The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has just released a new report “Metrics For Effective Governance” offering eight simple metrics for gauging “institutional success in attaining agreed-upon goals.” The key measures that ACTA suggests include: 1. Student Characteristics 2. Student Selectivity 3. Cost of Attendance and Financial Aid 4. Financial Resources and Performance 5. […]
Read More
Given their common characteristics it’s often difficult for a person of even superior discernment to tell, from a slight distance, the difference between an accomplished university bureaucrat and a robust brick wall. Both seem witlessly to beg for the wrecking ball. The nation’s nine colonial colleges—not to mention the hundreds founded since—are thronged with administrative […]
Read More
By Robert L. Freedman A.B. ’62 I am running as a petition candidate for Harvard’s Board of Overseers to help Harvard College improve itself. I have been interested in higher education – and in particular in what is taught and how it is taught – since graduating from the College in 1962. I have the […]
Read More
Trustees face a quandary in trying to figure out their role in academic governance. As a matter of law, institutional responsibility is squarely in their hands. On the other hand, while few challenge their oversight in matters managerial and financial, they are routinely warned that when it comes to intellectual content, the heart of university […]
Read More
Senator Grassley, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, has turned his attention to the tax status of collegiate athletic programs – wondering “what gives the IRS comfort that they have met the requirements of being a charity.” The Chronicle furnishes Grassely abundant cause to wonder, reporting that athletics donations now amount to more than a […]
Read More
Anyone looking for a prime example of official huckster-speak should take another look at Dartmouth’s press release concerning the board restructuring. It makes the college’s reduction of alumni voting rights sound like, well, a warm bath. First there’s a lot of mush about Darmouth’s unusually small board, which Dartmouth’s governance committee found was putting “the […]
Read More
ACTA comments on an accreditation tussle afflicting St. Andrew’s Presbyterian College. It seems that the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (there’s a mouthful) is less-than enthusiastic about the college’s current expansion plans – and has placed it on an accrediting probation. ACTA is skeptical as to whether the commission […]
Read More
Press Release: Dartmouth College Office of Public Affairs Dartmouth Board of Trustees Elects Stephen Smith HANOVER, N.H. – The Dartmouth College Board of Trustees has elected Stephen F. Smith as a trustee following a nomination vote by Dartmouth’s alumni from a slate of four candidates. Smith, a 1988 graduate of Dartmouth, will join the board […]
Read More