A pervasive myth about public universities is that their chronic decline is mostly a political problem. The myth is enormously destructive because, having accepted it, one is then led down a primrose path in search of a non-existent political solution.
The myth goes like this. Because public universities’ decline is driven by cutbacks in state support, and because support is determined by government, then the decline merely reflects higher education’s low priority among elected officials. If one buys this premise, then the secret to restoring state funding is to convince lawmakers to change their minds and pay more attention to universities’ needs.
And how might one do this lawmaker convincing? So the myth goes, by doing what academics always do and that is by making appeals to reason. Surely, if legislators were really aware of the dire impact of their actions, then they would bump their state’s campuses higher up the list of funding priorities. Once one buys into the myth, then the path to public higher ed's salvation is through more effective lobbying.
There is just one problem with this strategy: it doesn’t work. Higher education has been on that path for half a century, but it is the path of the status quo, not to salvation, and it leads only to more decay.
In Ohio, for example, appropriations are decided biannually. Every two years, campus officials marshal up arguments for more state funding. Charts and graphs are constructed, options are presented, proposals for glitzy initiatives are prepared, visits are made to legislative leaders, strategic plans are crafted, op eds are written, public relations campaigns are launched, trustees and alumni are mobilized, and support is garnered from business leaders.
I was part of that lobbying effort for more than three decades, and during that time Ohio higher education’s share of state funds steadily declined. The best one can say about all that effort is that without it things might have been worse. In this respect, Ohio is no different from nearly all states. In California, for instance, between 1985 and 2005, the fraction of general fund revenues allocated to the University of California dropped by half (from 6% to 3%).
It is tempting to blame inept or unsympathetic politicians for this decline. Admittedly, among the hundreds of state legislators I have known, there were some dim bulbs, plus a few ideologues, opportunists, and scoundrels. As one vice-chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents remarked, years ago, “Few politicians in this state get elected by supporting public universities, but plenty get elected by bashing them.”
But education-bashers are the exceptions. Most elected officials – Democrats and Republicans – really do understand the arguments made by higher education’s advocates. But as demands on treasuries have grown while revenues have lagged, politicians are caught between a rock and a hard place. We don’t have to worry whether funding for our campuses should come at the expense of, say, health care for the state’s elderly, but elected officials do have to worry. While you or I may place different weightings on the tradeoffs, the responsibility is not on our shoulders.
Here’s my point. What is, is. The democratic process has not favored public higher education for many decades. However, the blame does not rest with politics or inadequate lobbying, but with insufficient public money to meet society’s growing needs. At some point, and I believe that point is now, one has to accept the lessons of history and move on to another strategy. And even if that strategy means choosing among the lesser of evils, it is better to do that than to keep yearning for a fictitious enlightenment that will never arrive.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Maricopa Community College Trustee Disaster
One of the largest community college systems in the country, the Phoenix-based Maricopa County Community College district is overseen by a five-member board of trustees whose elected members serve six year terms.
Following an anonymous complaint filed with the Higher Learning Commission (a regional accrediting body) about the “role and behavior of the board and the integrity of the organization,” an independent investigating commission looked at the board and its practices. The commission’s report found a pattern among trustees of incivility, belligerency, micromanagement, lack of understanding of their job, inability of the board leadership to handle controversy and deal with “rogue” members, and general ineptness. The report makes for fascinating reading, and its recommendations for trustee conduct – self monitoring, respectful communication, civil behavior, appropriate delegation, accountability, respect for process and authority – should apply to all higher education governing boards. (A summary of the issues surrounding the Maricopa trustees can be found in Scott Jaschik’s report in Inside Higher Education)
The dismal Maricopa trustee situation follows on the heels of the resignation this past summer of the scandal-rocked Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, following a disclosure by the Chicago Tribune of inappropriate political pressure and trustee interference in the university’s admissions process. The fallout from the scandal resulted in the university system president’s resignation in July and, today, the resignation of respected Urbana-Champaign Chancellor, Richard Herman.
The two cases highlight growing concerns among academics about problematic governing boards in public higher education generally, and particularly the way they are chosen.
Particularly worrisome are elected governing boards, as is the case for the Maricopa Community College system. The resumés of the five board members suggest they are all fine people, with a commendable interest in volunteer work and public service, but with scant professional experience either in higher education or handling board-level responsibilities. (The president of the board is 26 years old and board members' employment includes military service, project management in an organization that promotes sexual abstinence, substance abuse counseling, Republican party committee membership, and health education consulting, among other activities.)
