Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education
400
Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education
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Overview
Why colleges and universities should change their governance systems—and what could happen if they don't
Do higher education institutions have what it takes to reform effectively from within? Locus of Authority argues that every issue facing today's colleges and universities, from stagnant degree completion rates to worrisome cost increases, is exacerbated by a century-old system of governance that desperately requires change. While prior studies have focused on boards of trustees and presidents, few have looked at the place of faculty within the governance system. Bowen and Tobin explore whether departments remain the best ways through which to organize decision making and if the concepts of academic freedom and shared governance need to be sharpened and redefined. Using case studies of four very different institutions, the authors demonstrate that college and university governance has capably adjusted to the necessities of the moment and governance norms and policies should be assessed in the context of historical events. They also demonstrate that successful reform depends on the artful consideration of technological, financial, and cultural developments. Locus of Authority shows that the consequences of not addressing college and university governance are more than the nation can afford.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781400865635 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/05/2015 |
| Series: | The William G. Bowen Series , #85 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Locus of Authority
The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education
By William G. Bowen, Eugene M. Tobin
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Princeton University Press and ITHAKAAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4008-6563-5
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION is widely praised for its accessibility, scale, and diversity. In recent years this acclaim has been tempered by concerns over rising costs, cutbacks in support of public education, low degree completion rates, and skepticism about higher education's ability to contribute to the clear need for upward mobility in America, all of which raise troubling questions about the nation's capacity to lead a global economy. Almost every contemporary issue facing higher education—from broadening student access, to achieving better learning outcomes (especially higher completion rates and reduced time-to-degree), to increasing productivity and lowering costs—is impeded and frustrated by a hundred-year-old system of governance practices that desperately needs modification. Perhaps most worrisome is the uncertainty one senses about higher education's resolve to reform from within.
The question of why anyone should care about a subject as arcane as the practices governing colleges and universities is a reasonable one. Contrary to the adage that academic politics is so vicious because the stakes are so low, today there is little doubt that the societal consequences of not addressing college and university governance are greater and more serious than they have ever been. Our country faces the transcendent challenges of raising the overall level of educational attainment and reestablishing the principle that higher education is the pathway to social mobility. This latter principle, which began to be enunciated forcefully only in the postwar years, is much more fragile and impermanent than we care to admit. If we are going to increase the fraction of the population with college degrees to as much as 60 or 70 percent (as President Obama has urged us to do), and provide meaningful opportunities for upward mobility, the heaviest lifting will have to be done by the less privileged and less well-resourced institutions that serve so many of our students.
Obviously, the quality of the education delivered is of great importance, but we do not deal with that tricky issue in this study because of its complexity. We concentrate instead on three other crucial aspects of educational outcomes—attainment, degree completion, and disparities in outcomes related to socioeconomic status—that are, in at least some respects, more amenable to analysis.
First, as is well known, overall completion rates (measured for present purposes by the percentage of 25- to 29-year-olds with BAs) had been stuck on a plateau since the late 1970s.2 More recently, there has been an uptick in educational attainment, with the percentage of 25- to 29-year-olds holding BAs or higher degrees increasing from 30 percent in 2007 to 34 percent in 2013. But the changing demographics of America warn us that elements of the population with below-average attainment rates (especially Hispanics) are growing relative to the main group with above-average rates (the white population). A second reason for caution in extrapolating progress is that we do not know how much of the recent uptick in attainment rates is due to the timing of the 2007 recession—or to what extent more recent improvements in labor markets will lead to decreases in enrollment and attainment (full-time undergraduate enrollment was 3 percent lower in 2012 than in 2010). Moreover, the absolute level of the current educational attainment rate remains unacceptably low if the United States is to compete effectively in an increasingly knowledge-driven world—a world in which other countries have been improving their attainment rates much more rapidly than we have.
Second, overall time-to-degree is long and has increased rapidly. The percentage of students completing their studies in four years fell from 58 percent for the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1972 (NELS-72) cohort to 44 percent for the NELS-88 cohort—the putative high school class of 1992.
