ABSTRACT
Academic governance is again in the news in the US. In 2012 the President of the University of Virginia, a ‘world-class’ US public research university, was summarily dismissed from her position by the university’s Board of Trustees (Rice 2012). But in response to overwhelming support from the University’s faculty, students, and alumni the board abruptly altered its decision and rehired her. The incident led to extensive news reports about changes in university governance in the US. These stories highlighted the growing influence in academic governance of boards of control, of state governors, of accreditation agencies, and of private donors, as well as mounting public concern about the performance of US colleges and universities. Traditional academic governance is increasingly perceived to be cumbersome, inefficiently slow, and ineffective in addressing the strategic issues currently confronting US higher education (Kezar and Eckel 2004).
