OPINION: New Mexico's higher education needs modern governance

Having recently concluded my tenure as president of New Mexico Tech, I have been reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of New Mexico’s higher education governance. My perspective has been shaped not only by years across multiple institutions, but most recently by firsthand experience with a campus-specific Board of Regents.

This reflection comes at a time when New Mexico’s regent system has come under renewed scrutiny. Headlines about recent controversies have raised questions not about the dedication of regents themselves — who give generously of their time without compensation — but about whether the governance structure created over a century ago still serves today’s needs. What once made sense in a rural state with limited communication may now hinder accountability, collaboration and long-term planning.

In leading New Mexico Tech, I came to see that sustainable success depends on governance that empowers leadership, protects institutional integrity and resists undue politicization or parochialism. Presidents and regents alike deserve a structure that is coherent, accountable and fair. Yet those conditions are not always guaranteed under the current decentralized model, where small boards can shift with political winds, respond unevenly to local pressures or be influenced by narrow interests.

Let me say from the outset: This is not a critique of any individual regents. Rather, it is an invitation to our community — from the governor and legislators to alumni and local leaders — to reimagine governance structures. A model designed for the realities of the early 20th century no longer meets the challenges of the 21st.

When New Mexico wrote its Constitution, each major public university was given its own independent Board of Regents. In a sprawling, rural state with poor transportation and limited communication, that arrangement made sense. But in today’s higher education environment — marked by rapid technological change, growing demands for accountability, declining enrollment and fierce global competition — we must ask whether this model still serves the public interest.

Defenders of decentralization point to its virtues: local control, preservation of unique missions and agility. Local boards, in theory, understand their economies and civic cultures better than a distant system office ever could. Because presidents report directly to regents, decisions can be made quickly. On top of this, the structure is embedded in the state Constitution, making it difficult to change.

Those arguments are real, but incomplete. Localism can morph into parochialism. Independence can slide into insularity. And speed of decision-making does not always equal soundness of judgment.

When regents focus solely on one campus, they may wade into operational matters best left to administrators — staff appointments, internal discipline, even curricular details. This undermines leadership and blurs the line between governance and management. At the other extreme, regents may grow too closely aligned with campus leadership, producing biased oversight — as controversies at Western New Mexico University have already shown.

The scale of the problem makes this fragility more dangerous. Small boards are charged with steering institutions that manage hundreds of millions of dollars, educate thousands of students and anchor statewide research enterprises. In the corporate or nonprofit world, such vast responsibilities would demand large, well-resourced boards. Here, the opposite is true — tiny boards wield enormous power.

Campus presidents, meanwhile, are left to operate in isolation. Unlike leaders in system models who benefit from peer collaboration and policy alignment, New Mexico presidents must navigate alone. They rely heavily on the administrators they are meant to oversee. It is not a failure of effort, but of design.

Good governance requires more. Strong boards are not managers of daily affairs but stewards of institutional futures. They set vision, ensure financial sustainability, build public trust and hold leadership accountable through clear metrics. Too often, New Mexico’s decentralized model prevents regents from fully inhabiting that role.

This is where the case for centralization comes in. A unified system would bring efficiency, coherence and fairness. Shared human resources, technology, procurement and legal services would reduce costly duplication. In a resource-constrained state, those savings matter.

And New Mexico is increasingly an outlier. Across the country, states, including California, New York and Texas, have moved to system models. These systems preserve local identity while aligning missions, reducing duplication and presenting a strong, united voice in their legislatures.

Centralized coordination would also align campus missions with statewide priorities, reducing wasteful competition and helping institutions complement one another rather than overlap. A unified voice — through a system chancellor or a strengthened Council of University Presidents — would give higher education far more leverage in Santa Fe.

Equity is another critical dimension. Coordinated enrollment strategies, streamlined transfer pathways and shared admissions systems would expand opportunity and distribute resources more fairly.

Centralization would also improve accountability. Presidents would operate with clearer expectations and peer support. Regents would gain access to professional staff, comparative data and external review. The result: less insularity, more strategic oversight and a healthier balance between autonomy and accountability.

The stakes could not be higher. Across the country, universities are under political attack — their value questioned, their science politicized, their academic freedom undermined. Public institutions are increasingly caught in cultural crossfires they cannot navigate alone. In New Mexico, where each board looks inward, there is no united front. A centralized governance model would give our institutions collective voice, strategic depth and political leverage.

New Mexico does not lack talent or commitment. It has a Higher Education Department with regulatory power that could evolve into a true-coordinating body. What we lack is structural coherence. The decentralized regent model theoretically preserves identity and community connection, but it does so at the expense of strategy, accountability and innovation.

If New Mexico is to meet the challenges of this century, it must reimagine not just what its universities do, but how they are governed. We deserve boards that think systemically, benchmark nationally and act boldly. Getting there will take courage — not just from regents and legislators, but from all who care about the future of higher education in this state.

The governance model we inherited from the early 1900s was built for a different era. It worked then. It no longer does. New Mexico has long prided itself on independence. The question now is not whether we can afford to change, but whether we can afford not to.