In two recent AGB blog posts, former public university presidents Carol Cartwright and Ellen-Earle Chaffee have teed up the challenges facing college and university boards, with a focus on the unprecedented challenges institutional presidents are facing (see Related Resources below), and the impact of those challenges not only on the role of the president, but also on higher education, writ large.
Governing boards are typically responsible for oversight and assessment of their chief executives’ performance. AGB’s Higher Education Governing Boards: An Introductory Guide for College, University, and System Boards (AGB, 2018) identifies presidential assessment as one of the essential responsibilities of governing boards. AGB senior fellow Terry MacTaggart has enumerated the potential benefits of a presidential assessment
In its May 10 meeting, AGB’s Council of Foundation Leaders met with Lisa Foss, PhD, the executive director of the Council on Higher Education as a Strategic Asset (HESA), a newly forged coalition of national leaders hailing from higher education, government, business, the nonprofit sector, and the military that will develop and propose recommendations for ensuring that higher education institutions can deliver the workforce and educated citizenry necessary to address the United States’s most critical national priorities.
During the last virtual meeting of calendar year 2022, the 25 members of AGB’s Council of Foundation Leaders discussed the potential issues, concerns, opportunities, and challenges of Name-Image-Likeness (NIL) and NIL Collectives.
In a recent straw poll and subsequent virtual meeting of the 25 members of AGB’s Council of Foundation Leaders (CFL) several post-COVID and strategic issues facing institutionally related foundation executives and their respective board chairs over the next 12 to 18 months were uncovered.
AGB recently published Top Strategic Issues for Boards 2022–2023, which outlines the most pressing challenges currently facing colleges and universities.
The 2022 AGB Foundation Leadership Forum brought together almost 500 board members, CEOs, and other senior staff of college and university foundations.
College and university endowments posted record returns in FY 2021. In August, Bloomberg reported a median return before fees of 27 percent for larger endowments.
Several themes have been on the minds of AGB’s Council of Foundation Leaders this summer and fall during the CFL meetings.
Top-of-mind priorities for foundation leaders in 2021 include the return to foundation offices; talent management and diversity, equity and inclusion; the foundation’s sustainability; tensions over the use of funds raised and managed by the foundation; and the institution-foundation partnership.