Elected governing boards can attract single-issue crusaders, ideologues, social activists, aspiring politicians who see the position as a stepping stone to higher office, and self-styled education reformers. Such boards are often fractious and politicized, and since experience and knowledge is not a prerequisite for the job, their members frequently lack the qualifications and nuanced understanding of higher education that the position really calls for.
The thirteen University of Illinois trustees are mostly gubernatorial appointees (two student members are elected), and this mechanism carries its own problems. During my years as a university professor and administrator in Ohio, I watched governors appoint as trustees their friends, campaign contributors, family members, spouses of colleagues, former coworkers, and sports fans wanting to influence coach selection. To be blunt, many of these people, some of whom had not set foot on a college campus since their undergraduate days, were simply unqualified for their oversight responsibilities, either by temperament, experience, or knowledge. Furthermore, as James Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan, has observed, there is generally no mechanism for removing board members, even for cases of gross incompetence or misconduct.
In this century, public higher education trustees must deal with daunting social and educational problems, not to mention expenditures of many millions of dollars. Board members should be thoughtful and open-minded, should have balanced judgment and good interpersonal skills, and should come to their positions without prior agendas. They should be able to frame complex issues in context, assess objectively the merits of academic proposals, be familiar with strategic planning, be able to read balance sheets, and understand the culture of academia.
In my opinion, the key to obtaining competent governing boards, whether elected or appointed, is to review more stringently the desired professional credentials of candidates. One way to ensure competency would be through the pre-screening of candidates by an objective, expert, and non-partisan review committee. In states or communities where trustees are elected, this could be an election committee, charged with presenting qualified candidates to the electorate. For appointed governing boards, such a committee would merely make recommendations to the governor or other appointing authority.
There may be other workable mechanisms. One way or the other, however, there must be more attention given to the professional qualifications of public higher education trustees. Anything less shortchanges institutions of the oversight they need in this troubling new environment.
Following an anonymous complaint filed with the Higher Learning Commission (a regional accrediting body) about the “role and behavior of the board and the integrity of the organization,” an independent investigating commission looked at the board and its practices. The commission’s report found a pattern among trustees of incivility, belligerency, micromanagement, lack of understanding of their job, inability of the board leadership to handle controversy and deal with “rogue” members, and general ineptness. The report makes for fascinating reading, and its recommendations for trustee conduct – self monitoring, respectful communication, civil behavior, appropriate delegation, accountability, respect for process and authority – should apply to all higher education governing boards. (A summary of the issues surrounding the Maricopa trustees can be found in Scott Jaschik’s report in Inside Higher Education)
The dismal Maricopa trustee situation follows on the heels of the resignation this past summer of the scandal-rocked Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, following a disclosure by the Chicago Tribune of inappropriate political pressure and trustee interference in the university’s admissions process. The fallout from the scandal resulted in the university system president’s resignation in July and, today, the resignation of respected Urbana-Champaign Chancellor, Richard Herman.
The two cases highlight growing concerns among academics about problematic governing boards in public higher education generally, and particularly the way they are chosen.
Particularly worrisome are elected governing boards, as is the case for the Maricopa Community College system. The resumés of the five board members suggest they are all fine people, with a commendable interest in volunteer work and public service, but with scant professional experience either in higher education or handling board-level responsibilities. (The president of the board is 26 years old and board members' employment includes military service, project management in an organization that promotes sexual abstinence, substance abuse counseling, Republican party committee membership, and health education consulting, among other activities.)
Elected governing boards can attract single-issue crusaders, ideologues, social activists, aspiring politicians who see the position as a stepping stone to higher office, and self-styled education reformers. Such boards are often fractious and politicized, and since experience and knowledge is not a prerequisite for the job, their members frequently lack the qualifications and nuanced understanding of higher education that the position really calls for.
The thirteen University of Illinois trustees are mostly gubernatorial appointees (two student members are elected), and this mechanism carries its own problems. During my years as a university professor and administrator in Ohio, I watched governors appoint as trustees their friends, campaign contributors, family members, spouses of colleagues, former coworkers, and sports fans wanting to influence coach selection. To be blunt, many of these people, some of whom had not set foot on a college campus since their undergraduate days, were simply unqualified for their oversight responsibilities, either by temperament, experience, or knowledge. Furthermore, as James Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan, has observed, there is generally no mechanism for removing board members, even for cases of gross incompetence or misconduct.