Third, another very troubling "fact of life" is that in America today there are serious disparities in both completion rates and time-to-degree associated with socioeconomic status—and that, once again, the problem appears to be getting worse. Disparities in completion rates between those in the top and bottom income quintiles are appreciably greater in the 1979–83 birth cohort than they were in the 1961–64 birth cohort. Compounding the problem of growing differences in graduation rates are increased disparities in time-to-degree.
Fourth, there is widespread concern about the affordability of higher education (some of it exaggerated and misplaced, to be sure, but these concerns are real, and perceptions matter almost as much as realities). Worries about the rising net costs of higher education for many students and their families are exacerbated by what David Leonhardt calls "the great wage slowdown of the 21st century"—the fact that "the typical American family [today] makes less than the typical family did 15 years ago, a statement that hadn't been true since the Great Depression."
We must ask whether it is reasonable to expect a century-old structure of faculty governance to enable colleges and universities of all kinds to respond to new demands for more cost-effective student learning. Will institutions that educate growing numbers of students from first-generation, under-represented, and disadvantaged backgrounds be able to make the organizational and pedagogical changes that preserve higher education as an engine of social progress? And can those institutions regarded as pacesetters in both the public and private sectors do more than maintain their positions in the higher education hierarchy? Can they provide both examples of successful uses of new approaches and leadership for higher education generally?
We believe it would be wise to heed the cautions of Clark Kerr, one of the twentieth century's wisest, most thoughtful, and innovative higher education leaders:
The professoriate is not well organized to consider issues of efficient use of resources. Many decisions with heavy cost consequences, including faculty teaching loads and size of classes, are made at levels far removed from direct contact with the necessity to secure resources. Departments usually operate on the basis of consensus and it is difficult to get a consensus to cut costs.
At this point in time, we are dealing with deeply entrenched cultural expectations that are a century old and system-wide and cannot be changed easily. As Kerr presciently observed in 1963:
Faculty members are properly partners in the [higher education] enterprise with areas reserved for their exclusive control. Yet when change comes it is rarely at the instigation of this group of partners as a collective body. The group is more likely to accept or reject or comment, than to devise and propose.
Both of these observations by Kerr were made years ago, but they certainly continue to ring true—perhaps more so today than even Kerr could have anticipated. Most college and university presidents would probably agree that governance falls near the bottom of an imposing list of financial, demographic, technological, and cultural concerns that occupy their days. In private moments, however, we suspect that many presidents recognize that the unpredictable pace and nature of change repeatedly expose longstanding flaws in institutional governance. A growing number of trustees are frustrated by the slow, deliberative nature of institutional decision-making. They want clearer boundaries between decisions that affect the curriculum (narrowly defined) and those that involve the institutional mission and budget. Many faculty members categorically reject the values, vocabulary, theories, and methods of "corporate" approaches. Faculty nominally endorse the concept of "shared governance," a concept we interpret as presuming the absence of an inherently adversarial relationship between faculty and administrators/trustees and the embrace of a collaborative approach to achieving common goals. But even within the faculty ranks, cherished traditions of debate, consultation, deliberation, and the search for consensus have been diminished by the compartmentalized nature of the academy and by faculty members' loyalties to their disciplines rather than to their institutions.
Yet, as our colleague Lawrence Bacow astutely observes, context is important: "People assume that the way things are today is the way they have always been and will always be [even though] things have evolved over time as institutions have confronted different challenges and opportunities." "Governance" (by which we mean, as we have already said in the preface, "where authority is located and how it is exercised") is far from any pre-ordained set of abstract concepts, much less an established set of rules and regulations—and far from the static creature that some may assume it to be. Governance has always been a product of the times, and it has evolved in response to the pressing needs of new days. The current governance system needs to continue to evolve, we believe, and perhaps to change in quite fundamental ways. Accordingly, we think it is important to track historically the evolution of governance practices—and especially to identify the forces that have driven changes in the authority granted to faculty in different areas and within different sectors.
