Raleigh, NC—American colleges and universities have strayed from their key missions—the search for truth and service to society—in recent decades. To counter these trends, sweeping changes must be made to the current model of university governance, argues Jay Schalin in his latest report for The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
The report, Bolstering the Board: Trustees Are Academia’s Best Hope for Reform , challenges the idea that a system of shared governance must be preserved.
“Is academia’s current system of shared governance equipped to deal with the massive problems the institution faces? The answer can only be a resounding ‘No!,’” said Schalin. “Shared governance is, in a large part, responsible for these problems.”
Bolstering the Board describes the development of the shared governance model and notes that “most of the major stakeholders at public universities other than boards of trustees—faculty, administrators, students, state legislatures, accrediting agencies, and federal agencies—increased in influence” over the course of the twentieth century. Governing boards, by contrast, were pushed to the background.
Schalin provides evidence that this transition harmed higher education institutions by isolating them further from the public-at-large (leaving them vulnerable to academic “groupthink”) and by cutting out the only stakeholders with legal incentives to ensure that institutions provide a quality education.
Martin Center president Jenna A. Robinson said, “Schalin’s focus on the incentive structures in board governance provides a key insight to understanding many problems that plague universities.”
To bring academia back to its missions to pursue truth and to serve the public, Schalin recommends a broad slate of governance policy reforms.
Additionally, the Martin Center will host a webinar about Bolstering the Board on Thursday, July 23 at 12PM Eastern. For more information and to register, please visit our website .
The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal is a nonprofit organization located in Raleigh, North Carolina that is dedicated to improving higher education in North Carolina and the nation.