Governance structures for institutions of higher education emerge from an intricate interweaving of historic and contextual factors.
Governance is a function of structure and of how people act within that structure.
The bureaucratic model describes a traditional, rule bound, hierarchical power structure similar to K-12 structures. Authority is delegated from the top down with the faculty, staff and students each occupying respectively lower levels of the pyramid. The collegial model proposes a community of scholars, with consensual decision making processes involving all constituencies affected by the decisions. The purpose of this digest is to define shared governance, discuss the way shared governance is actually structured in community colleges, and to identify issues suggested by recent community college shared governance experiences. An ideal shared governance model is collegial in nature, recognizing the contributions and requirements of all members of the college in a group consensus process.