Most colleges and universities have enterprise resource planning (ERP) data systems that provide decision-makers accurate and timely information on business, finance, personnel, payroll, enrollment, and budget functions. But there is no digital strategy for a holistic support system for students. Information on student interactions usually is separated within dozens of frequently incompatible data systems designed for individual service areas, cutting off a critical source of timely insight on a student’s aggregate experience. Federal law protecting student privacy is an additional, legitimate, limit on the flow of information about students to those who might provide them with needed support. To bring data management and information flow on student support up to the expectations of the current generation of technology-sophisticated students, the university will need a radical rethinking of what is necessary for a student data strategy.

This chapter discusses how internal governance mechanisms may diverge from the legal starting point of a limited liability entity as directed by its corporate board and that shareholders (including a parent company) are only permitted to exercise their power through the means of the general meeting. I have, to analyze internal governance mechanisms on the outskirts of the law, drawn on management literature to broaden the rather narrow discussions in corporate law on the strategic and coordinative means of a parent company. This chapter therefore, through this, adds a discussion of the factual divergence between law and practice and between formal ownership structures and internal control structures to corporate law literature.