Background
BOWEN, William was born on October 6, 1933 in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. Son of Albert A. Bowen and Bernice Pomert.
("Bill Bowen's powerful insights into the principles and p...)
"Bill Bowen's powerful insights into the principles and practices of institutional governance make his new book must reading' for all board members." - H. B. Atwater, Jr. Chairman of the Board and CEO General Mills, Inc. "The old boys' club' of the boardroom no longer works as companies and organizations re-engineer for the global challenge. Dr. Bowen's thoughtful and incisive analysis of issues and his prescriptions for good governance are must reading for all responsible board members." - W. Michael Blumenthal Former Secretary of the Treasury and Limited Partner, Lazard Freres & Co. "This thoughtful, lively, and well-written comparison of the many similarities and striking differences in the governance of not-for-profit and for-profit corporations is a unique resource from which both sectors will benefit. This valuable book, and in particular its twenty presumptive norms' to govern how boards function, will certainly establish a new and important agenda for management and directors." - Helene L. Kaplan Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom "Dr. Bowen brings to Inside the Boardroom unusual qualifications: a distinguished economist who has served as university president, foundation executive, and [as a member of] several for-profit and nonprofit boards of directors. From this varied experience he combines scholarship with corporate reality in ways which provide wisdom, insight, and guidance as to how boards should work and how in fact they do work, and what they can and cannot contribute to management. Best of all, he does so in a thoroughly readable way." - Nicholas Katzenbach, Partner Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland and Perretti Former United States Attorney General Former Senior Vice President and General Counsel, IBM Corporation "This superb study rests on Bowen's extensive experience of both corporate and nonprofit boards and his personal qualities of lucidity, perceptiveness, intellectual acuity, and fair-mindedness. Readable, fresh, jargon-free, and thoughtful, the book is a gem." - Richard W. Lyman President Emeritus, The Rockefeller Foundation President Emeritus, Stanford University "William Bowen is the finest example of America's meritocracy. He rose, by ability and wisdom, from Main Street to the highest counsel of business and philanthropy while gaining along the way admiration for scholarly innovations as an economist and leadership as President of Princeton University. In this short book he addresses - from experience and with analytical precision - the vital problem of how outside directors might help improve governance of business corporations and non-profit institutions. Read. Ponder." - Paul A. Samuelson Nobel Laureate in Economics Department of Economics, M.I.T.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471025011/?tag=2022091-20
(A number of policy issues have direct or indirect consequ...)
A number of policy issues have direct or indirect consequences for the non-profit and charitable sector, including the establishment of a social innovation initiative, changes in the tax treatment of charitable donations, responses to the economic downturn, and health care reform. The non-profit and charitable sector represents a significant portion of the U.S. economy. This book provides a formal definition of the non-profit and charitable sector, its size and scope. Also explored are how charities are funded and an overview of the charitable sector's relationship with government and policy considerations.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1611220270/?tag=2022091-20
( This is the book that has forever changed the debate on...)
This is the book that has forever changed the debate on affirmative action in America. The Shape of the River is the most far-reaching and comprehensive study of its kind. It brings a wealth of empirical evidence to bear on how race-sensitive admissions policies actually work and clearly defines the effects they have had on over 45,000 students of different races. Its conclusions mark a turning point in national discussions of affirmative action--anything less than factual evidence will no longer suffice in any serious debate of this vital question. Glenn Loury's new foreword revisits the basic logic behind race-sensitive policies, asserting that since individuals use race to conceptualize themselves, we must be conscious of race as we try to create rules for a just society. Loury underscores the need for confronting opinion with fact so we can better see the distinction between the "morality of color-blindness" and the "morality of racial justice."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691050198/?tag=2022091-20
(Winner of the 2001 Grawemeyer Award in Education Winner ...)
Winner of the 2001 Grawemeyer Award in Education Winner of the 1999 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Government and Political Science, Association of American Publishers This is the book that has forever changed the debate on affirmative action in America. The Shape of the River is the most far-reaching and comprehensive study of its kind. It brings a wealth of empirical evidence to bear on how race-sensitive admissions policies actually work and clearly defines the effects they have had on over 45,000 students of different races. Its conclusions mark a turning point in national discussions of affirmative action--anything less than factual evidence will no longer suffice in any serious debate of this vital question. Glenn Loury's new foreword revisits the basic logic behind race-sensitive policies, asserting that since individuals use race to conceptualize themselves, we must be conscious of race as we try to create rules for a just society. Loury underscores the need for confronting opinion with fact so we can better see the distinction between the "morality of color-blindness" and the "morality of racial justice."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J12ET0/?tag=2022091-20
(Shape of the River : Long-Term Consequences of Considerin...)
Shape of the River : Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions by William G. Bowen and Derek Bok. Princeton UP,1998
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MT0GUI/?tag=2022091-20
( The President of Williams College faces a firestorm for...)
