Relationship Reconsidered: Catholic Universities and Their Changing Governance Structures

Relationship Reconsidered: Catholic Universities and Their Changing Governance Structures

In 2000, AGB and ACCU published a national study—“Relationship Revisited: Catholic Institutions and Their Founding Congregations”—mapping the broad variety Catholic university governance arrangements took and how they were changing.¹ The findings were surprising not only for the extent of change that was underway at the time, but for the reasons offered. Founding religious were requesting (and boards were granting) additional reserved powers and other control mechanisms at a somewhat startling rate. The reasons that were given in the surveys of both presidents and congregation heads consistently spoke of the perceived need of the congregations to strengthen their hands structurally at a time when their numbers on campus were drastically shrinking. Where once the sisters, priests, and brothers were sufficient to set a strong institutional culture through their day-to-day presence, the perception was that the retirements and departures left an unfilled need for another way by which the purposes and culture of the institution would remain on point and effective. The 2000 study documented a startling number of new reserved powers, guaranteed congregational representation, the claiming of key positions for members of the congregation, preferential hiring provisions, defined financial payments, reversionary clauses, and more.

Now, 23 years later, this study has been repeated to see how the various governance relationships have changed over time. Once again, we reviewed all of the controlling documents and asked presidents how well those relationships were functioning and whether additional changes were expected or wanted in the near term and for what purposes. Once again, the results were surprising…