The role of trustees has become a key component in one of higher education’s more controversial issues: who should govern the universities?
At the Board of Governor’s (BOG) meeting on January 10, members of the Tenure and Personnel Committee averted an attempt to reduce trustees’ power. The committee addressed a comprehensive revision of the section of the university system’s code involving academic freedom and tenure for professors. The section includes the procedures for terminating professors.
Although much of the revision involved minor language changes, the committee decided that one matter was not mere “bookkeeping.” The proposed changes might have substantially decreased the involvement of the Boards of Trustees for the individual schools in the UNC system. Because of committee members’ objections, the proposed was pulled from the agenda for further discussion and revision.
Some observers of higher education consider trustees to be the essential owners of the academy. Yet the trustees’ role has diminished with time; often they do little more than make the wishes of the administration official. Ward Connerly, a famous former member of the California Board of Regents, has said that trustees are often “nothing more than a rubber stamp for the administrators.”
At UNC, for example, the faculty dominates curriculum and academic hiring. While there are different hiring practices for each university, the policy at UNC-Chapel Hill is representative of all 16 schools in the system. It states that “the primary responsibility for recruiting new members of the faculty rests with the school or department seeking new members, since the faculty members of each unit are best qualified to determine the needs of the unit and to evaluate the qualifications of candidates to meet those needs.”
The administration has control over most other matters.
Many wish that were not the case. One of the hopes expressed by reform-minded speakers at the 2007 Pope Center Conference in October was that boards of trustees of universities will regain some of their former independence and clout.
The decision to shelve the proposed code changes by the BOG Tenure committee reflected, at least, a desire to keep trustees involved.
The UNC code defines three reasons for dismissal of a tenured professor: incompetence, neglect of duty, and misconduct. Professors who have been terminated for those reasons can appeal within 14 days. The appeal initially goes before a standing committee of faculty members. If the committee decides in favor of the terminated professor, and the chancellor of the school concurs, then the chancellor’s decision is final.
But if the faculty committee rejects the appeal or if the chancellor disagrees with the committee’s decision, the faculty member can appeal to the university’s trustees for an additional hearing. If the trustees decide in favor of the professor, their decision is final, but if they deny the appeal, the faculty member can still appeal to the Board of Governors.
The changes proposed to the committee would have eliminated the trustees from the process.
Annually, there are one or two such cases in the UNC system where an appeal by dismissed professors progress beyond the faculty committee and chancellor, according to Charles Waldrup, a university attorney.
Most committee members wanted to keep the trustees in the process. Vice-chair Frank Grainger said that “the boards of trustees ought to be the one to make the decision” because they have “a better understanding than us [the BOG].” Hannah Gage, chair of the committee, was concerned that leaving trustees out of the process would inhibit their effectiveness because of the loss of information. “Are they [the trustees] going to be made aware of what’s going on?” she asked. “Sometimes in one process we begin to see other problems. “
In 2004, another change to the code removed trustees from the appeals process — in that case, for non-tenured teachers whose contracts are not renewed. While the long-term trend seems to be a gradual erosion of trustee involvement, this time that erosion was stalled.
Jay Schalin is a writer for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.