Aims McGuinness

Aims C. McGuinness, Jr. is a senior associate at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS), a private nonprofit whose mission is to improve planning and decision making in higher education. At NCHEMS, he specializes in state coordination and governance of higher education and advising state governments on long-term strategies to improve the effectiveness of their education systems and linking education to the state’s future economic competitiveness and quality of life.

Prior to joining NCHEMS in 1993, he was a senior staff member for 17 years at the Education Commission of the States (ECS), one of the principal sources of policy advice on education reform for state governments. Before joining ECS in 1975, he was executive assistant to the chancellor of the University of Maine System.

Over the past 20 years, Aims has advised many of the states that have conducted major studies of their higher education systems and undertaken higher education reforms. Recent projects have concerned developing a “public agenda” for the future of higher education, changing relationships between the state and higher education, and reform of community and technical college systems.

Aims has extensive experience as a board member and facilitator for board development. He served eight years (two terms) as an elected member of the board of education for Littleton Public Schools, a 16,000-student district in Colorado, serving the last four years as board president. He served eight years (two terms) as a member (appointed by the governor) of the board of trustees for the state colleges in Colorado (the governing board for Metropolitan State College in Denver, Adams State College, Western State College, and Mesa State College), serving as board chair for the last two years. He currently serves as a facilitator through the Association of Governor Boards (AGB) on board development and evaluation.

On the international level, he serves as examiner for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for national reviews of education policy and as a consultant to the World Bank. He served on reviews of the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Ireland, Israel (The Galilee Region), South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, the Russian Federation, and Turkey. He is currently a consultant to the World Bank on reform of higher education governance in India.

Aims has published a variety of articles focusing on state policy and governance in higher education. From 1999-2000, he published a bimonthly column in AGB’s Trusteeship magazine. He developed the basic reference guide to higher education coordination and governance in the 50 states, now available through the ECS website.

Aims earned his BA in political science from the University of Pennsylvania, his MBA from The George Washington University, and his PhD in social science from Syracuse University (Maxwell School).