AGB History final highres - March/April 2021 - ABG27

trustee selection for both the private and
public sectors.

1979 Handbook of Trusteeship,
Financial Responsibilities
Workshop and Slide Show
Several other important projects were
launched or carried out that bore fruit the
following year, most notably the Handbook
of College and University Trusteeship,
edited by AGB Vice President Richard T.
Ingram, completed by the end of 1979 and
published early the next year, which at once
became the authoritative source of information and advice on governance in higher
education.
The Presidential Search Consultation
Service was cosponsored with the Association of American Colleges.

1980 Distinguished Service
Award; Office of Public Policy
The first Distinguished Service Award in
Trusteeship was presented to Atherton
Bean, veteran trustee and former board
chairman of Carleton College. This new
and perhaps overdue form of recognition
of trustee service was made possible by
a grant form the Standard Oil Company
(Ohio), and the following year an increase
in the grant made possible the annual
bestowal of the award on two individuals,
one from each of the two sectors of higher
education.
A combination of grants made possible
the implementation of a decision of the
board of directors to start an AGB Office of
Public Policy with the mission of providing
our members with more comprehensive
coverage of public policy issues. Nancy
Axelrod was appointed vice-president/programs and public policy.
Also in 1980: A major project designed
to help the nation's 200 theological seminaries weather the difficult times ahead by
helping their governing boards to improve

AGB.ORG

their performance was launched with a
grant from the Lilly Endowment. Foreseen
as products of the project are a Manual of
Theological School of Trusteeship and an
adaption of AGB's Board-Mentor Service.
AGB joined the United Negro College
Fund and two other associations in a project aimed at providing private historically
black colleges with technical assistance
to strengthen their management and
governance.

1981 A New Three-Year Plan and
the Trustee Institute
By year's end, most of the first Three-Year
Plan had been achieved or were being met;
a new Plan for 1982- 84 prepared by the
staff, again in consultation with the Board
of Directors, set new objectives for the
Association. Foremost among these was
the establishment of a Trustee Institute to
give formal training to trustees.
By the year's end, staff headquarters had
moved into new officers in Suite 400, One
Dupont Circle. The staff now numbers 21
persons, serving nearly a thousand boards
and 24,000 individuals governing some
1,500 campuses in which about two-thirds
of the total FTE student population were
enrolled.

The Struggle Ahead
Thus we have summarized seven years
of rapid development. And we come to
a time of new, intense stress for educational institutions of every kind. Community colleges, which in themselves were
the newest and most rapidly growing
feature of American education, are now
feeling serious financial constraints.
Reductions in the federal commitment
to education have forced all institutions
to review every element of their own
programs. Even the most generously
endowed and most selective institutions
are forced to make painstaking exam-

inations of current practices and future
prospects.
A nation with a history of unrivaled
commitment to education faces a set of
problems just the opposite of those causing such struggles a few short years ago.
In this scene the system of lay trusteeship continues to suffer attacks. State-related institutions have been increasingly
consolidated under the general government
of central boards, resulting perhaps in
increased convenience for governors and
legislators but at the possible cost of variety
and vitality in the units themselves. State
and federal functionaries have pressed
their claims on institutions, claims of prior
judgment, claims of audit and review, even
claims of power to accredit institutions as
a whole, to determine the degrees to be
granted, the programs to be authorized or
discontinued.
The continued pressure from governmental forces and from other parties at
interest suggest that the voluntary portion
of both governance and accreditation is
no longer up to the job, if it ever was. The
literature reflecting this kind of view has
grown in volume from the time of Beck's
first attack along with Hofstadter up to
our own time. The complaints are fairly
repetitious: the impropriety of having
governance lodged with persons who have
no competence as educators, the failure
of such persons to address seriously the
educational aspect of their institutions,
which after all are their only reason for
being; but contrariwise the feat of meddling
by incompetents (if indeed trustees show
interest in educational affairs); the dominance of corporate types on boards and the
consequent tendency to advocate commercial rather than educational approaches to
governance. And so on. And on.
For an association of governing boards,
still other problems prevail. Is there any
common ground for members of a board

March 2021 | AGB: A CENTENNIAL HISTORY 27
http://www.AGB.ORG
AGB History final highres - March/April 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AGB History final highres - March/April 2021
