“It Was a Perfect Storm”: The Case of Navigating Shared Governance at Struggling State University During a Fiscal Crisis

ABSTRACT Due to a series of fiscal challenges, struggling state university (SSU) (a public, research‐engaged regional comprehensive university) faced a multi‐million dollar structural deficit. University leadership proposed a variety of program cuts or eliminations that faced immediate backlash from faculty, students, and staff and a vote of no‐confidence in the university leadership. In this single descriptive case study, we examine the factors that led to the fiscal crisis and how faculty and university leadership perceived their role and experience with shared governance during this time. This case offers valuable insights into the complexities of shared governance, particularly focused on budgetary and financial affairs during a fiscal crisis. Summary Universities need to invest in high quality, ongoing leadership training, and not just for new leaders. We are asking leaders to serve in increasingly complex policy and socio‐economic environments. Learning on the job is not an effective or sustainable model for professional learning when mistakes are very costly for leaders. Higher education leaders need better media training to illustrate the multitude of ways in which universities serve the public good. Improving communication on how higher education strengthens communities and states’ economic futures will be critical in recovering lost state funding and public support. Higher education leaders need more sophisticated strategies to communicate about institutional crises. Whether the crisis is related to a pandemic, fiscal, scandal, or something else, the importance of transparent information sharing and proactive engagement with shared governance bodies, or directly with students, staff, and faculty, cannot be overstated. University leaders should spend extra effort understanding long‐term costs of decisions, in particular how and what they cut during fiscal crisis. Many institutions make cuts to critical programs only to find themselves in a worse position because of hasty top‐down decisions and unanticipated impacts of those decisions. Shared governance is not efficient, but it is critical.