Many boards will find themselves hiring a new president in the near future, as higher education faces unprecedented turnover in its top leaders. Not only must they manage the transition of a new president into the institution, but they must also manage the transition of the current president out. Best practices for the transition are discussed in…

A college and university board of trustees typically comprises people possessing great experience, wisdom, records of achievement, and a strong desire to meaningfully contribute to the institution. Such an asset is enormously valuable. Yet too often institutional leaders feel they are unable to tap all its benefits. For their part, board members…

While boards have to delegate the daily administration of athletics programs to their presidents, they must be aware of the issues and involve themselves in policy considerations that properly belong to them and can ultimately have a major impact on the institution's financial welfare and reputation. The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate…

The time between a president's resignation and the next president's assumption of office--often a 12-to-18 month period--can be crucial for an institution. Between the winding down of an existing presidency and the successful launch of the next, there are all too many opportunities for lost momentum, frayed relationships, key departures, and…

Forget basketball and March Madness. Aside from always pressing financial issues, it is "MOOC madness" that has emerged as the topic "du jour" at a growing number of American colleges and universities. Indeed, in boardrooms all across the country, people are grappling with what the advent of MOOCs--massive open online courses--means to their…

In today's world, managing a campus crisis poses special challenges for an institution's governing board, which may operate some distance removed from the immediate events giving rise to the crisis. In its most challenging form, a campus crisis--a shooting, a natural disaster, a fraternity hazing death, the arrest of a prominent campus…

In the late 1940s and throughout the decade of the '50s, Catholic colleges began to shift governance control from members of the sponsoring religious community to lay men and women. Typically, a "one-third plus one" rule addressed the required presence of representatives of the religious community on the board, a measure intended to…

The changing landscape in higher education is increasingly forcing institutions to examine their long-standing business models and to start making changes. Leading those changes and overcoming internal resistance to them will require strong oversight from governing boards. What might an institution's review of its business model actually look…

To bring major initiatives to fruition, trustees, administrators, faculty members, and donors must all be effectively engaged. By broadening a project's impact, the concerns of board members and other constituencies may be addressed and resolved to the satisfaction of all. An institution must provide sufficient time and multiple opportunities for…

Consequential governance requires critical thinking on big issues that affect the institution's success over the long term. A major issue in the academy is tenure--guaranteeing faculty members lifelong employment and academic freedom--bestowed after a probationary period of several years during which the faculty member is responsible for proving…

The strategic plan represents an institution's top priorities. Yet colleges commonly set aside financial resources to pursue them only after investing in maintaining the status quo. When building a budget, boards should focus on putting institutional assets at the center of the process and aligning fiscal decisions with their college's mission and…

Most board of trustees' evaluations of a president's performance look backward, assuming that the challenges of the future will be pretty much the same as they've always been. But as every alert trustee now realizes, colleges and universities face problems more daunting than the familiar conundrums of the past. As a result, each presidential…

Controversies over higher education governance are in the news these days. The most recent occurred this summer when several members of the board of the University of Virginia asked the president, Teresa A. Sullivan, to resign, only to be forced to reinstate her after protests from students, faculty, donors, alumni, and others. That situation…

As governing boards have become more sophisticated and polished in their oversight of colleges and universities, they have also become more intentional in the way they organize themselves to meet their missions. Some boards have evolved entirely new structures. Even within the parameters of fairly traditional constructs, many boards have made…

The real danger with a successful president and a complacent board is that the board will no longer have the benefit of a "marketplace of ideas" when making critical decisions. Boards that rely on an experienced president as the major source of their information are just as likely as a student's single-source paper to arrive at…