February 17, 2006

When Trustees Blunder

By RICHARD P. CHAIT

Is inept governance contagious? Has the germ that infected corporate America contaminated colleges and universities, too? For every Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom, we seem to have an academic equivalent.

But there is both less and more to the story.

There's less because novelty is always newsworthy. "Board bites college" articles are still the exception, not the rule. The most egregious errors make the news, and the news frequently makes trustees look foolish. In reality nearly all

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