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More on Dartmouth
Some comments on our previous post on Dartmouth raise important issues regarding the size of governing boards. ACTA has discussed this issue many times, and our philosophy is that the most effective size for a board is around 15 members or less. Here is what we said in our 2005 report Governance in the Public Interest: A Case Study of the University of North Carolina System:
An oversized board diffuses responsibility and makes meaningful discussion difficult....A smaller board [than UNC's] would facilitate a focus on central issues, allow thorough discussion, and increase each member's accountability.
UNC's Board of Governors, as our report noted, has 32 members. Dartmouth's current board, on the other hand, is right around the size we cite as ideal--it has 18 members. This stands in stark contrast to many of its peer schools, which have, as we noted in our other post, a rough average of 46 board members.
We've also been asked many times why we believe what's going on at Dartmouth is important and what exactly our role has been. That's more than worth explaining again here.
As our mission statement says, ACTA "is dedicated to working with alumni, donors, trustees and education leaders across the country to support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives a philosophically-balanced, open-minded, high-quality education at an affordable price." That should make obvious why Dartmouth interests us. For many years, we have stood up for the right of Dartmouth's alumni--as well as those of other schools--to provide thoughtful input. We are concerned that the present governance review may imperil such input. And the reason for that is Dartmouth's leaders' own statements. For instance, Dartmouth vice president for alumni relations David Spalding said the following to the Boston Globe:
It's hard to say that there is a groundswell of opinion among alumni on this issue. We're hearing from a few hundred of our alumni who feel very passionately about this through the petitions. We're not hearing from thousands through these petitions.
That suggests one of two things: Spalding either doesn't know what his "constituency"--the alumni--thinks, or he doesn't care. A recent report from the Dartmouth Association of Alumni Executive Committee tells quite a different story:
Ninety-two percent of Dartmouth College alumni responding to an opinion survey say they want to keep their right to elect one-half of their alma mater's trustees, a right they have enjoyed since 1891. The Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College, through its Executive Committee, conducted the survey via U.S. Mail.[...]
The Association received 4,156 responses from alumni during two weeks in August. The first statement on the survey read: "I believe that the Board of Trustees should maintain its current balance of 50% charter trustees and 50% directly-elected alumni trustees (excluding the two ex officio positions)."
We're also interested since our experience shows that too often, academic freedom, academic excellence, and accountability are threatened, rather than valued, by those inside our nation's campuses. Comments like those of T.J. Rodgers in the recent Wall Street Journal piece--addressing Dartmouth's core academic purpose and the status of the free exchange of ideas--underscore the kind of thoughtful discussions that independent trustees, can and should initiate, and we are worried by the fact that trustees who try to do so are under attack.
We believe alumni have a key role to play in higher education, and we have taken the opportunity to say so in the media. We also believe that while the present governance review has claimed to be interested in best practices, it is actually exemplifying "worst practices" as regards the role of the CEO and conflicts of interest--something we documented in a memo, at the request of alumni.
Some of the ideas in our memo were, notably, included in a full-page ad (PDF) in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. We did not subsidize this ad, nor have we supplied any financial support to the Dartmouth effort. We simply shared our expertise with concerned alumni and they, under their own volition, acted on it. And now it's the board's turn to act. We hope they will do the right thing and preserve alumni input. The passion Dartmouth alumni have for their alma mater is a blessing, not a curse, and the board should treat it accordingly.
Posted by cmitchell at September 7, 2007 02:31 PM
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One is gratified to learn that ACTA is not subsidizing the comedy at Dartmouth, but distressed to see it cite to the worthless (indeed, comically inept) study claiming that 92% of surveyed alumni "want to keep their right to elect one-half of their alma mater's trustees."
Do you really believe that survey? Dartmouth alumni purchased a right to "nominate" trustees for election by the board in 1891 -- what makes you think they have a "right to elect" anyone? And when the board numbers 18, as you point out, and the nomination only applies to 8 members by design, what makes you think they could ever "elect one-half" of the trustees?
In case you were not aware, the Alumni Association is being run, possibly into the ground, by a bare majority of its executive board of a dozen or so people. Out of 67,000 alumni, fewer than eight (some with undisclosed legal ties to litigious outside lobby groups) are inventing bogus surveys like the one you mentioned and then embarking on expensive litigation against Dartmouth on the basis of the results they manage to achieve. That doesn't sound like responsible stewardship to me.
Can you explain why a Dartmouth employee such as the Director of Alumni Relations (it sounds like an outreach/PR/client-satisfaction kind of post) would have any "constituents"? Are you under the impression that he was elected instead of hired, or that his employer is the alumni instead of the Trustees of Dartmouth College?
Posted by: Gozer at September 8, 2007 03:08 PM
I don't know how you can critique the comment that "We're hearing from a few hundred of our alumni who feel very passionately about this through the petitions. We're not hearing from thousands through these petitions."
The petitions he was referring to are those of votedartmouth and savedartmouth. That Globe story appeared on August 29 and the quote was presumably uttered earlier. It is entirely plausible that the petitions had only a few hundred signers at the time -- as of this writing, well over a week later and following a great deal more publicity, the savedartmouth petition does not claim to have any more than 1,200 signers.
Posted by: Gozer at September 8, 2007 03:58 PM
Dartmouth has increased its board from 18 to 26. That's bigger than ACTA's idea of 15, but not egregiously so considering that Harvard's board is rumored to be in the mid-40s.
Your reasons for picking the number 15 seem good, but they are contradicted by evidence of the actual success of large boards. If Harvard has 46, then large size clearly is not a detriment. Because the Ivies or other top schools average in the 30s, you will need to reexamine your criteria -- success results from or at least is not at all hampered by a large board. Wouldn't it be wisest to pick the best schools and average their board size to find the ideal?
Posted by: Noacta at September 8, 2007 11:24 PM
Correction: Harvard is confusing, since it technically has a board of just 7 but also runs a Board of Overseers of 30.
Better examples of the tremendous success created by large boards are MIT (74), Duke (36), Bowdoin (45), and Princeton (40). Dartmouth's Trustees found the average of the large group of schools they surveyed to be 42.
Ignoring quibbles with particular decisions made by some of the listed boards, does ACTA have any evidence to counter the obvious conclusion that large boards (defined as in the 40s, or even over 18) breed success? No Ivy League school has a board as small as ACTA's ideal of 15, other than Harvard's strange case.
The survey may be found in the Dartmouth Trustees' report.
Posted by: Noacta at September 10, 2007 02:23 PM