Corporate governance has several objectives: growth, transparency, leadership, social responsibility and trust, as well as the protection of shareholders and company assets. It also plays a key role in determining a company's control environment. In this article, the author takes a closer look at corporate governance in the private sector, focusing specifically on the banking sector because people--even as lay persons--have had ample opportunity to witness how well or how badly governance has worked in recent years. Only when people know why things did not work the way most shareholders had expected or hoped will they be able to draw conclusions for the higher education sector--assuming they consider both sectors' governance structures to be comparable.