Dartmouth's latest insult to the intelligence of its alumni
Our friend Joe Asch provides a devastating critique of the claim by Dartmouth's power-hungry ruling faction that its decision to dilute the power of alumni to elect trustees rationally stemmed from a “best practices” study of other institutions of higher learning. Joe, a former consultant at Bain & Company, explains that such a study examines the top companies in an industry and attempts to determine the reasons for their success. By contrast, according to Joe, the Dartmouth Governance Committee looked at 31 “peer institutions,” many of which are plainly inferior to Dartmouth at least by reputation, and simply computed the numerical averages concerning governance practices at these schools. As Joe says, following the average choices of other schools of varying quality and reputation will only lead to Dartmouth becoming an average school itself.
Joe also shows how the recent trustee elections -- the ones that insurgents won, thereby prompting the sudden changes in the rules -- have enriched the Board. Of the 12 trustees who were either hand-picked or elected before petition candidates became involved, seven are money managers or deal makers, three are managers of large corporations, one is a senior lawyer, and one is a doctor. By contrast, the four petition trustees include an entrepreneur who has founded a multi-billion dollar corporation; a public intellectual and former speechwriter to the President of the United States; and two tenured faculty members.
The addition through the petition process of the two educators seems particularly significant. Joe writes:
It is extraordinary that prior to the election of Todd Zywicki and Steven Smith. . . Dartmouth’s Board had no members at all with experience as a full-time faculty member or as a senior educational administrator. This posture makes as little sense as a corporate Board of Directors that has no business executives on it. At Harvard, two of the six non-ex-officio members of the governing Corporation are faculty members at other schools, as are 10 of the 30 members of its Board of Overseers. At Yale, three members of the 18-person governing Corporation are faculty members or senior administrators at other institutions, and at Princeton, seven of the 38 member of the Board are full-time educators.
Taking this analysis one step further, Joe finds that the four educational institutions with the smallest governing boards are Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale and Amherst. The schools with the highest percentage of alumni-chosen trustees are Dartmouth, Duke, Princeton and Yale.
How sad that Dartmouth would expand its board and reduce the percentage of alumni-chosen trustees, thus parting company with the practices of Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Princeton, and Duke, on the pretext of following a "best practices" study that considered the 35th and 41st ranked schools in the nation (per U.S. News) to be among Dartmouth's peers. How sad that Dartmouth's ruling faction is so desperate to cling to power.