Although we hope that this volume will be informative across a wide range of higher education institutions, our focus is primarily on faculties of arts and science at four-year colleges and universities. This focus reflects the limits of our personal and professional experiences, the constraints of time, and an overriding interest in improving the overall level of the nation's educational attainment, which will be determined in no small part by what happens in BA-granting programs. We recognize that both professional schools and community colleges serve absolutely essential purposes in the structure of higher education. Moreover, these institutions represent a valuable source of insights about governance policies, functions, and cultures. Certainly the experiences of schools of law, medicine, and business differ markedly from those of schools focused on the arts and sciences, particularly in terms of autonomy, dependency, and responsiveness to demands for university-wide centralization. Community colleges also function in distinctive ways. We trust that other scholars will complement what we have done by examining closely these other sets of institutions, and the roles of their faculties in shaping policies and practices. We are also conscious of the fact that we do not deal with the for-profit sector of higher education, which provides yet another set of governance issues.
Studies of governance in higher education often focus on boards of trustees and presidents. Both are important actors in the governance drama, and there is no lack of books about them. Legislators, alumni, and students matter, too. But, of course, so do faculty, especially when it comes to decisions about staffing, curricula, and teaching methods, all areas of growing concern.
We certainly do not believe that governance is ever an end in itself. In colleges and universities it is a means to the fundamental educational ends of teaching, learning, scholarship, and service. An institution can have an impeccable governing structure and still do badly in serving its core mission. Errors of judgment, and errors of both commission and omission, can have harmful consequences even when all processes are in excellent order. A good governance structure is no substitute for having excellent leadership in key positions—and at least a modicum of good luck! It is also true, however, that even the best leadership can be thwarted by poor governance.
For reasons mentioned earlier and explained in some detail later in this study, we are persuaded that faculty roles are of prime importance at this juncture—both positively, in terms of the ability of faculty to drive badly needed substantive change, and negatively, in terms of the ability of faculty to stand in the way of that change. We start, then, with the twin premises (1) that the governance challenges facing American higher education today—as it copes with pressures to adapt to a new world marked by a lethal combination of high expectations concerning educational outcomes, severe fiscal constraints, and rapid technological change—are of absolutely central importance, and (2) that these challenges have to be addressed on the basis of a deep understanding of faculty roles, and how they have evolved over time. In our view, the ability of American higher education to take full advantage of, among other things, the opportunities that emerging technologies offer, depends critically on the continuing adaptation of governance structures to new circumstances. Successful adaptation requires a clear understanding of faculty roles today—how we got where we are and what we must preserve—and of why a more capacious interpretation of shared governance need not be either solely consensual or adversarial.
This study has five chapters and a separate section containing the full versions of our case studies:
• This introduction is chapter 1.
• Chapter 2 sketches in broad strokes the major factors that have shaped American higher education from its colonial origins to the end of World War II. Our big-picture account is, we recognize, a highly impressionistic one, and a "highlight" film at that. It is in no sense original work, and we want to record our debt to major scholars of the unfolding panorama, including Richard Hofstadter, Walter Metzger, Lawrence Cremin, Laurence Veysey, Frederick Rudolph, Jurgen Herbst, Roger Geiger, John Thelin, and John Aubrey Douglass, among many others.
• Chapter 3 takes this story forward from the end of World War II to the present day. In this more contemporaneous presentation of a historical overview, we have supplemented rich secondary sources by preparing four case studies of the evolution of faculty roles. This effort has focused on the experiences of several specific educational institutions that, taken together, provide insights into how at least some present-day features have developed in response to changing circumstances. In seeking in this way to "put some flesh on the bones," we have worked especially closely with colleagues from The City University of New York (CUNY), Princeton University, the University of California, and Macalester College. The highly varied experiences of these quite different institutions are referenced in chapter 3 (and, to a more limited extent, in chapter 2).
• Chapter 4 is a topical analysis of how governance practices are and are not effective in addressing specific challenges facing higher education today, including who makes staffing decisions and the locus of authority over online learning.
• Chapter 5 is an avowedly normative discussion of what needs to stay as it is, and what needs to change. Key overarching questions include whether departments are the right way to organize some kinds of decision-making. Is there a need for more horizontal and less vertical organization of efforts to address certain questions, but not others? A closely related issue is whether the core concepts of "academic freedom" and "shared governance" need to be sharpened and even redefined. Our overriding objective, we should make clear, is not to diminish faculty roles but rather to facilitate the most effective contribution of faculty to university life in a new day.
