressures as its own category. And I think it’s telling in its first year, it’s ranked 10th. In the past, external pressures didn’t even always make the top 10. It was only sometimes up there.

Drumm McNaughton: What surprised you about this list besides that last one?

Justin Kollinger: For me, it’s the consistency. In the last three years, in our higher ed survey, the same top seven have been in some order for the past three surveys. 2024 was a really tumultuous year. We had changes in athletics, we had changes in Title IX, we had a changing regulatory landscape, we had climate disasters. I expected more change this year, so I was actually surprised by the consistency.

Drumm McNaughton: What didn’t make the list that surprised you?

Justin Kollinger: Well, and this is, I think, speaking to some of that surprise and consistency. I would have hoped to have seen, well, not hoped to have seen, because I don’t want these things to happen.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, really.

Justin Kollinger: But I do think it’s relevant that climate change or the environment didn’t make the top ten. You mentioned the California wildfires earlier.

That’s a very obvious example. The hurricane in western North Carolina, as another example, that hit institutions that weren’t preparing for it. The wildfires in Hawaii a couple of years ago, the list goes on. And in my anecdotal conversations with colleges and universities, most are not treating this as a changing risk. Although I will say the ones who are doing some really impressive work.

I talked to one urban university in the mid-Atlantic, and you would think that their landscape provides them some insulation from climate risk, and yet, they had a very well-developed climate risk management system. And it contemplated everything from freezes to extreme heat, to hurricanes, to blizzards, and they were prepared for seemingly any eventuality. And I was A very impressed by it. But B thought that it could serve as a model. This is, like I said, an institution that you wouldn’t expect to be prepared for anything, but if they can do it, I think it makes a lot of sense for those who do have those vulnerabilities to be very realistic about the threats that face their campuses, especially in the years ahead.

Drumm McNaughton: And when you take a look at those environmental risks, what comes first to mind is Katrina and Tulane University, when Scott Cowan was the president. They shut down the university for eight or nine months. They were running the university out of a hotel room in Houston.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah, exactly. The institutions that have suffered a natural disaster are obviously the places who have learned how to mitigate those risks. I do think that it’s worth noting here that there is, I think we think of this as a property risk, a healthy human safety risk, and that’s all true. We don’t always think about it as a liability risk, but it can be.

If you look at the Maui wildfires, there were a group of organizations, not just anyone, but a group of organizations agreed to a 4 billion liability settlement as a result of the Hawaii wildfires. So something to keep in mind there, there’s many aspects and angles to these environmental and climate risks.

Drumm McNaughton: So, the bottom line on all this is, what should presidents be doing with this information?

Justin Kollinger: I think you foreshadowed it well.

[00:33:01] Enterprise Risk Management

Justin Kollinger: The first thing I would say is make sure your ERM program is alive and that you have those linkages between your lower-level staff, your management staff, your senior management and the board. And that everybody’s on the same page as to a culture of risk management. But I’m just starting with the function of enterprise risk management. You can have enterprise risk management of many different maturity levels. You can have a super advanced one, you can have a relatively bare-bones one, but I strongly recommend you have one because it starts that conversation.

And I know you’ve done some workshops and presentations on enterprise risk management, so I don’t know if you have any additional insight that you would give to a college or university that’s trying to start one up.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, thank you. I definitely do. First, start one, put together the framework on how to start categorizing your risks. And then understand the difference between risk management and risk oversight because there’s functions at the university level, the risk management, figuring out what the risks going to be. Then the board it’s up to them to do the risk oversight to be able to ask the right kind of questions to make sure the plans are in place.

Anytime you do a strategic plan, if you’re not doing a risk management plan, along with that, you’re leaving yourself at, sorry about redundancy, you’re leaving yourself at risk

Justin Kollinger: Absolutely. . AGB. I worked on a book on risk management for presidents and boards that is available through AGB. So I’d recommend anyone who wants to see something, a guide for how to get started. That’s available for them as well.

Drumm McNaughton: Or call me. So, Justin, this has been fascinating. I always like talking about risk. I don’t like to have to deal with it, frankly, we have to.

