Shared Governance

A subtle and important aspect of a successful university

Shared governance in higher education represents a subtle collaboration between trustees, administrators and faculty that has produced the system of higher education that is the envy of the World, one campus at a time. It has also been identified as needing substantial reform, and the task of shared governance in this moment is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The Association of American Universities (AAU) is the pre-eminent organization that represents research intensive comprehensive institutions, with members being admitted by invitation only (N=71, founded in 1900). The AAU’s 2013 statement Academic Principles: Institutional Autonomy, Academic Freedom, and Shared Governance provides an overview of how shared governance is vital to the health of higher education, and how it fits with the key concepts of institutional autonomy and academic freedom that are central to the research university. The AAU defines shared governance in this way:

The traditional concept of shared governance encompasses the joint efforts of the governing board, administration, and tenured faculty to govern a university internally.

(emphasis added by me)

The AAU definition further defines the concept and notes differences between public and private universities in terms of how the governing boards are selected or elected:

The composition of governing bodies varies among institutions; for example, some but not all governing boards include seats for student trustees. However, the division of responsibilities among the board, the administration, and the faculty remains broadly similar across institutions. Led by the president, the administration oversees the operation of the university, making the day-to-day decisions and implementing institutional policies. The faculty holds the primary responsibility for matters related to education and research, such as setting the curriculum, while fiduciary responsibility and legal authority rest with the board. This shared governance model can also be affected by the relationships between the board and entities outside the university that retain some discretionary power over the institution’s governance. An example is a state governor who appoints board members or a system-wide governing board.

There are at least two types of issues drawing increased attention to shared governance: explicit legislative reforms targeting public universities in some states, and disputes at individual campuses (public and private) about how campus administrators are dealing with the disruption of the financial model of the research-intensive university.

Explicit Legislative Reforms that Violate Shared Governance Norms

The Texas Legislature recently passed Senate bill 37 that became law when signed by the Governor in late June. It takes effect in September and mandates a series of explicit changes to shared governance that violate the traditional governing board - administration - faculty sharing of roles as described by the AAU.

In the nation’s currently fraught political environment, curriculum review and approval are common flashpoints for conflict between faculty and governing boards or legislatures, and this document summarizes Senate bill 37 (now law) with the below bullet points focusing on legally-mandated changes to faculty senates or councils at public universities in Texas:

Faculty/Faculty Senates/Councils:

• Faculty does not have to be tenured to serve on the faculty senate/council.

• Limits number of members to 60 with clearer term limits for appointed/elected members.

• Official faculty senate/council duties are to advise administration—any published report or statement outside of that purview is prohibited.

• Clarifies faculty may not be involved in decision-making of a faculty grievance process.

Let’s look at these changes through the lens of process and substance. First, there is little doubt that the Texas Legislature can legally dictate most of these changes, though as my Granddaddy used to tell me “everything you can do you ought not necessarily do it.” Debate over what type of faculty can serve on a faculty senate is common, and at Duke the faculty added non tenure track faculty as eligible for election to the Academic Council, our faculty senate and these colleagues have served admirably. Some faculty were opposed to this change at Duke, while others thought it did not go far enough, but the key from a shared governance perspective is that the faculty hash that out and not have it imposed upon them as they now have in Texas public universities.

Other changes noted above are simply restatements of current reality, such that faculty senate’s only make advisory recommendations to the leadership of the university (President, Provost, etc.) who in turn make then to the Board of Trustees, who in turn hire and fire the President. The three levels of shared governance working together for the past 75 years have created the system of research intensive universities that are the envy of the World.

The Texas law set to take effect in September has at least one constitutionally suspect provision. The law states that faculty members cannot be paid or receive reduced responsibilities for serving on faculty Senate, so they have explicitly made such service not a part of the faculty member’s job. To then say they can only advise in the manner asked by the university leadership or trustees, and cannot report on other topics of interest to them as faculty leaders is against the best ideals of shared governance and likely unconstitutional. The tell is in Section 2.02 Subchapter G, Chapter 51, Section 51.3522 (o) of the law itself, which says in full:

This section may not be construed to limit a faculty member of an institution of higher education from exercising the faculty member's right to freedom of association protected by the United States Constitution or Texas Constitution.

When they write into law that a section is not a violation of constitutional rights, it typically is exactly that and the Legislature is hoping this statement of intent will shield the law from being overturned in litigation.

