We don’t know how long Margaret McKenna and Drew Meyer have been bickering, but now the question is: Can this marriage be saved?

McKenna is the embattled Suffolk University president, and Meyer is the chairman of the school’s governing board who has been orchestrating a coup to oust her. They’ve spent the past couple of days in what I could only imagine is the higher education equivalent of marriage counseling.

Their weeklong standoff may be coming to an end. On Thursday afternoon, Suffolk said that McKenna and Meyer have agreed on how to resolve issues between them. Details are being finalized, the school said, and the full board of trustees still must approve the proposal. The board meets on Friday.

A faction of the board, led by ­Meyer, has wanted to let McKenna go after only seven months in the job. The group accused her of unauthorized spending and an “abrasive’’ management style. McKenna, a civil rights attorney who ran Lesley University for two decades, has refused to resign. Faculty, students, alumni, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, and business and civic leaders have rallied to her side.

This is the deal I’m hoping for: McKenna stays, and the Suffolk board cleans up its act.

Unless she is the most impossible person to work with in the world, McKenna has to remain at the helm for this reason alone: What other competent candidate wants to be Suffolk University president now?

Meyer and his cabal have turned Suffolk into a clown college at the center of a three-ring circus. Martha Coakley, who appeared to be the leading candidate to replace McKenna, wisely hightailed out of there. No way the former attorney general and gubernatorial candidate was going to report to a bunch of Bozos.

In order to stay, McKenna will need to repair her relationship with the board, but it’s hard to see how both Meyer and McKenna can stay together for the sake of 8,300 students.

“It’s awfully difficult to have a constructive and productive relationship between a board chair and president when the board chair appears to be the architect of the ouster,’’ said Richard Chait, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who studies university management and governance.

“If the board determines she should remain, a change in the leadership of the board would be advisable, if not necessary,’’ Chait said.

McKenna is the fifth Suffolk president in five years after longtime leader David Sargent, James McCarthy, and two interims. Such turnover in the corner office is not “bad luck,’’ said Chait, but rather points to issues on the board.

“Rapid turnover of presidents strongly suggests problematic governance,’’ Chait said.

Scott Harshbarger, a former attorney general who now advises clients on corporate governance, sees all kinds of problems with the Suffolk board, from potential conflicts of interest to breaches of confidentiality.

“There are any number of failures to comply clearly with best practices,’’ said Harshbarger, senior counsel at the Boston law firm Casner & Edwards, who has been following the issues through the news media.

Suffolk’s board practices are subject to review by the state’s attorney general, whose office oversees nonprofits boards and charities to ensure trustees uphold their fiduciary duties.

After first demurring on the McKenna situation, Attorney General Maura Healey on Thursday weighed in. Her office said it has “questions’’ about why the trustees have yet to institute reforms at the prodding of the university’s accrediting agency, including updating its bylaws and becoming less involved in the day-to-day affairs of the school.

“Good non-profit governance practices should be standard at sophisticated public charities such as Suffolk University,’’ Healey’s office said in the statement. “We believe that any decisions the Board makes must be done in the best interest of the students and the institution.’’

This wouldn’t be the first time the AG had to provide adult supervision. Back in 2009, then-AG Coakley determined that Suffolk’s board had failed to follow its own procedures and other safeguards in monitoring a potential conflict of interest between a trustee and a contract with the school.

Harshbarger has a soft spot for the downtown university, having hired many Suffolk Law graduates and having worked with them as colleagues. For the school’s sake, he said, he hopes the “board will, on its own, do the right thing.’’

The right thing would be for Meyer to clean up board practices and be transparent with his fellow board members, McKenna, and the rest of the campus.

For her part, McKenna can pledge to do a better job of keeping trustees in the loop and, going forward, make sure they have the same goals.

Now as for whether McKenna and Meyer can repair their relationship, only they know the answer. It’s hard to see how both of them can work together again, but it’s not impossible.

In 2012, Helen Dragas, head of the board of the University of Virginia, asked for the resignation of president Teresa Sullivan, just two years into her tenure. Sullivan agreed to step down, but after a groundswell of support from faculty and students she ended up staying.

Sullivan and Dragas must have worked out their differences because Sullivan is still president today, and Dragas remains on the board.

By reaching a deal, McKenna and Meyer have started to put the interests of the institution first. It can’t be about them anymore.

Shirley Leung is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @leung.