In this century, public higher education trustees must deal with daunting social and educational problems, not to mention expenditures of many millions of dollars. Board members should be thoughtful and open-minded, should have balanced judgment and good interpersonal skills, and should come to their positions without prior agendas. They should be able to frame complex issues in context, assess objectively the merits of academic proposals, be familiar with strategic planning, be able to read balance sheets, and understand the culture of academia.
In my opinion, the key to obtaining competent governing boards, whether elected or appointed, is to review more stringently the desired professional credentials of candidates. One way to ensure competency would be through the pre-screening of candidates by an objective, expert, and non-partisan review committee. In states or communities where trustees are elected, this could be an election committee, charged with presenting qualified candidates to the electorate. For appointed governing boards, such a committee would merely make recommendations to the governor or other appointing authority.
There may be other workable mechanisms. One way or the other, however, there must be more attention given to the professional qualifications of public higher education trustees. Anything less shortchanges institutions of the oversight they need in this troubling new environment.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
U. of Illinois Presidential Search - Off to a Poor Start
Rocked by scandal and turmoil, one of the nation’s top public university systems is searching for a new leader. The daunting challenges facing the incoming president call for sophistication, experience, strategic skills, courage, and vision. Unfortunately, in announcing Monday the composition of the presidential search committee, the trustees have thrown up a roadblock to finding that person.
The new search committee will have nineteen members: three trustees, eight faculty members, three students, one civil service employee, one member of the academic professional staff, one administrative officer, one alumni association representative, and one member of the Illinois Foundation. The members are to be spread across the school’s three campuses, with student and faculty members chosen by elections of their respective senates.
Thus the new Illinois search committee, aside from being unworkably large, will have many members who have scant insight into the responsibilities and challenges of the presidency, may never even have met a university president, and will lack the knowledge and sophistication needed properly to evaluate candidates. The rationale for large, broadly inclusive search committees is to pay homage to community desires to participate in the search. Unfortunately, this goal conflicts with the more important goal of finding the best candidate.
Broadly inclusive search committees tend to extract mostly generic views from candidates. Thus, student representatives will ask if candidates are really committed to undergraduate teaching. University senators will ask if candidates support shared governance. Minority members will ask if candidates will foster racial and ethnic diversity. (Hint: the answer is yes to all three.) All candidates expect such questions and know to give bland, cautious answers that avoid stepping on toes; they will keep to themselves any views, however relevant, that some committee members could find objectionable. Change agents and problem-solvers need not apply.
Committee members who lack a nuanced understanding of the president’s job are often drawn to candidates who are outgoing, appear distinguished, remember their names, and seem friendly and approachable. While these are desirable social traits, they have more to do with the ability to interview well than the potential to advance an institution. Inexperienced committee members cannot assess a candidate’s decisiveness, planning skills, and ability to identify good people, not to mention his or her willingness to tackle problems, plan strategically, delegate appropriately, foster morale, build an executive team, and master the nuances of university finances.
In the quiet of their offices, trustees will often acknowledge that a large, democratically balanced search committee would not be their druthers. Such committees, they will confess, are mostly window dressing intended to keep the peace among campus constituencies. Instinctively, trustees also understand that such committees are unlikely to settle on decisive candidates who would face up to their institution’s problems and guide it through turbulent waters. Even so, after weighing the pros and cons, trustees often decide to tread cautiously and yield to community pressures, reasoning that, somehow, they will still be able to identify and recruit the best president, despite the obstacles. Typically this means that the "real" search takes place behind the scenes in conversations between trustees and the search consultant.
But experience suggests that this reasoning is flawed. Trustees should not overestimate their own abilities to evaluate candidates, nor the acuity of search consultants. Governing boards really need the informed advice and balanced judgment that a well-chosen search committee can provide. Hiring a president is the most important action a university governing board ever takes, and choosing the right person for the job has to take precedence over the desire of campus groups to influence directly the decision.
What do I mean by a “well-chosen search committee?” First, only in part for practical reasons, it should be no larger than eight members. Paradoxically, small committees tend to generate fewer complaints from academic communities than very large committees. The latter encourage the community to parse itself into an ever finer grid of vested interests, all of which will demand representation. So long as a small or medium sized committee makes a good-faith effort to solicit advice from across campus, and so long as the members are admired and respected, complaints from the community are likely to be muted.