At the back of the book are our four case studies. These constitute a kind of appendix, but they are really more than that because they contain some original material that we reference in the main text. As we have explained in the preface, we make no claim that our case studies are "representative" of the large and incredibly varied set of institutions that comprise higher education in this country. Even so, we believe that these studies, along with the special report on Arizona State University that we reference in the preface, provide powerful illustrative examples ("teaching moments") that might otherwise remain abstract and difficult to communicate. We acknowledge that ultimately this study relies on our own considered judgments, and we do not claim anything like scientific validity for our claims and assertions. Our views are influenced by our own experiences in ways we understand and surely in ways we do not. We have tried to propose a useful set of "opinions" for our readers to ponder and, we hope, take to another level. Others will have to judge how well we have succeeded in meeting this objective.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Locus of Authority by William G. Bowen, Eugene M. Tobin. Copyright © 2015 Princeton University Press and ITHAKA. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix1 Introduction 1
2 Historical Overview, Part 1—From the Beginnings to World War II 13
Antecedents in Europe and Colonial America 14
The Emergence of the Research University 27
Control of Faculty Personnel Decisions—and Issues of Academic Freedom 34
World War I and the Interwar Years 45
3 Historical Overview, Part 2—World War II to the Present 67
World War II and the Growth of Sponsored Research 68
The "Red Scare" and the Loyalty Oath Controversies 70
The Explosive Expansion of Higher Education, Leading to the "Golden Age" of the 1960s 77
Protests and Rebellions 87
Retrenchment in the 1970s—and Subsequent Ups and Downs 98
The Real Estate "Bubble" Breaks—and Fiscal/Political Realities Take Hold (or Do They?) 109
The Impact of Experiments with Online Learning 112
The Pathways Initiative at CUNY 127
4 Faculty Roles Today and Tomorrow—Topical Issues 131
The Selection and Tenure of the President 133
The Faculty Appointment Process—Criteria and Decision-Making Authority 139
The Role of the Faculty in Giving Advice of All Kinds 142
The Role of Faculty in Staffing Decisions—and the Rise of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty (the New Majority) 151
Faculty Responsibility for Maintaining Academic Standards in Admissions, Curricular Content, and Student Performance 165
Control over New Teaching Methods—Online Learning 169
5 Overarching Challenges 177
Confronting Trade-offs and the Need for Upfront Consideration of Costs 177
Aligning Roles and Responsibilities 182
Coping with an Ever-Changing Academic Landscape 189
Clarifying Notions of "Academic Freedom" 201
Rethinking "Shared Governance" 205
Case Studies 213
Introduction to the Case Studies 213
The University of California 217
Princeton University 261
Macalester College 291
The City University of New York 315
INDEX 361
What People are Saying About This
"Withering critiques of the academy appear daily, predicting the end of higher education as we know it. Bowen and Tobin step into this fray with insight, deep knowledge of the field, data, and a good eye for history. Their eminently sensible book convincingly argues that higher education institutions have evolved over time in response to pressures and challenges, and that they are capable of continuing this evolution."—Lawrence S. Bacow, president emeritus, Tufts University"This timely book thoughtfully explores the challenges of decision making at our universities today. Bowen and Tobin make lucid recommendations, some controversial, about the delineation of authority between the faculty and administration. Their book should be in the hands of every university trustee, president, administrator, and faculty leader and will stir healthy debate across the higher education landscape."—William Kirwan, chancellor, University System of Maryland"Everyone who follows news about higher education or participates in that arena professionally is aware that faculty-administration relations are a vexed issue right now. Yet there hasn't been a concise and deeply informed volume that addresses the history, contemporary issues, and prospects for constructive action—until now. This lucid and persuasive book makes an important and highly distinctive contribution."—Michael S. McPherson, president, Spencer Foundation"Locus of Authority proposes that solutions to current issues in American higher education are impeded by an out-of-date system of governance. Addressing such problems as cost containment and effective uses of technology, the authors show that answers depend on ‘not business as usual' decision making that cuts across institutional boundaries. I am not aware of another book that approaches institutional change in this way."—Mary Patterson McPherson, president emeritus, Bryn Mawr College and executive officer emeritus, American Philosophical Society