This issue of Trusteeship provides a picture of the current
environment for campus governance, as well as some guidance. William
Freund, chief economist emeritus of the New York Stock Exchange, offers
his reflections on the economy and the "slow, gradual, and tedious"
recovery before us. State legislators Geanie Morrison and Denise
Merrill suggest that now is the time for state legislatures to engage
more directly with higher education to accomplish state goals. The
challenge, they argue, is finding new ways to address the educational
needs of states and citizens, even in this new turbulent economy.
Tom
Hyatt offers guidance on the new IRS Form 990, the implementation of
which is affecting boards of all independent institutions, as well as
the foundations of public colleges and universities. Part of the new
focus on board and institutional accountability, this "new report card"
is sure to have more public audiences than the previous form, but it
also offers a way to verify "use of best practices in governing
policies and procedures."
Governance guru Dick Chait does what
he does best--he questions "common knowledge" about governance. Instead
of focusing so much on policies and procedures, he would have boards
pay attention to their culture to avoid being "lawfully mediocre."
"May you live in interesting times." While the source of thisexpression is unknown, its meaning is clear. The more "interesting" the times, the more challenging you will find them. Certainly this academic year proved to be among the most "interesting" in memory, and one suspects that next year will be more of the same.
A Trusteeship Q&A with Richard Chait, research professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He kicked off the recent AGB National Conference on Trusteeship with a plenary speech about the "Gremlins of Governance," three major challenges that face college and university governing boards today--in the areas of board structure, planning, and trustee selection.
Much has been made of the Internal Revenue Service's introduction of the completely revised Form 990 last year. The new Form 990 is no longer a document focused on financial data. It is now a governance-centric document that places its primary focus on the work of the governing body. The board must now be a partner with management and the organization's consultants to ensure that the organization's governance is effective, up-to-date, and properly explained to the public.
Clearly, what we are experiencing now is not one of the ordinary recessions that we have experienced since World War II. What we've seen is a bursting of a bubble in the credit markets and in financial institutions--with the effects spreading globally.
Geanie Morrison and Denise Merrill
The economic meltdown has hit our college campuses, and higher education is on the chopping block in state budgets, with cuts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars already approved and hundreds of millions in more cuts on the way. As veteran legislators, we have seen this story play out before in previous recessions.
Richard B. Artman and Mark Franz
So you've hired a new president, now what? Whether hiring a sitting president or one beginning a first presidency, the board of trustees should be keenly interested in ensuring that the new president's first months in office flow as smoothly as possible. Increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the idea of using a transition team to assist the new president, and our experience--as a newly hired president and as the leader of his presidential transition team--leads us to strongly endorse this approach.
A sampling of national media coverage of higher education in the last two months.
A board must establish a set of operational rules of engagement if it is going to appropriately fulfill its obligations.
Acting to head off claims and shoring up internal systems can save an institution millions in financial penalties and legal fees.
The four-year degree has been the staple of American higher education since the founding of Harvard University in 1636.
How to evaluate faculty members in a way that they see as fair has long plagued education in general and higher education in particular.
The recently published AGB Survey on Higher
Education Governance, supported by the TIAACREF
Institute, examined practices ranging from
trustee assessment to presidential compensation.
Part of the survey dealt with practices regarding
board orientations.
Following are highlights of the findings on
orientations.
A recent portrait of undocumented
immigrants by the Pew Hispanic
Center reveals that most children
of undocumented residents living
in the U.S. are actually citizens. According to "A
Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United
States," 73 percent of children in undocumented
or mixed-status families (with a parent or sibling
undocumented) were born in the U.S. That adds
up to approximately four million young people,
contrasted with a million and a half undocumented
youths.
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