And second, the committee must have members who understand the complexity and scope of responsibilities of the presidency and also have a deep understanding of the problems and needs of the institution.
Thus it is essential the committee include some of the most respected scholars and teachers at the institution. Only faculty members can evaluate the credentials and prior scholarly work of candidates, and even if that work took place decades ago, it still provides important insight into candidates’ intellectual depth and administrative style.
Search committees should also include a sitting or former chancellor or president. Only one who has actually done the job can appreciate fully its pressures, demands, and complexities. A president or chancellor can also spot superficial thinking and will not be impressed by candidates who lack substance but are able to interview well.
Search committees must include senior administrators – deans, vice-presidents or vice-chancellors. Senior administrators can place candidates’ administrative credentials in the context of campus problems and needs. Presidents must deal with turf battles between colleges and campuses, deans who have lost control of their budgets, soaring startup laboratory costs for new professors, and myriad other issues that never make it to a trustees’ meeting. Those in the trenches can assess the saviness of candidates to deal with such issues.
And of course, search committees must include members of the governing board. Trustee members will fully understand the larger societal responsibilities of the institution, the challenges of working with legislatures and elected officials, the importance of financial oversight, and the necessity to preserve and enhance the institution’s reputation for objectivity and integrity.
That other groups – students, staff members, alumni organizations, sports fans, senate members, and so forth – may not be personally sitting at the table does not mean their voices can be neglected. A properly functioning search committee has an important responsibility to consult with them and to represent their interests. But ultimately, trustees should realize that presidential leadership is so crucial to the well-being of the school that they should do everything possible to pick the best person. And if doing so means ruffling a few feathers, then so be it.
The new search committee will have nineteen members: three trustees, eight faculty members, three students, one civil service employee, one member of the academic professional staff, one administrative officer, one alumni association representative, and one member of the Illinois Foundation. The members are to be spread across the school’s three campuses, with student and faculty members chosen by elections of their respective senates.
Thus the new Illinois search committee, aside from being unworkably large, will have many members who have scant insight into the responsibilities and challenges of the presidency, may never even have met a university president, and will lack the knowledge and sophistication needed properly to evaluate candidates. The rationale for large, broadly inclusive search committees is to pay homage to community desires to participate in the search. Unfortunately, this goal conflicts with the more important goal of finding the best candidate.
Broadly inclusive search committees tend to extract mostly generic views from candidates. Thus, student representatives will ask if candidates are really committed to undergraduate teaching. University senators will ask if candidates support shared governance. Minority members will ask if candidates will foster racial and ethnic diversity. (Hint: the answer is yes to all three.) All candidates expect such questions and know to give bland, cautious answers that avoid stepping on toes; they will keep to themselves any views, however relevant, that some committee members could find objectionable. Change agents and problem-solvers need not apply.
Committee members who lack a nuanced understanding of the president’s job are often drawn to candidates who are outgoing, appear distinguished, remember their names, and seem friendly and approachable. While these are desirable social traits, they have more to do with the ability to interview well than the potential to advance an institution. Inexperienced committee members cannot assess a candidate’s decisiveness, planning skills, and ability to identify good people, not to mention his or her willingness to tackle problems, plan strategically, delegate appropriately, foster morale, build an executive team, and master the nuances of university finances.
In the quiet of their offices, trustees will often acknowledge that a large, democratically balanced search committee would not be their druthers. Such committees, they will confess, are mostly window dressing intended to keep the peace among campus constituencies. Instinctively, trustees also understand that such committees are unlikely to settle on decisive candidates who would face up to their institution’s problems and guide it through turbulent waters. Even so, after weighing the pros and cons, trustees often decide to tread cautiously and yield to community pressures, reasoning that, somehow, they will still be able to identify and recruit the best president, despite the obstacles. Typically this means that the "real" search takes place behind the scenes in conversations between trustees and the search consultant.
But experience suggests that this reasoning is flawed. Trustees should not overestimate their own abilities to evaluate candidates, nor the acuity of search consultants. Governing boards really need the informed advice and balanced judgment that a well-chosen search committee can provide. Hiring a president is the most important action a university governing board ever takes, and choosing the right person for the job has to take precedence over the desire of campus groups to influence directly the decision.
