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Inside Higher Education
Ending ‘Mom-and-Pop’
Governance
Authors break down the basics of university governance but can't resist
looking at the big picture.
By Rick Seltzer
March 1, 2018
The challenges colleges and universities face are well documented and
often intimidating.
Population trends will leave institutions in some parts of the country
without enough traditional-age local students to fill classrooms, while
stretching others’ capacity. Costs keep escalating, high sticker prices
are a consistent source of angst and constantly rising discount rates
leave many private colleges in the difficult position of not having
enough money coming in even as they’re perceived by students as being
too expensive.
Yes, market conditions are difficult. But that doesn’t mean higher
education’s leadership will escape scrutiny. It’s worth wondering if
governance practices currently in place are adequate for attracting
good leaders, training them and putting them in a position to succeed
in the face of challenges.
Some experts believe solutions have to start at the top, with changes
to the way shared governance plays out between trustees, administrators
and faculty members. Among them are the authors of two books released
in January by Johns Hopkins University Press, How to Run a College and
How University Boards Work.
“Can American higher education navigate through uncharted waters if the
leadership relies on an unprepared, inexperienced captain and crew?”
ask the authors of How to Run a College, Brian C. Mitchell and W.
Joseph King. Mitchell and King are both experienced college presidents
and trustees who believe higher education’s most important challenge is
professionalizing its governance.
Failing to professionalize governance isn't good for anyone, said
Mitchell, a former president of Bucknell University and Washington
& Jefferson College, in an interview.
“There should be a clear delineation of authority and a clear
understanding -- and a transparent understanding -- of how power is
executed on a college campus,” he said. “Until then, we have a kind of
mom-and-pop approach to governance, and that’s not serving anyone well.”
Mitchell and King argue that higher ed is suffering through a
particularly bleak period, one that can seem unprecedented. But viewing
the current era as a historical outlier can lead to damaging paralysis
among college and university leaders. It is also historically
inaccurate.
American higher education has already gone through and survived two
similar periods of pressure, according to Mitchell and King. The first
was a depression in the 1870s, and the second was the Great Depression
of the 1930s.
Those eras, which the authors refer to as inflection points, were
marked by hundreds of colleges and universities merging or closing. But
they were also times of great adaptation and innovation.
Colleges and universities are nimble, Mitchell said. If today is indeed
a third point of inflection, lessons can be drawn from the past to help
colleges and universities survive.
Mitchell and King argue for colleges and universities to evolve,
modernizing practices and monetizing assets. They examine major
elements of college operations: governance, finance, enrollment
advancement, academic affairs, student life and athletics. They support
shared governance, but it’s clear they believe the system could work
better if all parties refocused on educational strategies and
transparency between different leaders.
“It’s a misunderstanding of what trustees do, what faculty do and how
their work relates that causes many problems,” said King, who is
president of Lyon College. “If you have substantial malfunction or
dysfunction, it’s not going to go anywhere.”
Some of the authors’ greatest concerns are focused on the state of
governing boards. Mitchell and King believe boards are often too big
and too dysfunctional. Those at private universities often run more
than 40 trustees deep and come with internal politics, which leads to
complacency, they write.
While public universities may have board issues of their own, including
charges that trustees are politically motivated or appointed, their
boards are typically smaller than private boards and therefore don't
attract as many criticisms related to size.
Voting boards should have no more than a dozen active members, Mitchell
and King argue. Larger advisory boards can also play a separate role,
approving policy and preventing boards from becoming insular, but they
should be geared toward offering advice and helping with fund-raising.
It’s a model like the one used by Harvard University, where the
30-member Board of Overseers influences strategy and carries certain
responsibilities but is eclipsed in direct power by the 13-member
Harvard Corporation, which has fiduciary responsibility and approves
major operations.
A Focus on Trustees
In How University Boards Work, Robert A. Scott doesn’t go so far as to
advocate for limiting voting boards to 12 members. He thinks 12 is on
the small side, he said in an interview. Yet he also advocated for
limiting the size of voting boards.
“It depends on the institution,” he said. “Eighteen would be the low
end -- certainly no more than 30. Eighteen to 24 is manageable. You can
get in touch with everybody in a day.”
Still, Scott, who is the former president of Adelphi University and
Ramapo College, sees plenty to worry about in boards. Among his many
concerns are that board members often know little about the higher
education enterprise or their own institutions, and that board chairs
sometimes act like emperors. Trustees with experience on other boards
or in business frequently believe they do not need a guide when they
start on college or university boards, he writes. Unfortunately, that’s
not the case.
Trustees need to be much more knowledgeable about their institutions
than they are today, Scott believes. They need to know a college’s
history and heritage, its competitors and where it fits in the overall
higher ed ecosystem. They also need continuing professional
development. That support will help them understand how to navigate
challenges.
Scott also argues for trustees to spend more time listening and asking
questions -- and for others in university governance to do the same. He
advocates for presidents to eschew the corporate-style chief executive
officer role in lieu of a chief education officer ideal, with an
emphasis on being collaborative. Boards, he writes, should be a
president’s partner in establishing priorities.
Toward its end, How University Boards Work includes a list of ideas
best described as policy priorities. For instance, Scott writes that
colleges should be held accountable for graduation rates. He suggests
they might pay more attention to student retention if they were forced
to repay public financial aid dollars for students who drop out before
graduating -- an idea that has parallels in risk-sharing concepts that
have drawn interest at the federal level. He also suggests making
non-need-based aid count as taxable income for a recipient’s family,
because so-called merit scholarships are a major cost driver among
colleges.
The ideas are presented alongside some changes colleges and
universities could make on their own, like modifying class schedules to
make better use of facilities. But the inclusion of policy ideas in a
book aimed at trustees fits a larger idea: the big picture matters for
colleges and universities, and their leaders, as they face the future.
It’s a theme running through both books, even though they dedicate many
of their pages to the basics of running a college or university. In
practice, the big picture could mean a faculty member taking a more
active role in student life, because much of what students learn on
campus comes from outside the classroom. It could mean presidents being
more engaged and transparent with faculty members, even in times of
crisis. It could mean trustees advocating for higher education funding
when they’re meeting with politicians.
“Enterprise risk is not just about one’s own institution,” Scott said.
“It’s about the whole enterprise.”
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