Governance and risk management

Provision of work-integrated learning (WIL) experiences for all higher education students has assumed increased importance over the past decades. The increase has changed WIL from a cottage industry embedded within disciplines to a higher education enterprise. Considerable attention and resources have been allocated to identifying WIL opportunities and designing innovative WIL models to accommodate increased demand for placements against reduced opportunities. However, scarce and highly uneven attention has been paid in research and institutional leadership to the fact that provision of WIL opportunities also introduces potential risks to all key stakeholders in WIL partnerships. This chapter argues for deliberate and system-wide attention by universities to risk identification, mitigation, and management in the provision of WIL. The chapter draws on examples of enterprise risk management in practice to outline the characteristics of effective risk management and identifies the potential problems involved in failure to adopt a collaborative institutional approach.