Shared governance under siege

Dissent 42

January 27, 2000

SHARED GOVERNANCE UNDER SIEGE

 By Chunk Wheeler [Roy Bauer] 

     Obviously, shared governance has been under siege in the SOCCCD for about three years; in recent months, matters have only grown worse. We at the Dissent would like to provide some context for this issue. Toward that end, we have provided three articles: (1) the entry entitled “shared governance” from The Dissenter’s Dictionary; (2) a 2-year old article on shared governance—as a national issue—by Courtney Leatherman of the Chronicle of Higher Education; and (3) a very recent article by the same writer and in the same journal concerning the phenomenon of increased reliance on part-timers, a related issue.

SHARED GOVERNANCE

    In American universities, the notion that professors (and students) should play a role in the governance of their institutions—which traces back to the American Association of University Professor’s widely-embraced 1966 “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities”—has been a “cherished tradition,” but, by the 80s, it was under attack by trustees and presidents and was otherwise threatened, owing to political pressures, increasing competition, and increasing reliance on adjunct professors, who, typically, have played no role in governance. By 1991, the assault became so serious that the AAUP began a “blacklist” of institutions that violated shared governance—e.g., those in which the board or the president made unilateral decisions concerning tenure or curriculum.

     In the 80s, Californians finally legislated shared governance for the community colleges there (AB 1725), but this did not prevent the system from suffering the same tensions between partisans of faculty empowerment, on the one hand, and those who wished to run colleges like corporations with obedient “employees,” on the other.  By late 1997, SOCCCD became the poster child of the system’s shared governance wars, though, in many ways, the problems of the district were unique. Indeed, they were bizarre—what with its Holocaust-denying trustee (Frogue), an illiterate and brazenly autocratic college president (Mathur), and its gay-bashing union (the Faculty Association). Adding another bizarre twist, in late ’98, owing to support from the faculty union PAC, two trustees joined the board who were affiliated with Education Alliance, a Religious Right group whose leader, Mark Bucher, was the chief advocate and author of Proposition 226, the 1998 initiative that sought to remove unions as players in California politics.

     Generally, in public, the “Board Majority” has claimed to embrace shared governance—while claiming also that faculty fail to understand their role within it. On occasion, however, Board Majoritarians have explicitly expressed their rejection of shared governance. For instance, during the May ’97 Board meeting, Mr. Frogue, then president of the Board, distributed a brief essay of his entitled “Comments on Shared Governance” in which he asserted that shared governance is “dysfunctional” and does not “work.” He noted that 200,000 voters cast ballots for the four victorious trustee candidates in November (of ’96) and that the Academic Senate presidents were chosen by a handful of faculty. He seemed to suggest that, as a consequence, the Academic Senate presidents should have only a minor role in district and college governance.

     In fact, starting in December of ’96, the BM-dominated Board ceased even pretending to consider the advice of faculty as expressed through its agents, the faculty senates, though it seemed often to do the bidding of the union Old Guard, whose members were sometimes appointed as administrators and whose “enemies” among administrators were removed or otherwise encouraged to seek employment elsewhere.

     Meanwhile, the district’s “Shared Governance Leadership Handbook” (of Fall ’96) stated, “The Saddleback Community College District Board of Trustees fully supports AB 1725 and the spirit of shared governance. Implementation of shared governance in the SCCD is through a structure of councils and governance units designed to ensure all entities the right to participate effectively in district and college policy making.”

     Central to the Board’s support of shared governance is its adherence to Board Policy 2100.1—”Delegation of Authority to the Academic Senate”—which, in response to Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations, mandates that “the governing board delegates to the college academic senates responsibility for and authority over academic and professional matters.” As of this writing (1/20/00), that policy is still in effect. Nevertheless, in recent years, the board has failed to delegate authority to the senates, illustrated by its apparent determination to foist upon Saddleback College a soccer program—a curriculum matter—despite the faculty recommendation to the contrary, and the Board’s repeated failure to explain in writing its failure to accept Academic Senate recommendations (on matters over which the body is given authority by 2100.1), as per the board policy.

     Perhaps the nadir of SG has now occurred (early 2000), with the initiative to modify BP 2100.1. “The board,” said Sampson, “felt it delegated too much authority to the faculties and it needs to clarify and correct some of the policies” (Times, 11/27/99). Hence, Sampson expressed his intention to recommend changing the faculty senates’ role from “authority over” academic and professional matters to “responsibility for advising the board” concerning them.

