So, thanks to UBC, everyone wants to talk about Boards of Governors these days. How they’re not transparent enough, how they’re not representative enough, etc. What should we make of these claims?
On the transparency thing, I think the radicals have at least half a point, regarding some universities at least. Practice varies from one institution to the next, but it’s not hard to find some boards where harmful secret practices exist. Some parts of board meetings must be in camera – anything to do with hiring or performance monitoring of Presidents (sorry guys, Presidents have the same privacy rights re: employment as everyone else). But frankly most of it can be, and often is, open to the public. Certainly when it comes to institutional finances and financial planning, nearly everything should be open (certain parts of discussions regarding investment management probably need to remain schtum, but that’s about it).
The other issue is more problematic. It seems everyone and their dog want to make Boards more “representative” (see one example here, from Carleton). This is desperately wrong-headed, and stems from a misunderstanding of the function of Boards of Governors, and indeed of governance generally.
Boards are not representative bodies. Board members are trustees, not politicians. They act in the best long-term financial interests of the institution, and hold the leadership of the institution – specifically the President – to account for how the institution is run. In publicly-funded systems, they also have one incredibly important role: namely, to make sure that money spent aligns with the institution’s long-term interests.
The reason this matters so much is that someone has to oversee the financial functions. Universities spend millions – in some cases billions – of dollars each year, much of it public money. Where upstanding members of the community are present and keeping an eye on the shop, there is little need for government to play an activist role; where the governing board is made up of insiders, government quite reasonably worries about foxes guarding hen houses, and takes a more direct role. If you look across Europe, for instance, there’s a pretty direct correlation between the degree of external representation on boards and institutional financial autonomy.
Now, someone pushing for more representation might reasonably reply by saying: “we’re not interested in weakening external financial oversight; what we want is more discussion about what actually constitutes the long-term interests of the institution”. And, you know, fair enough: there aren’t a lot of places to discuss this kind of thing. This is why strategic planning processes are important (and why faculty shouldn’t ignore them). It’s also why Boards and Senates should probably meet together more often, both formally and informally, so as to encourage more exchange about “big picture” stuff.
But a University Board is not a Parliament – not even to the extent Senate is. Representativeness is not, and never has been, one of its functions. If you want to worry about boards, worry about their effectiveness. Worry about their knowledge base of higher education and its challenges. Worry about their size (many Canadian boards have 30-40 people, which is about twice as big as they should be). Worry about cliques gathering in specific committees and doing end-runs around the rest of the Board (or the President). These are all significant issues that require attention.
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Generally agree. However, on many boards the public representatives are little more than cheerleaders for the president, and the constituency groups can provide a good counterbalance for that.
I think that most of the people who actually complain about representativeness on boards look at the current membership of some boards and suspect that the sorts of people being appointed by government to the board, for instance, do not actually provide an appropriate cross-section of society to perform the trustee role effectively. (“Do they *all* have to be bankers? Couldn’t some of them be from the social/non-profit realms of society?) Or they may have some doubts about who winds up as the “internal members” of a BOG. ( Do all the faculty members have to be Chairs (or from Faculty X, or whatever?)”)
But to suppose that there is some contradiction between being a group of trustees and being a group with a requirement for appropriate representation is a mistake. Most of the boards I’m a member of are for organizations that build into the basic rules of the organization that the board must have membership from particular groups (“more than half the members of the board at any one time must be self-advocates or immediate family members of persons with disabilities”, for instance.) And the BOG at my university builds into its rules, by and act of Provincial Parliament, representation for the governments of two cities and the region, faculty, grad students, undergrad students, alumni, and a requirement that the “community at large” members “represent a broad spectrum of the community.”
Have more than two people ever really said anything that makes it appear that they are unable to distinguish a board from a parliament?
” Worry about their knowledge base of higher education and its challenges.”
My sense is that this is exactly the worry that underlies many calls for reform of board governance, and the invocation of the language of representation reflects the concern that board members may not have a good grasp of how universities actually operate. Let’s say — hypothetically, of course! — that a new, activist board chair with a record of voluntary service in the techical and college sectors comes into a research university, and asks all administrators to read “The Innovative University,” just as federal and provincial governments are hyping “skills gaps” and “misalignment” of post-secondary with labor market needs etc. The concern felt by rank and file academics under those circumstances might be understandable, no?
Two things. First, should the following rather limit the role of a board?
“They act in the best long-term financial interests of the institution, and hold the leadership of the institution – specifically the President – to account for how the institution is run. In publicly-funded systems, they also have one incredibly important role: namely, to make sure that money spent aligns with the institution’s long-term interests.”
If their role is more or less that of auditing for gross incompetence, then there’s no reason to need a board to be representative, and no fear of board members forming cabals, or doing much else, for that matter. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a process of appeal if a board oversteps its role and makes decisions which aren’t strictly financial. Nor, for that matter, is there an obvious way to replace a board which is failing in its obligations.
Moreover, and more importantly, we have a tradition in our society — borrowed from parliamentary practice, but hardly restricted to it — that leaders should enjoy the confidence of the led. While a vote of non-confidence doesn’t lead to an immediate resignation of (say) a department chair, there ought to be some similar method by which the community can declare itself lacking confidence in a board. In the corporate world, there’s the possibility of a shareholder revolt.
There isn’t, but there should be, something similar available to the university community. It’s worth noting, by the way, that the institutions with the highest reputations also have the greatest levels of collegial governance. Oxford, I believe, has no board as such, and the faculty successfully rebelled against the creation of one.
In sum, if a board acts as a buffer between government and an independent and largely self-governing community, then it reinforces collegial governance and institutional autonomy, and should be encouraged. If it acts as a branch of the provincial government, controlling the university as a sort of crown corporation, then it is clearly a hindrance to collegial governance and institutional autonomy, and should be fought in every way. The best ways to encourage the former over the latter role are to make the board representative and to limit its powers.