This digest is based on a full-length report (with the same title) on advisory committees to universities and colleges. Under decreased resources and increased pressures for more accountability, advisory committees are an effective way for colleges and universities to connect with their environments. An advisory committee is a group of volunteers…

Faculty participation in college or university decision making is accepted as intrinsically good and as having positive effects on institutional functioning, but it is reflected in varying degrees in actual practice. The rationale for faculty participation is related to increased employee satisfaction and performance; faculty also tend to afford…

Faced with scarce resources and environmental uncertainty in the past decade, colleges and universities have experimented with different modes of academic staffing, most of which are attempts to preserve or create more flexible policies and practices. In spite of tenure systems in operation at 94% of all four year colleges, institutions have at…

This digest discusses shared governance in community colleges and identifies issues highlighted by recent shared governance experiences. Governance structure in public community colleges tends to have many variations at both the state and local level. Shared governance is a pattern of self-government in which decision-making is shared among…