     During the December ’99 board meeting, Sampson was asked whether the board was able unilaterally to change the policy in this fashion. His answer: “Yes.” In fact, however, BP 2100.1 states that “This policy is a mutual agreement between the governing board and the academic senates and may be modified upon mutual consent of the parties.” Nonetheless, it now appears inevitable that the Board will act to change the policy without the consent of the faculty senates.

 * * *

From the Chronicle of Higher Education

January 30, 1998

‘Shared Governance’ Under Siege: Is It Time to Revive It or Get Rid of It? 

Professors feel shut out of decision making, and unsure about how to regain their influence

By COURTNEY LEATHERMAN

     If you want to draw a crowd to a faculty senate meeting, talk about pay, parking, or ousting the president. Anything else plays to an empty house.

            But lack of interest among faculty members is just one of the problems plaguing “shared governance” on campuses these days. The concept of professors’ playing a role in running their institutions is a cherished idea, but it’s under siege, threatened by overreaching trustees, ineffectual presidents, and professors themselves.

            Faculty members at many institutions feel they have been sidelined lately as others have decided big issues. They’re tired of the situation and are angling to be players once more. Professors are battling their governing boards over admissions policies in California, tenure codes in Minnesota, and conference topics in New York.

            Amid the turmoil, however, a lot of people are beginning to rethink the whole notion of shared governance.

            For faculty members, that means reviving it. “I find there is a consistent call from professors asking, ‘How do we get back into the game?’” says Joe Flynn, a distinguished-service professor at the State University of New York. As the co-founder of the National Network of Faculty Senates, which gives governance workshops around the country, Mr. Flynn says he senses “a new point of evolution” in the idea of governance.

            Professors on various campuses are calling in governance pros like Mr. Flynn to help them work with their administrations. Faculty governing bodies — typically called senates — are reviewing their governance documents in search of improvements. And national faculty groups are cranking up the rhetoric to rally interest in the sacred tenet.

            Trustees, on the other hand, want to revamp the whole notion of shared governance — and they’ve hired a consultant to do just that.

            “It’s almost gotten to the point that people don’t want to use the term ‘shared governance’ anymore, because it implies something that may not exist,” says John D. Walda, president of Indiana University’s Board of Trustees and a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.

            Shared governance is an idea developed by higher-education groups and disseminated by the American Association of University Professors in its 1966 “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.”

            The proposal lays out the roles that trustees, administrators, professors, and even students should play in their “shared responsibility and cooperative action” for running institutions. The statement says, for example, that professors should have primary authority over curriculum, research, and faculty status, and that their decisions should be overruled by the president or governing board “only in exceptional circumstance.”

            At the time, higher-education groups, including the governing- boards association, “recognized” and “commended” the statement as a step forward in delineating governance roles, but did not “endorse” it – a fact that the A.A.U.P. sometimes forgets, says Tom Ingram, president of the governing-boards group.

            He and many trustees want to make professors mindful that higher education has changed significantly in three decades: Institutions have become bigger and more complex and have come under increased pressure from outsiders like corporations and lawmakers. In the current environment, many trustees argue, there is a need for speed, and the traditional concept of shared governance has not kept up.

            “Faculty involvement in institutional governance is not going well at all,” Mr. Ingram says.

            He believes that most faculty senates are “dysfunctional.” He argues, as many others do, that they are notoriously slow to act, reluctant to make hard decisions, and eschewed by the top scholars on the faculty.

            Trustees bear a share of the blame, he concedes, pointing to “activist trustees” who have meddled in affairs that are clearly academic.

            Last year, the governing-boards association put out a report that called for strengthening the power of the presidency. Now the group wants to develop a new statement, specifying “what role the faculty should and should not presume to have” in running institutions, Mr. Ingram says.

            The group has hired a consultant — Robert H. Atwell, a past president of the American Council on Education — to develop a statement of principles for institutional decision making. It expects Mr. Atwell to act within the year. He plans to consult with scholars, trustees, and administrators, but says he’s not looking for a stamp of approval from any other organizations — including faculty groups.

            Moreover, the governing-boards association hopes to avoid even using the term “shared governance” in its statement.

            Faculty leaders, predictably, are bristling at the idea.

            “I’m trying to think of governance without the sharing,” says Mary Burgan, head of the A.A.U.P. “I guess that’s the monarchy.”

            She hopes to have her association put out its own booklet this year to give faculty members guidance on governing. (She recommends setting strict time limits on faculty meetings, for example.)

            She and others admit to weaknesses in faculty governance. But get rid of it, they warn, and you lose many of the values that separate academe from industry.

            And faculty members may do more than balk at being taken out of the decision-making loop, some say. They may walk — a picket line. The threat of unionization has become an increasingly popular weapon in the governance wars.