An example of shared governance navigating faculty expertise with advisory only input is the tenure review process. At most universities, the Provost organizes a process whereby the faculty work quite hard to review colleagues to determine if they receive tenure or are fired. This includes three or four faculty members serving on a committee that seek outside, arms-length letters of assessment, and then those faculty deliberate and write a recommendation to a department that votes, and passes the department’s recommendation to a Dean who weighs in before sending the case on to a university-wide tenure committee, populated by faculty not from the department in question to take a big picture look at each case. This group make a recommendation to the Provost, who ultimately determines what to do. At Duke, for example, the Provost can go against the recommendation produced by the multistep process, but he or she can only do so a limited number of times before the faculty ask why they are investing so much time and energy in the process. The faculty efforts legitimize the process.

It is an example of an advisory only process, yet one in which the faculty typically receive great, yet not absolute deference. Shared governance is hard work, requiring give and take to seek shared goals for the good of the institution.

This system of checks and balances works better than just about any other system that one could imagine for determining tenure. In fact, there is a still a check on the campus-driven system when the Provost makes a recommendation to the President who makes one to the Board of Trustees who ultimately are the only ones who can grant tenure. I have many times told a junior colleague at Duke who received word of the Provost granting tenure that it technically is not final until the Duke Trustees act, though it would be beyond provocative for them to single out a faculty member and deny a recommendation of tenure that emanated from the process above.

Shared Governance and Emergency Budget Cuts

Research intensive universities with academic medical centers have been especially struggling to address short term budget shortfalls and longer term uncertainty this Spring, dealing with what I called the quadruple whammy. This story in the July 11, 2025 Chronicle of Higher Education with the provocative title, “The Death of Shared Governance” focused on Duke University, and numerous folks have written asking why I have not written about it yet on substack. Basically, I already wrote about it on June 8, in response to discussions around campus, though the Chronicle of Higher Ed piece certainly amplified the story. As I wrote to the reporter who authored the Chronicle piece, she authored a story centered on faculty governance at Duke that did not interview the leaders of Duke’s system of faculty governance!

From my June post discussing Duke,

Numerous committees such as the University Priorities Committee, the Academic Programs Committee and most certainly the Executive Committee have talked about different parts of what I have called the quadruple whammy that has grown to the sextuple whammy. There have also been discussions of different aspects of our challenges in the monthly Academic Council meetings last Spring semester, some in open session and others in Executive Session (any faculty member can attend any Academic Council meeting, including Executive Sessions). The normal committees are in addition to briefings for faculty and staff held by executive leaders online, and there have been visits to some Department faculty meetings to discuss unit-specific financial realities.

It is Important to Understand What Shared Governance Is, and Is Not

I agree with the AAU that Governing boards, university leaders and the faculty bring different roles, skills and time horizons to individual campuses, and higher education as a whole. All three are needed to make a given campus successful, and it takes hard work and mutual respect to work well together.

• Boards have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain the endowment of a university and to well-shepherd all the assets of the enterprise. Boards of public universities have a responsibility to the taxpayers of a state to see that monies are well spent. They bring insights from other types of organizations and life experience to higher education, often love of an institution, and are sometimes financial donors to the enterprise.

• Presidents, Provosts and other academic leaders tend to be in posts for relatively short periods of time, and they can often be beholden to the need for short term results that enable them to continue their careerist rise that often means changing universities. Such changing allows them to bring new ideas and to have a fuller understanding of higher education that can be applied to a given university. They are also ultimately responsible as leaders of the institution in a way that an individual faculty member, or groups of faculty, are not.

• Faculty have a dual identity as a member of a particular scholarly tradition or discipline, as well as a member of a university community. They are closest to the students and on the cutting edge of research innovations. Many, but certainly not all faculty have a longer time scale at a given institution (I have served at Duke under four provosts and three presidents), and faculty hired with resourced creativity are the only comparative advantage that a university has over other types of knowledge producing organizations.

These three groups need each other for the university to be successful.

These three groups have different roles, skills, strengths and weaknesses. We faculty need some of us to learn how the broader university works, where the cross subsidies are, and how reality differs from how things look from outside. This requires us to pull up from our own research for the good of the whole. It is easy to ignore shared governance when times are good, but you need those who learned the systems to be ready for the bad times.

The best that faculty can do in shared governance is to show up, learn the brief of their given assignment and engage the university administration in good faith. If you get to engage Trustees, ask questions and be interested in the answers and give them direct answers. We faculty who are engaged in shared governance must be realistic, however. We can provide advice and insight, make proposals and the like, but we cannot mandate that our input be followed, because we are, after all, not the Provost nor the President and they are accountable to the Trustees. In the end those in such roles have to live with the consequences of the decisions they make, as will the faculty who will remain at a campus after they are gone.

These three groups need each other for the university to be successful. That is my story, and I am sticking to it.