It is easy to see why a college might want a big board. It is simpler to add trustees than to remove members who are no longer pulling their weight, and growth can be justified as an effort to broaden the diversity of opinions in a group. It is also true that there may be no better way to cultivate donors than to give them active policy-making roles at a college. Large boards are particularly prevalent at private institutions. According to the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, the average private college board has 29 voting members, and most boards have hovered around that range for the past three decades. But there are a fair number of boards that have twice the average membership. The University of Miami, for example, has 74 voting members. Syracuse University has 60. The typical public college board has about 12 voting members, but there are outliers among them, too. The board at Pennsylvania State University, a public institution that is often considered quasi-private, has nearly three times as many members as the average public-college board. In the wake of the recent sex-abuse scandal involving a former assistant football coach, the 32-member board was criticized for disengagement and poor communication. Those same shortcomings are commonly associated with large governing boards. Even in a group of well-meaning individuals, the basic mechanics of a meeting can be gummed up if a board gets too large. Over the past several years a few institutions have conceded that their large boards may be a problem. Johns Hopkins University is in the process of shrinking its board, and two small liberal-arts colleges in the Southeast recently completed similar restructurings.