Justin Kollinger: Same here.

[00:34:59] Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

Drumm McNaughton: Three takeaways for university presidents and boards.

Justin Kollinger: I just mentioned culture and I do want to get into a little bit on that. We talk about often as a culture of risk management of everybody taking ownership or responsibility. . That’s true. I’m going to add to it. I think that our philosophy at UE can expand on that idea of culture.

Our philosophy is a “cool head, warm heart” approach to risk management. And by cool head, I mean that we encourage colleges and universities to manage risk with thoughtful foresight and consistent application of policies and guidelines. Incidents are going to occur. Be prepared and take reasonable steps to respond to them. 

 And then when we say warm heart, we mean to show care to your community before, during, and after something happens. I mentioned that student who died by suicide earlier, and that’s the kind of response we’re talking about. It really does make an impact for building that trust that we keep coming back to in this conversation.

Drumm McNaughton: And even the way you said that, “Died by suicide” versus “committed suicide” is a much better way of saying it because it shows empathy to the people who could be affected by his or her passing.

Justin Kollinger: Yeah. Exactly, and I want to take caring using that as an example, but I think it does go to show the importance of communication and making sure people understand that you really do care. I know everybody on campus cares. I’ve worked with so many caring leaders on campus, but the busyness of the day-to-day can sometimes hide that. So any chance you get to show that care, it makes a big difference for everyone.

 My second one, and the risk managers I know, might get mad at me for saying this because I know they’re already really busy. But if you’re a president, please elevate your risk manager. There are people who know, often, everything that’s happening on campus. They have unique problem-solving tools. They have an eye towards minimizing failure. And these are people who could be well-positioned to be strategic contributors, but they aren’t always at the table.

Drumm McNaughton: And I would say, if you don’t have a risk manager, get one.

Justin Kollinger: Yes, seconded.

Drumm McNaughton: And lastly,

Justin Kollinger: I’ll say, use your third-party experts. We at UE have a lot available to our members like checklists, online courses, and personalized support, but other insurers have resources and experts available. Your insurance brokers have resources available. Of course your associations also have resources and experts. We’re all here to be part of this ecosystem to support your success. Don’t forget we’re here to help.

Drumm McNaughton: Those are great takeaways. Thank you.

[00:37:31] Wrapping Up

Drumm McNaughton: What’s next? What’s next for you other than a wonderful vacation coming up?

Justin Kollinger: Well, thank you. I would say that I would encourage everybody listening to check out our Large Loss Report in addition to this the Top Risks (Report) survey, I will make sure that you have both available on your website so that you can link to them. We’ve talked about that top 10 list, but in the large loss report, we share publicly reported settlements and awards against educational institutions Greater than $2. 5 million. And that’s an increase from last year. We had set the threshold at 1 million in the prior year. So that speaks to, I think, the urgency and the rate of change. But what I really like about this report is that it gives you examples.

If you ever are talking to somebody who says that kind of incident can’t happen here. Well, that report is going to have 20 plus pages of incidents that happened all over the country. And as much as I hate to use those as examples, sometimes that’s what it takes to get change to start on campus.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s a great takeaway. Thank you. I will add to that is, when you read through these incidents it may key your thinking to say, what are we doing about this?

Justin Kollinger: Do you remember the Flint water crisis a few years ago?

Drumm McNaughton: Oh yeah,

Justin Kollinger: I know an institution that took the five or six news articles about the Flint water crisis and use that to create a tabletop exercise on their campus. And they didn’t think they could have problems when it came to their water supply, but they didn’t think it would hurt to be prepared. And I think those kinds of examples are perfect for that scenario.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s great. And you just alluded to another thing is doing tabletop planning, which is so critical. We used to do that in the Navy for emergency response, so very simple,

Justin, thank you so much for being on the program. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I hope you have a great vacation.

Justin Kollinger: Thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun.

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening. And a special thank you to my guest, Justin Kullinger from United Educators. Justin, thanks so much for joining me on the program. I look forward to the next time we get a chance to chat.

Listeners, thanks much for listening again. Look forward to next time.