Desk

September 4, 2013; InsideHigherEd.com

 

A new survey of 523 college presidents has been completed by Gallup and Inside Higher Ed, and the findings are interesting. All the questions and answers from the Gallup/Inside Higher Ed Presidents’ Panel can be viewed here, but one fascinating takeaway is that there are big differences in college presidents’ perception of the board that depend on whether the institution is public or private:

Generally, the 102 presidents of four-year public colleges were more negative about their board members than the 197 respondent presidents of private four-year colleges. This report indicates that 45 percent of those presidents from four-year private college “strongly agreed” that their colleges were well governed by their boards, while only 20 percent of the presidents of public four-year colleges strongly agreed.

Ronald Ehrenberg, the director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, suggests that the difference in how board members are appointed may explain the above finding, in that in public institutions’ board members are often elected or appointed by governors or other state officials, while most private boards are self-perpetuating. John Casteen, president emeritus of the University of Virginia, said some public colleges suffer from board members with no higher-ed experience but a history of political donations.

Aligned with the above finding is the fact that 68 percent of four-year public college presidents would pick new board members if they could, but in private institutions sixty-seven percent of private college presidents said they would not. And the findings extend even further, with 63 percent of private four-year college presidents strongly agreeing that they “see eye-to-eye” with their boards most of the time, compared to only 27 percent of public four-year college presidents who strongly agreed.

The findings are being published on the heels of high-profile disputes involving boards at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia.—Ruth McCambridge