A fundamental problem is that university boards have an increasing disconnect from anything to do with merit, and a close enough connect to donating money (in two ways) that it's pretty close to just buying a seat. They're mostly made up some mixture of: 1) large donors to the university, who're appointed to maintain good relations, encourage future donations, etc.; and 2) for public universities, large political donors, who're appointed by governors, sort of in the way that ambassadorships often go to big political donors.
It's admittedly long been common for particularly large donors to be flattered a bit with some role, but over the past 10-20 years this seems to have gone from being a few members of the board, to being almost all of them, with very few members appointed primarily because of non-donation-related merit, like someone thinking they're actually good candidates for overseeing an academic/research institution. Note the lack of accomplished scientists on the board, for example. In addition, the political appointees seem to have decreased in quality: it was once more common to appoint someone who, while they were from your own party, was a late-career "elder statesman" type figure, e.g. a former governor or Congressman.
It's sadly not a partisan issue, either: if you look at, say, the University of California Board of Regents, you have a nice bipartisan mixture of big Democratic donors (appointed by Democratic governors) and big Republican donors (appointed by Republican governors). Their expertise is... not too relevant seeming, including such credentials as "former CEO of Paramount Pictures" and "husband of Dianne Feinstein".
It's admittedly long been common for particularly large donors to be flattered a bit with some role, but over the past 10-20 years this seems to have gone from being a few members of the board, to being almost all of them, with very few members appointed primarily because of non-donation-related merit, like someone thinking they're actually good candidates for overseeing an academic/research institution. Note the lack of accomplished scientists on the board, for example. In addition, the political appointees seem to have decreased in quality: it was once more common to appoint someone who, while they were from your own party, was a late-career "elder statesman" type figure, e.g. a former governor or Congressman.
It's sadly not a partisan issue, either: if you look at, say, the University of California Board of Regents, you have a nice bipartisan mixture of big Democratic donors (appointed by Democratic governors) and big Republican donors (appointed by Republican governors). Their expertise is... not too relevant seeming, including such credentials as "former CEO of Paramount Pictures" and "husband of Dianne Feinstein".