Follow Rules

The Nevada System of Higher Education is governed by federal and state law; as well as by the Board of Regents Handbook, which includes the Regents’ policies and procedures for governing NSHE institutions.  There is nothing unusual about this hierarchy of rules and power; but what is odd is that in many places the Handbook empowers administrators to ignore the Regents’ governing rules on a day to day basis. Not faculty, staff, or students, just administrators.  If NSHE was a country such an arrangement would be called a banana republic; mini dictatorships hidden under a thin façade of the rule of law.  This raises all kinds of questions, but for now the biggest is: Without clear internal NSHE mandates that administrators follow rules and directives, how exactly will state officials be assured that NSHE administrators will uphold the System’s commitment to change?  If the legislature wants real change in higher education, it must begin by demanding that discretion to act independent of established policies and procedures be eliminated and tossed out like the old, broken funding formula.