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Meeting Today's Governance Challenges

The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 75, No. 4 (July/August 2004) Copyright © 2004 by The Ohio State University Over the past four decades higher education institutions have faced increasing complexity related to governance (Berdahl, 1991; Birnbaum, 1988; Kezar, 2000; Leslie & Fretwell, 1996). In particular, institutions now face even greater competing priorities and demands to engage the community, business, and industry; to solve social problems and improve the schools; to generate cutting edge research and innovations to fuel the economy; to develop a more just and equal society by preparing a diverse student body, while having fewer funds, more demands from students, and an increasingly complex legal environment (Eckel, Hill, & Green, 1998; Kezar, 2000). Three significant changes in the environment within the last decade make governance even more problematic and will be described in greater detail in this article: (1) the need to respond to diverse environmental issues, such as accountability and competition; (2) weak mechanisms for faculty participation, major faculty retirement with close to half of the faculty retiring in the next ten years and a more diverse faculty entering the professoriate; and (3) the need to respond more efficiently based on shorter decision time frames (Kezar, 2000). The intense environmental demands on higher education place great responsibility and strain on institutional leaders to make wise decisions in a timely manner. Dill and Helm (1988) argue that “the substance of academic governance has changed” (p. 323). They note that traditional “maintenance” decisions, which include items such as the allocation of Meeting Today’s Governance Challenges