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[barcrossliar]

Am I the only one who is concerned with the composition of their board of trustees?  Our board members seem to be fine people, but most seem to be chosen for business acumen, having money, or for being a local "insider."  Almost none have a background in education, yet they choose our president, who determines our curriculum.

Boards may always have been this way, but it seems to me that presidents used to be more likely to have risen through academic ranks, so the boards were choosing educators with good administrative skills.

Can anyone talk me down?

-+LR

[terpsichore]

Who they are is important, but what they do is more important. Is your board doing (or not doing) things that concern you?

[choirguy]

Your board's primary responsibility is to either raise money or give major money.  Their second responsibility is to raise money.  Their third responsibility is to raise money.  Once they have fulfilled these three primary responsibilities, they are responsible for setting institutional policy and then hiring a president to carry it out.  The mantra for boards of trustees (regardless of whether they be educational not-for-profits or other charities) is GIVE, GET, or GET OFF!

[larryc]

My old school is undergoing convulsions right now because the board was nothing but a cocktail club for 25 years. A typical meeting ran like so:

Board: How is the college?
President: Excellent, thanks to my visionary leadership!
Board: A raise for you then! Cocktails all around!

It went on like that for 25 years (seriously, with the same president even) until the president got weird and they had to fire him. But then it turned out that none of them know what to do next. They bungled the search for a new president and hired some poor schmuck who is not up to the job. The new guy screwed up willy-nilly until he got a faculty vote of no confidence. But the board won't fire him because they would have to admit a mistake, and worse, have to look for a new president. It is a huge cluster f*ck and all the fault of an incompetent board.

So yes, it matters a lot who is on the board and they need to have some awareness of educational issues. However, there is not a damn thing any of us can do about it.

[irhack]

Our board serves as a finishing school for our own VPs. So, although we're a small school, we have all these extremely specialized VP-level people, earning well into six figures, who were hired straight from their terms as board members. Who said nepotism was dead?

[barcrossliar]

I guess that whole "talk me down" thing was a bit optimistic.

Thanks for your replies. 

-+LR

[sibyl]

Our college has a mix of people: some recent alumni with some early success in their careers, some academics, some folks with membership in or connection to the religious group that governs the college.  But mostly they are businesspeople, individuals who are there (as choirguy aptly puts it) for their ability to give or to inspire giving in others. 

The Board has responsibility to ensure that the college is well managed; in particular they have some fiduciary responsibility for maintaining the charitable donations that the college has received.  So yes, having people with business acumen is worthwhile and helpful, because they are well positioned to anticipate challenges on the financial and legal fronts (the climate for floating bonds, regulatory changes, changes to benefit law which affect retirees or new employees, etc.).  They should know how business operates because they need to know that, to the extent the college is a business, it is not being mismanaged.

It is the responsibility of the president and other operational officers to manage operations and to educate the board about how higher education works and how it differs from regular businesses.  A good many presidents do not do this well, so boards will meddle with some frequency. 

[simplesimon]

As an administrator (and potential job candidate), I pay a lot of attention to campus leadership--provost, president, board--and what they have accomplished (or failed to accomplish) in recent years.  We have all seen examples of failed boards: Adelphi University, Albright College, American University, Boston University, Charles Drew University, Florida Memorial University, University of Illinois . . . the list goes on and on.   As near as I can tell, failed boards are rarely held accountable for their missteps, but their institutions do pay a price: talented professionals eschew vacancies at such schools—for years!  Potential donors are also watching, and their largess goes elsewhere when boards go astray.  That is as it should be, but far too many boards operate without any real oversight and that is not good.

More accrediting bodies and state board of regents (that have the power to oversee and police boards of trustees at private universities) need to make board evaluation a routine and public part of the work that they do.  Like students and faculty, boards should to be evaluated for quality, composition, and performance and those evaluations should be made public regularly.  It should not require a scandal in the newspapers for the public to realize that a given board is headed in the wrong direction, asleep at the switch, corrupt (sweetheart business deals between board members and the institution are very common), or has otherwise failed the institution, but all too often that is the case.