The President of Williams College faces a firestorm for not allowing the women's lacrosse team to postpone exams to attend the playoffs. The University of Michigan loses $2.8 million on athletics despite averaging 110,000 fans at each home football game. Schools across the country struggle with the tradeoffs involved with recruiting athletes and updating facilities for dozens of varsity sports. Does increasing intensification of college sports support or detract from higher education's core mission? James Shulman and William Bowen introduce facts into a terrain overrun by emotions and enduring myths. Using the same database that informed The Shape of the River, the authors analyze data on 90,000 students who attended thirty selective colleges and universities in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s. Drawing also on historical research and new information on giving and spending, the authors demonstrate how athletics influence the class composition and campus ethos of selective schools, as well as the messages that these institutions send to prospective students, their parents, and society at large. Shulman and Bowen show that athletic programs raise even more difficult questions of educational policy for small private colleges and highly selective universities than they do for big-time scholarship-granting schools. They discover that today's athletes, more so than their predecessors, enter college less academically well-prepared and with different goals and values than their classmates--differences that lead to different lives. They reveal that gender equity efforts have wrought large, sometimes unanticipated changes. And they show that the alumni appetite for winning teams is not--as schools often assume--insatiable. If a culprit emerges, it is the unquestioned spread of a changed athletic culture through the emulation of highly publicized teams by low-profile sports, of men's programs by women's, and of athletic powerhouses by small colleges. Shulman and Bowen celebrate the benefits of collegiate sports, while identifying the subtle ways in which athletic intensification can pull even prestigious institutions from their missions. By examining how athletes and other graduates view The Game of Life--and how colleges shape society's view of what its rules should be--Bowen and Shulman go far beyond sports. They tell us about higher education today: the ways in which colleges set policies, reinforce or neglect their core mission, and send signals about what matters.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691096198/?tag=2022091-20
( In Reclaiming the Game, William Bowen and Sarah Levin d...)
In Reclaiming the Game, William Bowen and Sarah Levin disentangle the admissions and academic experiences of recruited athletes, walk-on athletes, and other students. In a field overwhelmed by reliance on anecdotes, the factual findings are striking--and sobering. Anyone seriously concerned about higher education will find it hard to wish away the evidence that athletic recruitment is problematic even at those schools that do not offer athletic scholarships. Thanks to an expansion of the College and Beyond database that resulted in the highly influential studies The Shape of the River and The Game of Life, the authors are able to analyze in great detail the backgrounds, academic qualifications, and college outcomes of athletes and their classmates at thirty-three academically selective colleges and universities that do not offer athletic scholarships. They show that recruited athletes at these schools are as much as four times more likely to gain admission than are other applicants with similar academic credentials. The data also demonstrate that the typical recruit is substantially more likely to end up in the bottom third of the college class than is either the typical walk-on or the student who does not play college sports. Even more troubling is the dramatic evidence that recruited athletes "underperform:" they do even less well academically than predicted by their test scores and high school grades. Over the last four decades, the athletic-academic divide on elite campuses has widened substantially. This book examines the forces that have been driving this process and presents concrete proposals for reform. At its core, Reclaiming the Game is an argument for re-establishing athletics as a means of fulfilling--instead of undermining--the educational missions of our colleges and universities.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691123144/?tag=2022091-20
( Thomas Jefferson once stated that the foremost goal of ...)
Thomas Jefferson once stated that the foremost goal of American education must be to nurture the "natural aristocracy of talent and virtue." Although in many ways American higher education has fulfilled Jefferson’s vision by achieving a widespread level of excellence, it has not achieved the objective of equity implicit in Jefferson’s statement. In Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, William G. Bowen, Martin A. Kurzweil, and Eugene M. Tobin explore the cause for this divide. Employing historical research, examination of the most recent social science and public policy scholarship, international comparisons, and detailed empirical analysis of rich new data, the authors study the intersection between "excellence" and "equity" objectives. Beginning with a time line tracing efforts to achieve equity and excellence in higher education from the American Revolution to the early Cold War years, this narrative reveals the halting, episodic progress in broadening access across the dividing lines of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The authors argue that despite our rhetoric of inclusiveness, a significant number of youth from poor families do not share equal access to America’s elite colleges and universities. While America has achieved the highest level of educational attainment of any country, it runs the risk of losing this position unless it can markedly improve the precollegiate preparation of students from racial minorities and lower-income families. After identifying the "equity" problem at the national level and studying nineteen selective colleges and universities, the authors propose a set of potential actions to be taken at federal, state, local, and institutional levels. With recommendations ranging from reform of the admissions process, to restructuring of federal financial aid and state support of public universities, to addressing the various precollegiate obstacles that disadvantaged students face at home and in school, the authors urge all selective colleges and universities to continue race-sensitive admissions policies, while urging the most selective (and privileged) institutions to enroll more well-qualified students from families with low socioeconomic status.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813925576/?tag=2022091-20
( In one of his commencement talks as President of Prince...)