What do I mean by a “well-chosen search committee?” First, only in part for practical reasons, it should be no larger than eight members. Paradoxically, small committees tend to generate fewer complaints from academic communities than very large committees. The latter encourage the community to parse itself into an ever finer grid of vested interests, all of which will demand representation. So long as a small or medium sized committee makes a good-faith effort to solicit advice from across campus, and so long as the members are admired and respected, complaints from the community are likely to be muted.
And second, the committee must have members who understand the complexity and scope of responsibilities of the presidency and also have a deep understanding of the problems and needs of the institution.
Thus it is essential the committee include some of the most respected scholars and teachers at the institution. Only faculty members can evaluate the credentials and prior scholarly work of candidates, and even if that work took place decades ago, it still provides important insight into candidates’ intellectual depth and administrative style.
Search committees should also include a sitting or former chancellor or president. Only one who has actually done the job can appreciate fully its pressures, demands, and complexities. A president or chancellor can also spot superficial thinking and will not be impressed by candidates who lack substance but are able to interview well.
Search committees must include senior administrators – deans, vice-presidents or vice-chancellors. Senior administrators can place candidates’ administrative credentials in the context of campus problems and needs. Presidents must deal with turf battles between colleges and campuses, deans who have lost control of their budgets, soaring startup laboratory costs for new professors, and myriad other issues that never make it to a trustees’ meeting. Those in the trenches can assess the saviness of candidates to deal with such issues.
And of course, search committees must include members of the governing board. Trustee members will fully understand the larger societal responsibilities of the institution, the challenges of working with legislatures and elected officials, the importance of financial oversight, and the necessity to preserve and enhance the institution’s reputation for objectivity and integrity.
That other groups – students, staff members, alumni organizations, sports fans, senate members, and so forth – may not be personally sitting at the table does not mean their voices can be neglected. A properly functioning search committee has an important responsibility to consult with them and to represent their interests. But ultimately, trustees should realize that presidential leadership is so crucial to the well-being of the school that they should do everything possible to pick the best person. And if doing so means ruffling a few feathers, then so be it.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Why Universities Do Not Make Strategic Cuts
In a Chronicle of Higher Education opinion piece, The Unkindest Cut of All, Idaho State provost Gary A. Olson argues against across-the-board cuts when managing state-mandated budget reductions. “The unkindest cut of all” he writes, “is the one that slices evenly and indiscriminately across all programs without any attention to priorities.”
I agree completely with Dr. Olson. However, as legions of battle-scarred provosts and deans can confirm, uniform cuts to academic budgets are both the easiest to implement and also those least likely to raise a campus outcry.
Any senior academic administrator can attest to the challenges of eliminating or merging weak academic colleges, departments, programs and centers, or even to changing their reporting relationships. Faculty and students in targeted areas can be counted on to resist strenuously any potentially threatening administrative action.
Experience shows that those whose ox is about to be gored are likely to complain they were not adequately consulted. They will call for more deliberation and debate, will want to audit the impending decision by challenging its premises (e.g., whether the financial crisis is real or contrived), and will want to explore other options.
It is also typical for affected units to voice their complaints publically, hoping to garner support from campus legislative bodies, alumni, students, and perhaps even trustees and elected officials. In academia, prolonging a controversy and stretching out debate for many months can be effective ways to forestall an impending administrative action, however much that action may serve the larger interests of the institution.
While protracted campus debate about retrenchment strategies may be theoretically desirable, it is simply not practical during a fiscal crisis. Thus administrators are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they act decisively to make selective cuts, they will be accused of autocratic behavior that violates principles of shared governance. If they make unselective generalized cuts, they damage their institution.
In this environment, it is not surprising that many seasoned deans and provosts simply throw up their hands and take the expedient way out, knowing full well that doing so is ultimately harmful to their school. Shared governance may be effective at ensuring that all voices are heard, but it is very bad at bringing closure to difficult and controversial issues that require a timely solution.
I agree completely with Dr. Olson. However, as legions of battle-scarred provosts and deans can confirm, uniform cuts to academic budgets are both the easiest to implement and also those least likely to raise a campus outcry.
Any senior academic administrator can attest to the challenges of eliminating or merging weak academic colleges, departments, programs and centers, or even to changing their reporting relationships. Faculty and students in targeted areas can be counted on to resist strenuously any potentially threatening administrative action.
Experience shows that those whose ox is about to be gored are likely to complain they were not adequately consulted. They will call for more deliberation and debate, will want to audit the impending decision by challenging its premises (e.g., whether the financial crisis is real or contrived), and will want to explore other options.
