By Jose Z. Garcia
One of my first actions when I became Secretary of Higher Education in 2011 was to organize a conference for members of boards of regents. We held it at the legendary Santa Fe Institute to highlight the “higher” in higher education. Regents saw Sam Shepard, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer-movie star (The Right Stuff), in residence that year, walking around the premises. As the conference opened, we handed blank cards to the two dozen or so board members present. We asked them to jot down the major responsibilities the New Mexico Constitution spells out for regents. We reviewed their answers; not one board member answered correctly.
The Constitution (Article 12, section 13) stipulates: “The legislature shall provide for the control and management (emphasis is mine) of each of the institutions… by a board of regents for each institution…” The word “control” suggests fiscal responsibility and “management” suggests policy and operational oversight. A few members correctly answered fiscal responsibility and fewer mentioned management oversight, but none included both.
Some members insisted they should never get involved in day-to-day operations; others emphasized a “supportive” role to the president. Some believed their only duties were to hire and fire the president, as is largely the case as school boards have evolved in public education. We spent the rest of the day discussing all of this and providing examples of what regents might do within the ballpark of the New Mexico Constitution and current statutes. At the end of the day, one prominent regent at a major institution pointedly said to all: “I just think of my job as being a cheerleader for the president. I’m not an expert.”
After a day of extensive discussion, that remark, and what seemed like indifference from other board members, indicated to me a systemic problem of governance and accountability in institutions that gobble up 12%-15% of the state budget each year. Among other things, this helped explain why New Mexico higher education institutions at all levels tend to rank lower than counterparts in surrounding states.
This now brings us to the current controversy at Western New Mexico University where the administration has been accused of financial improprieties (see Sherry Robinson column on this page). While the president, Joseph Shepard, his wife Valerie Plame, regents, and other officials were jet-setting around the world and staying at swanky hotels, Western tied for last place among 115 “Regional Universities West” ranked by U.S. News & World Report (2024).
Less than a decade after our conference, the board at Western appears to have failed to manage and control a president whose lavish appetites seemed to rival Louis IV of France. Some even took exotic trips with him, and when the Higher Education Department Secretary finally asked Shepard to stop, the regents flipped her the bird. All of this has been amply documented by Searchlight New Mexico, The Albuquerque Journal, the Santa Fe New Mexican and now, a year later, the State Auditor. It was shocking but not, after my four-year tenure as Secretary of Higher Education, surprising.
While some regents I encountered were outstanding, national-class managers of their institutions – retired Lt. Gen. Brad Hosmer, former Superintendent of the Air Force Academy and National Defense University and a self-made expert in New Mexico educational policy, is the exemplar here – most regents were followers, not leaders. There are no qualifications for the job. There are no required training programs for regents. They are appointed for six-year terms by the governor and, since the New Mexico Supreme Court has all but eliminated their possible removal from office by the governor, face virtually no accountability. Wealthy campaign contributors covet these appointments largely for the prestige value they confer. They get to fire the coach if there’s one loss too many and sit in the best seats at football games. Regents, for certain, are well wined and dined by the one person normally accountable only to them – the president of the institution. This is an open invitation for abuse, and, if nothing changes, abuse will continue.
At Western, there was an added, political, problem, which underscores the systemwide failure of accountability. Joseph Shepard, president of Western, is also president of the Council of University Presidents (known as the CUP), the powerful lobby group for four-year institutions including UNM and NMSU. And one of his board members is Dr. Dan Lopez, who preceded Shepard in that role. Officials up and down the line who might have flagged the obvious irregularities in the normal financial reporting would have been flagging two of the most powerful higher education officials in the state – far more powerful than the Secretary of Higher Education. As a lobby group the CUP is formidable. Every college has at least one state legislator and senator who feels pressure to protect funding, supported by regents who typically feel the same. The CUP unifies the institutions politically at funding time.
It is time to create effective accountability for the $1.3 billion in taxpayer money New Mexico spends each year on higher education for results that usually pale in comparison with higher education institutions in surrounding states. State legislators. Governor Lujan Grisham. Please step in and fix this system.
There are several ways to solve problems in the system:
1. Create a statewide board, possibly elected, with qualifications. This would in addition to solving the regent-as-a-plum-for-campaign-money issue, create a stronger possibility of having a higher ed strategy for the state instead of 24 institutions going off in 24 unrelated directions.
(Warning: Election would have the small advantage of popular accountability but without strong qualifications it would become a step up the ladder for ambitious politicians or simply people who want to get elected to something.)
2. Put serious qualifications and requirements for regents: at least some tangible experience in university finance, management of large organizations, commitment to higher education.
(Warning. It gets complicated: what do you do about the 16 two-year institutions who are run by local often elected governing board members: this leaves the problem of local entrenchment rather than systemic direction still on the table. Some states have created two boards of regents, one for the two-years.
3. Put some teeth into the Higher Education Department; its people keep the stats and know what is happening but they are rendered impotent by the governor’s office that wants headlines about lottery opportunities, not policy and because they can’t do anything about the regents.
4. The California system posits a three-tiered system, with a chancellor for the University of California schools, a chancellor for the four-year colleges, and a chancellor for the two-years, each run by a board with qualifications. This system is 60 years old and is wearing pretty thin but it is light years ahead of the N.M. non-system of higher education, with no long term goals, no common mission, no sustained attention to workforce needs in the future. What is frustrating about New Mexico is the lack of a system that monitors what is happening and makes long-term goals and plans: for example, telling Western to either move up from last place in its niche of four-years or else the state will close it down. Northern has similar problems.
Jose Z. Garcia is a former New Mexico secretary of higher education.