Inside Higher Ed: Holding Trustees Accountable
This has been a challenging couple of years for university and other nonprofit governing boards. The Enron-style corporate governance scandals have undoubtedly had a spillover effect into the nonprofit world, even if the Sarbanes-Oxley law designed to clean up those problem doesn’t technically apply to most colleges and universities. Nonprofit groups and colleges in particular have had their own set of governance and conflict-of-interest controversies as well, prompting a Congressional review into American University’s compensation for its former president. And all of this has come at a time when the performance and effectiveness of higher education as a whole is under scrutiny of its own, from governments and the public.
To try to guide trustees in such a turbulent climate — and, its leaders hope, to send a reassuring signal to the public and to policy makers — the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges has released a statement aimed at better defining to whom, and for what, board members are accountable. In broad strokes, the areas on which the “AGB Statement on Board Accountability” seeks to focus trustees’ responsibilities may seem unsurprising: the fiscal integrity of their institutions, how boards conduct their own business, the educational quality of the institutions, and oversight of the president.
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