It is also typical for affected units to voice their complaints publically, hoping to garner support from campus legislative bodies, alumni, students, and perhaps even trustees and elected officials. In academia, prolonging a controversy and stretching out debate for many months can be effective ways to forestall an impending administrative action, however much that action may serve the larger interests of the institution.
While protracted campus debate about retrenchment strategies may be theoretically desirable, it is simply not practical during a fiscal crisis. Thus administrators are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they act decisively to make selective cuts, they will be accused of autocratic behavior that violates principles of shared governance. If they make unselective generalized cuts, they damage their institution.
In this environment, it is not surprising that many seasoned deans and provosts simply throw up their hands and take the expedient way out, knowing full well that doing so is ultimately harmful to their school. Shared governance may be effective at ensuring that all voices are heard, but it is very bad at bringing closure to difficult and controversial issues that require a timely solution.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
"Admin Men" (Part II): Inside the Corporate Offices of Wannabe U.
Mere poverty should not keep one from enjoying the good life. That seems to be an unstated theme behind the swell of faculty anger over academia’s infiltration by corporate business practices. Growing faculty discontent (googling “corporatization of the university” yields over a hundred thousand hits) suggests a new internecine war is pitting university faculty against university administrators, with professors alarmed that important academic values are being savaged by an uncaring marketplace and the relentless pursuit of revenue.
Thus the “good life” sought by professors is that prior era when colleges and universities were oases of quiet and humane reflection, when scholars, teachers, and students could explore the boundaries of knowledge, unencumbered by the dehumanizing push for money, accountability, and quantitative assessment. The key question is whether public universities can ever return to that era, even as they endure brutal financial pressures and fend off criticism from an increasingly hostile and disrespectful public.
Gaye Tuchman, author of Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University, suggests the answer to that question is “no.” After many chapters spent dissecting the corporate influence on academic culture – the pressure to measure, assess, benchmark and audit, the imposition of trendy business strategies (“Total Quality Management,” “Continuous Quality Improvement,” “Revenue Based Budgeting”) all of which she sees as imposing a top-down culture that centralizes administrators’ power – in the final chapter she seems to throw up her hands and bleakly accept the inevitable: at “Wan U.” and other publics, she concludes, the good life is not coming back.
Professor Tuchman’s book does not focus specifically on the issue of public university “mission drift.” As Eugene Tobin observed, in his essay in Crossing the Finish Line (reviewed earlier), “In many respects, flagship universities … resemble corporations…in their ownership and operation of hospitals, publishing companies, airports, hotels, stadiums, athletic complexes, television stations, farms, and research centers; and, in some cases, in their financing or subsidizing of low-cost housing projects.” To the list one could add restaurants, retail apparel outlets, travel agencies, electronics and computer stores, CD and DVD distributors, convenience marts, theaters and concert halls. At the extreme (e.g., major athletic programs), profit-generating businesses can become an unstoppable and corrosive force in university life. At large public flagships, especially, faculty fear that the business tail too often wags the academic dog. In this perception I believe they are correct.
However, what particularly rankles many faculty members is the language and methodology of business. To them, “productivity,” “accountability,” and “efficiency” are calls to arms that portend enlarged class sizes, increased teaching loads, scaled back research and specialty seminars, curtailed faculty travel, more part-time contingent instructors, oppressive paperwork, and reduced library acquisitions. If that is the way professors see the future, no wonder they are upset. Here is how I put these concerns in Saving Alma Mater (p.165):
"If improving productivity means reducing the academic enterprise to a set of indices, benchmarks, and cost ratios, and then measuring gains by numbers on a spreadsheet, then most faculty members will want nothing to do with it. Professors treasure the individuality and idiosyncrasy of academic life, and they will object to anything they see as a dehumanizing influence on that life. Just as the relentless pursuit of efficiency and cost reduction has led to the proliferation of cookie-cutter shopping malls and bland restaurant franchises, its impact on academia, professors fear, would be to homogenize and strip away the soul of their institution."
However, I fear Professor Tuchman and her faculty colleagues may have it backwards. Increasing productivity and efficiency are ways to reduce class sizes, teaching loads, and busywork, not increase them. When productivity goes up, it means the quality of the institution can be maintained by fewer people, none working harder or longer than before. Efficiency and productivity improvements can’t solve all problems, of course, and when money is running out, a university has few options but to make cuts in services that lower quality and put additional stresses on faculty and staff. But successful efforts to make an organization more efficient and productive can moderate undesirable changes.
