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The work of state higher education system boards is changing. By “system boards,” I mean governing boards for all of higher education in a state, governing boards for certain kinds of institutions (such as the Louisiana Community and Technical College System and the California State University system), and state coordinating agencies (such as the Illinois Board of Higher Education). All of them have a general responsibility to promote cooperation and coherence among the institutions for which they are responsible.
But times have changed, and so should the ways in which systems boards do that work.
Many of these boards (or agencies) were created in the 1950s and 60s, when the US faced the great challenge of rapidly building capacity to accommodate large numbers of students. The GI Bill had sparked a movement in which people from a wide range of backgrounds found college education suddenly available to them, ushering in a vastly larger college-going population that would lead to dramatic growth of the American middle class.
In the mid-20th century, the primary work of the governing and coordinating agencies was to promote rational and politically acceptable expansion, ensuring that all regions of a state were served by institutions that were reasonably accessible and that these institutions offered comparable and appropriate arrays of programs, student services, and amenities.
Gordon K. Davies (gdavies02@comcast.net) has been the executive head of two statewide coordinating boards, one in Virginia (the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia) and the other in Kentucky (the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education)
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