Opinion | Current U regents don’t measure up to boards of the past

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I recently observed my first University of Minnesota Board of Regents meeting in nearly 30 years. Having served at the University as a vice president and dean under President Nils Hasselmo and President Mark Yudof, I was part of university management and attended every regents’ meeting for most of the 1990s.

While imperfect, those past regents’ meetings uniformly offered a thoughtful process by which the regents as public representatives sought to guide the university to best serve Minnesota. At the recent meeting, however, I observed what seemed to be a “ham-handed” and predetermined approval of significant issues, including substantial tuition increases, a new and mandatory student fee to support intercollegiate athletics, the proposed closing and sale of the Les Bolstad Golf Course, the Fairview-Medical School arrangement, the future of the University of Minnesota Morris, an end to hosting of high school commencements and a costly expansion of the university’s administration to include 13 vice presidents.

Based on this apparent shift in leadership culture, I began contrasting how current U regents and their administrative leadership now approach managing a great land-grant university with my experience with other public boards.

As an administrative leader of a handful of public universities, I worked with boards that I felt functioned well, most recently at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Based on the differences between my past experience and my recent visit to McNamara Alumni Center, I offer the following observations in the interest of promoting a public dialogue, including with the Minnesota Legislature that selects the regents:

Much has changed in the approach of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents, and not for the better. I believe the current board compares poorly with regents who served Minnesota from the U’s founding through the end of the 20^th century and with those boards in other states I personally served under. I do not make such a statement lightly and reaching that conclusion was surprising and disheartening.

U regents of that era and others I have worked with over the past three decades readily engaged with and listened to students and the public. Their meetings always included informed, respectful and at times spirited discussions on the issues faced by the institutions they guided. Most importantly, the regents demanded accountability from their administrators — myself included — for their individual performance and from themselves for the successes and occasional misfires of the institution as a whole.

By disappointing contrast, the current Board of Regents falls far short of this standard. In my view, this past October regents’ meeting was fully scripted, tightly controlled and devoid of any meaningful policy debate. Much of the conversation seemed a disingenuous stream of babbled praise directed at a parade of presenters, interrupted only by hyperbolic self-congratulatory remarks by the board itself. Board leadership simply deferred to the U president and her team on every issue that came up despite obvious gaps in planning and public consideration, whether it included the likely loss of significant university property or an unprecedented increase in cost of attendance at our flagship public university.

In the past, Minnesota prioritized student input on matters like affordability and the student experience. During my time at the U, the at-large “student regent” and the nonvoting student representatives to the board were strong and vocal advocates for placing those concepts at the top of U priorities. By contrast, last October the regents made college far less affordable and diminished the university experience for future students without any meaningful opposition from student leaders. Do current student leaders have no problem covering the massive cost increases or do they simply accept a well-orchestrated discussion and predetermined vote will approve those increases to cover the growth in number and compensation of administrators on campus?

Minnesotans deserve more than a Board of Regents that offers little insight and asks no meaningful questions. This version of Kabuki theater will never guide a higher education institution toward excellence when it faces the profound challenges faced by all universities across the country.

The U has an urgent need for legitimate citizen input, student advocacy and governing board stewardship. While I only provide one data point from which to judge current university leadership, what I saw and heard at the last Board of Regents meeting is consistent with the media’s portrayal and commentary about an institution struggling to hold its reputation and public trust. As an alumnus who spent a major portion of his professional life serving the University of Minnesota, my strong desire is to be optimistic about the university’s future. For that optimism to be sincere, all of us must call on the Minnesota Legislature to elect regents with the commitment and capacity to guide the university on our behalf — as they did in the past. We must also call on current regents to no longer be an afterthought in board matters and become the leaders we need for the university.