However, there is another issue. Like it or not, the fundamental responsibility of all senior academic administrators is to improve their institution, by which is typically meant emulating more highly regarded institutions having a similar mission. However, benchmarking one university against another naturally invites metrics of comparison. For example, if Berkeley chemistry professors publish more research articles, win more awards, garner more federal funds, give more invited papers at conferences, write more textbooks, and serve on more national commissions than do chemistry professors at “Wan U,” then tabulating changes in these measurable quantities is a way to see whether the chemistry department at Wan U is becoming more or less Berkeley-like.
Professor Tuchman clearly finds distasteful these sorts of quantifiable metrics, seeing them as the unwelcome intrusion of an “audit” and “surveillance” mentality. Partly, her case is based on the fact that some things are simply not quantifiable. Whether an English professor writes ten poems a month, or only one, says virtually nothing about the stature of either the professor or the English department. Here she has a point; one has to be careful not to load metrics (say, student evaluations of their teachers) with inappropriate meanings, and this is a mistake frequently made.
But part of her distaste seems to reflect what LSU president John Lombardi refers to as the innate conservatism of the professoriate. He observes that this conservatism means that “good” universities, like Wan U, “will rarely make the considerable and often unpopular effort required to increase their standards to match those of excellent universities.”
For instance, it would be highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a faculty senate to insist that promotion and tenure requirements be strengthened, to argue for elimination of weak departments and programs, to insist upon differential teaching loads, or to chastise a provost for creating too many commissions, appointing overly large search committees, awarding salary raises with too little spread, or not moving forcefully against incompetent teachers.
Thus there two ways to view the introduction of business practices into the academy. One perspective sees it as an unwelcome “coercive accountability,” that raises the stakes for professors by laying bare their individual shortcomings and making them uncomfortable. A social scientist interviewed in the book speaks of the “sense of danger [that] arises from the competitiveness that a corporate culture breeds. Rewards are given and sanctions imposed upon criteria that the faculty have not set.”
However, the other perspective views business methods as a way to help universities improve themselves and weather the storms of a changing environment. Yes, there are some “criteria that the faculty have not set,” but most administrators and virtually all members of the public see that as appropriate. And some professors, especially the younger ones, Professor Tuchman acknowledges, rise to the challenges of this new competitive environment and thrive in it.
And so, the “bottom line,” if one will forgive the expression, is that corporate forces in academia are here to stay. Properly used, they can lead to positive changes at universities and help stave off fiscal disaster. But misused, they can also be ruinous to important academic values. The key is for universities to appoint intelligent and thoughtful leaders who see business methodologies as powerful, but potentially dangerous, tools for improvement and survival, and not as ends in themselves. And in selecting these leaders, the voice of the professoriate continues to be both important and necessary, as it should be.
Thus the “good life” sought by professors is that prior era when colleges and universities were oases of quiet and humane reflection, when scholars, teachers, and students could explore the boundaries of knowledge, unencumbered by the dehumanizing push for money, accountability, and quantitative assessment. The key question is whether public universities can ever return to that era, even as they endure brutal financial pressures and fend off criticism from an increasingly hostile and disrespectful public.
Gaye Tuchman, author of Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University, suggests the answer to that question is “no.” After many chapters spent dissecting the corporate influence on academic culture – the pressure to measure, assess, benchmark and audit, the imposition of trendy business strategies (“Total Quality Management,” “Continuous Quality Improvement,” “Revenue Based Budgeting”) all of which she sees as imposing a top-down culture that centralizes administrators’ power – in the final chapter she seems to throw up her hands and bleakly accept the inevitable: at “Wan U.” and other publics, she concludes, the good life is not coming back.
Professor Tuchman’s book does not focus specifically on the issue of public university “mission drift.” As Eugene Tobin observed, in his essay in Crossing the Finish Line (reviewed earlier), “In many respects, flagship universities … resemble corporations…in their ownership and operation of hospitals, publishing companies, airports, hotels, stadiums, athletic complexes, television stations, farms, and research centers; and, in some cases, in their financing or subsidizing of low-cost housing projects.” To the list one could add restaurants, retail apparel outlets, travel agencies, electronics and computer stores, CD and DVD distributors, convenience marts, theaters and concert halls. At the extreme (e.g., major athletic programs), profit-generating businesses can become an unstoppable and corrosive force in university life. At large public flagships, especially, faculty fear that the business tail too often wags the academic dog. In this perception I believe they are correct.
