Student voice, namely the institutionalisation of students' contributions to the evaluation, and increasingly, the day-to-day running of higher education, has a wide-ranging influence. It shapes the concerns of management and academics; it changes the organisation and content of degree courses and, at times, challenges authority. Through her…

This article is based on an interview conducted with Mark Olssen in October 2014, and the subsequent discussions. These conversations invited Olssen to reflect on his experiences of neoliberalism as a practising academic who has worked in the UK for some 14 years, and also to comment as a researcher and writer who is well known for his work on…

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…

The work of state higher education system boards is changing. By "system boards," the author means governing boards for all of higher education in a state, governing boards for certain kinds of institutions (such as the Louisiana Community and Technical College System and the California State University system), and state coordinating agencies…

In the private sector, it is clear that the chair is in charge of the board and the CEO in charge of the company. But in the author's view the chair's principal role is to act as an adviser or counsellor to the CEO and senior colleagues--hence the wisdom of having a chair who is involved in other organisations and the preference for people of a…

This article presents an interview with Kentucky State president and APLU chairwoman, Dr. Mary Sias. President of Kentucky State University since 2004, Dr. Mary Sias added chair, Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities to her list of titles in November. In that capacity, Dr. Sias is charged with being one of the chief advocates for not…

Faculty members typically have few opportunities to understand the full scope of trustees' responsibilities and the work they do for institutions. But the author argues that when faculty can appreciate the work of trustees and trustees appreciate the role of faculty, an important framework for bridging worlds can be established. Furthermore,…

Not long ago, most academic insiders felt confident in saying, "the faculty 'are' the university." The faculty may still be the university, but who are the faculty? From public community colleges to private research universities, America has created the most powerful machine for the development of human capital in the history of the world. Yet an…

In this article, the author notes that an academic institution is essentially a political, not a corporate, system, and that its leader is more akin to the president of the United States than to a corporate chief executive. This is in spite of the argument, particularly when defending the compensation of college presidents, that leading an…

In an era of curricular accountability where everything from reading and math scores to body fat are events to be assembled, scrutinized, and standardized, the health-conscious school plays an ever-important role in community and the nation (or so we are told). This qualitative study analyzes interviews with school leaders in their role in…

The 2005-6 executive compensation controversy at the University of California has been explained as the result of a massive breach of compliance with the University's compensation policies by the Office of the President (UCOP). For more than a decade, the explanation goes, UCOP failed to comply with its own compensation policies, embodied in the…

The article considers the importance of examining how members of university governing bodies understand and perform their roles in the politically complex context of contemporary higher education. While a growing body of scholarly literature is devoted to the study of university governance, much of this work neglects the human aspects of…

In this paper, the author describes what might happen if a college got rid of its board of trustees and the faculty became voting partners in running the "corporation." What if there was no board of trustees composed mainly of outsiders? What if the president was chosen by and responsible to the faculty? What, in short, if the faculty owned the…

In an interview, Gerald L. Baliles, a former Democratic governor of Virginia, talked about how the job of college president has changed over the years. Baliles said that a president must be many things to many people: leader of the academic community, chief executive of the business enterprise, the spokesperson, the fundraiser, the advocate for…

Expectations of trustees have undergone a dramatic change in the wake of the Enron debacle, the new strictures of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and several new state policies, laws, and executive actions. Additionally, well-publicized examples of inadequate trustee oversight have affected the public's and policymakers' perceptions of higher education.…