OPINION: The College Board, an agency in need of reform

In 1944, the Mississippi state legislature created the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning (College Board) in order to protect the eight public senior colleges from political interference from state governors. Governor Paul B. Johnson had been the latest governor to do so. Since the College Board’s creation, however, governance and oversight problems have not disappeared. The problems have manifest themselves in different ways and even escalated.

Matters were greatly publicized following the resignation of Dr. Marcus Thompson as president of Jackson State University, drawing attention to the number of bad presidential choices which the College Board had made using a process lacking transparency and accountability. 

Prior to Thompson’s resignation, there had been highly controversial presidential firings at Ole Miss and Delta State University. Back during the Ayers litigation, the College Board created a classification system, hampering programmatic development at Jackson State, Delta State, Alcorn State, Mississippi University for Women, and Mississippi Valley State University, and widening funding discrepancies between those five universities and the big three – Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and Southern Miss. 

As the fall-out from the classifications reduced their productivity, the College Board, at one point, had gone so far as to recommend the closure of Mississippi Valley State and Mississippi University for Women, and the drastic reduction of course offerings at Delta State. 

Perhaps dwarfing those outcomes by comparison, has been the manner in which millions of dollars in settlements have been paid out because of bad decisions made and/or supported by the College Board. 

The problem in all of the situations above is that the College Board is accountable to no one and that it can and does operate in a non-transparent manner whenever it chooses to do so.

In order to correct those conditions one of several things need to happen. 

(1) The College Board could be abolished, enabling each university to have its own board of trustees. As one former president pointed out, as long as there is a board and commissioner over the entire system, the so-called presidents on each campus are merely chief executives for the institution. 

(2) College Board members could be elected, one from each congressional district, one from each university constituency, or some other fair and impartial division of the state. 

(3) Regardless of whatever else happens, the state legislature needs to enact legislation carefully defining the roles, powers, and limitations of any board that exists or is established, provides for periodic investigative authority over the board, and provides for the removal of members from the board.

At the other end of the spectrum, there should be reforms making governance more transparent and reflective of the fact that the universities are academic institutions. This would require the full implementation of the concept of shared governance on each university campus. Such shared governance is expected by regional accrediting agencies and by the Association of University Professors. 

The College Board, however, does not demand any shared governance. It seems content to allow the system to be run as a giant plantation and for that to serve as a model for the presidents on each campus. On no campuses in the system is shared governance in full operation wherein the faculty has the major voice in the development of programs and curriculum and in the recommendation of academic personnel for hiring, promotion and tenure. That kind of routine involvement, including the selection of the president, provost, and academic deans, would make for greater cohesion, stability, transparency, and accountability. It would even lessen the need for board oversight in many instances and the lawsuits resulting from oppressive oversight.

As matters now stand, the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning is an agency needing reform. It may not be as blatantly political as were some governors prior to its creation. It is, nevertheless, still too political, oppressive, and outdated for the higher education needs of Mississippi.