However, what particularly rankles many faculty members is the language and methodology of business. To them, “productivity,” “accountability,” and “efficiency” are calls to arms that portend enlarged class sizes, increased teaching loads, scaled back research and specialty seminars, curtailed faculty travel, more part-time contingent instructors, oppressive paperwork, and reduced library acquisitions. If that is the way professors see the future, no wonder they are upset. Here is how I put these concerns in Saving Alma Mater (p.165):
"If improving productivity means reducing the academic enterprise to a set of indices, benchmarks, and cost ratios, and then measuring gains by numbers on a spreadsheet, then most faculty members will want nothing to do with it. Professors treasure the individuality and idiosyncrasy of academic life, and they will object to anything they see as a dehumanizing influence on that life. Just as the relentless pursuit of efficiency and cost reduction has led to the proliferation of cookie-cutter shopping malls and bland restaurant franchises, its impact on academia, professors fear, would be to homogenize and strip away the soul of their institution."
However, I fear Professor Tuchman and her faculty colleagues may have it backwards. Increasing productivity and efficiency are ways to reduce class sizes, teaching loads, and busywork, not increase them. When productivity goes up, it means the quality of the institution can be maintained by fewer people, none working harder or longer than before. Efficiency and productivity improvements can’t solve all problems, of course, and when money is running out, a university has few options but to make cuts in services that lower quality and put additional stresses on faculty and staff. But successful efforts to make an organization more efficient and productive can moderate undesirable changes.
However, there is another issue. Like it or not, the fundamental responsibility of all senior academic administrators is to improve their institution, by which is typically meant emulating more highly regarded institutions having a similar mission. However, benchmarking one university against another naturally invites metrics of comparison. For example, if Berkeley chemistry professors publish more research articles, win more awards, garner more federal funds, give more invited papers at conferences, write more textbooks, and serve on more national commissions than do chemistry professors at “Wan U,” then tabulating changes in these measurable quantities is a way to see whether the chemistry department at Wan U is becoming more or less Berkeley-like.
Professor Tuchman clearly finds distasteful these sorts of quantifiable metrics, seeing them as the unwelcome intrusion of an “audit” and “surveillance” mentality. Partly, her case is based on the fact that some things are simply not quantifiable. Whether an English professor writes ten poems a month, or only one, says virtually nothing about the stature of either the professor or the English department. Here she has a point; one has to be careful not to load metrics (say, student evaluations of their teachers) with inappropriate meanings, and this is a mistake frequently made.
But part of her distaste seems to reflect what LSU president John Lombardi refers to as the innate conservatism of the professoriate. He observes that this conservatism means that “good” universities, like Wan U, “will rarely make the considerable and often unpopular effort required to increase their standards to match those of excellent universities.”
For instance, it would be highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a faculty senate to insist that promotion and tenure requirements be strengthened, to argue for elimination of weak departments and programs, to insist upon differential teaching loads, or to chastise a provost for creating too many commissions, appointing overly large search committees, awarding salary raises with too little spread, or not moving forcefully against incompetent teachers.
Thus there two ways to view the introduction of business practices into the academy. One perspective sees it as an unwelcome “coercive accountability,” that raises the stakes for professors by laying bare their individual shortcomings and making them uncomfortable. A social scientist interviewed in the book speaks of the “sense of danger [that] arises from the competitiveness that a corporate culture breeds. Rewards are given and sanctions imposed upon criteria that the faculty have not set.”
However, the other perspective views business methods as a way to help universities improve themselves and weather the storms of a changing environment. Yes, there are some “criteria that the faculty have not set,” but most administrators and virtually all members of the public see that as appropriate. And some professors, especially the younger ones, Professor Tuchman acknowledges, rise to the challenges of this new competitive environment and thrive in it.
And so, the “bottom line,” if one will forgive the expression, is that corporate forces in academia are here to stay. Properly used, they can lead to positive changes at universities and help stave off fiscal disaster. But misused, they can also be ruinous to important academic values. The key is for universities to appoint intelligent and thoughtful leaders who see business methodologies as powerful, but potentially dangerous, tools for improvement and survival, and not as ends in themselves. And in selecting these leaders, the voice of the professoriate continues to be both important and necessary, as it should be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
