Recent events have “made enormously plain how nearly impossible it is to effectively govern and lead universities,” said Richard Chait, a higher education professor at Harvard.
Private universities are governed by boards of trustees, often composed of dozens of prominent alumni and donors appointed by other trustees or, in some cases, elected by graduates or current students. These boards meet a few times a year, set a broad vision for the university, and appoint and review the president.
At Penn, critics said insufficient oversight has been part of the school’s problem.
“Trustees, including myself, failed to do our job,” Marc Rowan, a former member of Penn’s board of trustees who led the charge to oust Magill and Bok, wrote in a letter to the board Tuesday. “We, like Faculty, have distinct responsibilities and have simply abdicated those responsibilities for the last two decades.”
He said the board failed to ask crucial questions about the university’s strategic direction.