The recent leadership transition at Michigan State University has reignited familiar debates about presidential tenure, board governance, compensation and institutional instability. Those conversations matter. But they also risk masking a consequential issue facing higher education today:
Are governing boards and university leaders asking the right questions together?
American higher education is entering an era in which the old questions no longer produce adequate answers. Institutions built for stability now face continuous disruption — demographic decline, growing public skepticism, political scrutiny, technological acceleration, financial pressure and rapidly shifting expectations about the value of a degree.
In moments like these, boards and presidents do not need to agree on everything. But institutions depend on leaders sharing clarity about the questions that matter most.
Too often, governance conversations begin and end with operational urgency:
These are important questions. But they are insufficient organizing questions for institutions designed to endure across generations.
Universities are not quarterly enterprises. They are long-horizon public trusts. Their purpose is not simply to survive the next news cycle or financial challenge, but to expand opportunity, create knowledge, strengthen communities and contribute to civic and economic vitality over decades. They require a different set of questions:
These are stewardship questions requiring a commensurate mindset from governing boards and executive leadership teams.
Boards cannot function primarily as compliance structures or crisis-response bodies. Presidents cannot function as solitary visionaries expected to carry institutional transformation alone. The complexity of this era demands partnership grounded in trust, mission and long-term responsibility.
Leadership transitions will happen — and they should. Healthy succession is part of institutional vitality. But when transitions become recurring disruption, institutions risk losing something more important than executive continuity: strategic coherence.
Faculty and staff lose confidence in long-term priorities. Community trust erodes. Momentum slows. Institutions begin reacting to circumstances rather than shaping them.
The universities most likely to thrive in the coming decades will not necessarily be those with the largest endowments or the highest rankings. They will be the institutions whose boards and leadership teams learn to govern by focusing on enduring questions rather than temporary pressures.
Higher education does not need fewer challenges. It needs governance cultures capable of navigating those challenges together.
Dr. Philomena Mantella is president of Grand Valley State University.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: The questions higher ed boards and leaders must ask together | Mantella
Reporting by Philomena Mantella / The Detroit News
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