In one of his commencement talks as President of Princeton University, William G. Bowen called upon the assembled graduates to find ways, in their lives, to blend "the powers of the mind and the promptings of the heart." This collection of his presidential writings--drawn from annual reports, opening exercises addresses, commencement remarks, and other speeches and essays--reflects a blend of analysis and advocacy that speaks both to public policy issues affecting all of American higher education and to the deeper meanings and values of Princeton. The writings selected for inclusion here represent roughly half of the total archive annotated in Appendix B. They range from brief extracts to complete documents, and they are organized under such topics as the university in society; purposes of education/liberal education; graduate education, scholarship, and research; faculty; diversity, opportunity, and financial aid; the economics of the private research university; and a final chapter titled simply "Reflections." Throughout his fifteen-year tenure, President Bowen remained a teacher in the introductory economics course at Princeton, and his principal identification was always as a member of the faculty. His writings, as he saw them, were an extension of his teaching: an opportunity to communicate important ideas in ways that would sharpen his own understanding at the same time that they provoked others to think hard about the questions being raised. As such, his writings were a source of insight and illumination for many "students," of various descriptions, who listened, and read, and learned from what he had to say. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691096929/?tag=2022091-20
(Describes the world of charitable nonprofits; gives an ov...)
Describes the world of charitable nonprofits; gives an overview of the trends in institutional populations; and examines the complex relationship of such factors as institutional type, age, size, and sources of revenue.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787900249/?tag=2022091-20
( In one of his commencement talks as President of Prince...)
In one of his commencement talks as President of Princeton University, William G. Bowen called upon the assembled graduates to find ways, in their lives, to blend "the powers of the mind and the promptings of the heart." This collection of his presidential writings--drawn from annual reports, opening exercises addresses, commencement remarks, and other speeches and essays--reflects a blend of analysis and advocacy that speaks both to public policy issues affecting all of American higher education and to the deeper meanings and values of Princeton. The writings selected for inclusion here represent roughly half of the total archive annotated in Appendix B. They range from brief extracts to complete documents, and they are organized under such topics as the university in society; purposes of education/liberal education; graduate education, scholarship, and research; faculty; diversity, opportunity, and financial aid; the economics of the private research university; and a final chapter titled simply "Reflections." Throughout his fifteen-year tenure, President Bowen remained a teacher in the introductory economics course at Princeton, and his principal identification was always as a member of the faculty. His writings, as he saw them, were an extension of his teaching: an opportunity to communicate important ideas in ways that would sharpen his own understanding at the same time that they provoked others to think hard about the questions being raised. As such, his writings were a source of insight and illumination for many "students," of various descriptions, who listened, and read, and learned from what he had to say. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691096929/?tag=2022091-20
economist Foundation administrator
BOWEN, William was born on October 6, 1933 in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. Son of Albert A. Bowen and Bernice Pomert.
Bachelor, Denison University, 1955. Doctor of Philosophy, Princeton University, New Jersey, 1958.
Member faculty Princeton University, 1958-1988, professor economics, 1965-1988, director graduate studies Woodrow Wilson School Public and International Affairs, 1964-1966, provost, 1967-1972, president, 1972-1988, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York City, 1988—2006, president emeritus, since 2006, senior research associate. Founding chairman, board directors Ithaka Harbors Inc. Board directors Merck and Company, Inc., JSTOR, ARTstor Inc.
Board overseers Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retired Equities Fund. Romanes lecturer University Oxford, 2000. Jefferson lecturer University Virginia, 2004.
(A number of policy issues have direct or indirect consequ...)
(Winner of the 2001 Grawemeyer Award in Education Winner ...)
(Describes the world of charitable nonprofits; gives an ov...)
( This thought-provoking study of academic job markets ov...)
( In Reclaiming the Game, William Bowen and Sarah Levin d...)
("Bill Bowen's powerful insights into the principles and p...)
( Thomas Jefferson once stated that the foremost goal of ...)
( The President of Williams College faces a firestorm for...)
(Shape of the River : Long-Term Consequences of Considerin...)
( The Description for this book, The Economics of Labor F...)
( This is the book that has forever changed the debate on...)
( In one of his commencement talks as President of Prince...)
( In one of his commencement talks as President of Prince...)
(An important book.)
Author: The Wage-Price Issue: A Theoretical Analysis, 1960, Wage Behavior in the Postwar Period: An Empirical Analysis, 1960, Economic Aspects of Education: Three Essays, 1964, Ever the Teacher, 1987, Inside the Boardroom: Governance by Directors and Trustees, 1994, The Board Book: An Insider's Guide For Directors and Trustees, 2008. Co-author: (with W. J. Baumol) Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma, 1966, (with T. A. Finegan) The Economics of Labor Force Participation, 1969,, (with J. A. Sosa) Prospects for Faculty in the Arts and Sciences, 1989, (with Neil L. Rudenstine) In Pursuit of the Doctor of Philosophy, 1992, (with T. Nygren, S. Turner, E. Duffy) The Charitable Nonprofits, 1994, (with Derek Bok) The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, 1998, (with James L. Shulman) The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, 2001, (with Sarah A. Levin) Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values, 2003, (with Martin A. Kurzweil and Eugene M. Tobin) Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, 2005.
Trustee Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, 1978-1984, 89-92, Denison University, 1992-2000. Regent emeritus Smithsonian Institution. Member American Economics Association, Industrial Relations Research Association, Council on Foreign Relations, Phi Beta Kappa.
Swimming, tennis, reading.
Married Mary Ellen Maxwell, August 25, 1956. Children: David Alan, Karen Lee.