The authors draw on the history of Michigan as well as the more recent experience in New Jersey. To discuss in more detail the idea of charter colleges, visit Pioneer Network. Charter colleges are publicly owned institutions managed independent of most controls imposed by state bureaucracies and higher education systems. They are subject to applicable local, state, and federal laws and required to follow standard financial accounting and reporting procedures. They are governed by their own boards of trustees, although their charters are granted and evaluated by the state's coordinating agency.
Charter colleges enjoy almost complete discretion in managing their administrative affairs.
For example, the authority to contract for services, finance and oversee capital projects, set salaries and titles for non-represented employees, set tuition rates, build and hold reserves for multiple years, establish foundations for the receipt of private gifts, and, in some instances, negotiate employee contracts with bargaining units or manage under a flexible sidebar to master agreements. St. Mary's College of Maryland offers one successful example of the charter college idea in ac-tion. The key to the success of charter colleges lies in linking authority and responsibility to the leaders at the campus, on the one hand, and insisting on well-defined results that both the state's representative and the college negotiate and then agree upon in a charter, on the other. The precise definition of charter colleges would need to be adjusted to recognize the political realities of the Commonwealth. With some modifications, the charter college idea represents an attractive choice for several and perhaps eventually for more of the state's public institutions.