The Critical Role of Trustees in Enhancing Student Learning

By DEREK BOK

For decades colleges have been administered through a system of shared governance. Although the meaning of the term is ambiguous, causing border skirmishes to break out periodically, shared governance usually means that the trustees concentrate on the overall mission of the institution and on questions of finance, physical planning, fund raising, and, last but not least, hiring and firing presidents. Faculties, in turn, are given the task of taking care of academic matters —