            Over all, Dr. Burgan believes that the 1966 statement still stands. The A.A.U.P. made that clear in 1991: It started a blacklist of institutions that violated the principles of shared governance. Last year, Francis Marion University became the third and latest addition (joining Lindenwood and Elmira Colleges), after its president was found to have made unilateral decisions on matters involving the curriculum and tenure procedures. The case, Dr. Burgan says, reveals an institution “that really wants the faculty to go away and have no opinions at all.” Francis Marion officials have since abolished its Faculty Senate.

            Elsewhere, however, some professors believe that faculty senates are simply dying on the vine.

            In the November/December issue of Academe, the A.A.U.P.’s magazine, Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott writes, “If the faculty-governance patient is dying, the wounds are partially self-inflicted. Death by inattention is probably the fairest verdict.”

            In an interview, Dr. Scott, a political scientist at Eastern Michigan University, elaborates: “I’m trying to say that faculty should take a more active role. Otherwise, governance is going to be defined for them.”

            Some people believe that the Faculty Senate at the University of Minnesota was caught off guard when the trustees there tried to overhaul the tenure system two years ago. These critics say it was the faculty’s threat to unionize, and not the strength of the senate, that forced the trustees to withdraw their plan.

            Faculty leaders at Minnesota take exception to that characterization, and they take credit for getting the trustees to pull back. “I think it was the shining hour of faculty governance,” says Virginia Gray, a political-science professor and head of the senate.

            Even so, faculty leaders appointed a Task Force on Faculty Consultation to reconsider the university’s governance structure. After talking to a variety of people on the campus, the task force concluded that all university decisions require some participation by the faculty.

            At the California State University System, professors complain that most of them learned of a plan to form a corporation with four big technology companies only as the deal was about to be finalized last month.

            “There seems to be a policy where the less we know, the better off we are,” says Benjamin P. Bowser, a sociology professor on C.S.U.’s Hayward campus. “So faculty are caught in the position where we have to react after the fact.”

            They reacted with protests, and administrators have postponed a decision on the technology plan until March.

            Dr. Bowser notes that it becomes especially difficult for professors to keep an eye on governance issues when their institutions hire more and more part-time professors. Adjuncts, typically, do not play a role in governing. That duty, then, falls to the minority of full-timers on a campus.

            In the power struggle at C.S.U., time and confidentiality were important factors: Officials there said that the plan was a good deal for the university, but that they had to keep it quiet until all of the companies were on board.

            Ken P. Mortimer, the president of the University of Hawaii System, who has written extensively on shared governance, argues that quick decisions can be made with the faculty’s blessing — if officials have laid the groundwork beforehand. “The basic argument against consulting is that you don’t have the time,” he says. “Our argument has been if you consult and advise routinely, in the few cases where you have to move quickly, a system of trust will have been built up to allow you to move.”

            Theodore J. Marchese, vice-president of the American Association for Higher Education, acknowledges “the built-in tension between what the market wants and the values that are prized by shared governance.”

            He suggests: “Let’s ask how the enactment of shared governance can be more responsive.”

            James J. Duderstadt has been considering ways to revise shared governance since stepping down as president of the University of Michigan last year. He worries that faculties will turn to unionizing more often if universities can’t make their governance procedures work more smoothly. He recommends “the corporate model” for governance.

            There’s nothing hierarchical about his plan, though. He recommends putting professors on governing boards. A seat at the table would give them authority along with accountability, he says; faculty representatives could hire and fire presidents, and, in turn, could be sued, just like other board members.

            Mr. Duderstadt, who is president emeritus and university professor of science and engineering at Michigan, suspects that trustees won’t like his idea. But, he argues, “the real governance does not occur in the senate, but in the governance body.”

            Devin Thornburg can attest to that. A past chairman of the Faculty Senate at Adelphi University, he notes that Adelphi’s senate structure was, in theory, a model of good governance. But it turned out to be a paper tiger. The administration and the Board of Trustees refused to deal with the senate. “We were dismissed,” he says.

            But Dr. Thornburg, an education professor, and others at Adelphi did attract the attention of the New York State Board of Regents, which replaced all but one of the university’s trustees last year for insufficient oversight of the compensation and lavish spending of the president, Peter Diamandopoulos.

            Now the institution is trying to reconfigure the idea of governance. Dr. Thornburg, for his part, recommends “shared governance at an earlier point. “We need to bring faculty and administrators together at an earlier stage of the problem, rather than the old model of the administration acting and the faculty reacting,” he says.

            Senates are important, he says, but he’s also in favor of creating “subordinate groupings,” like task forces reporting to presidents or trustees, to get even more professors involved in governance.

            Faculty members, he says, “need to share the authority, but also the accountability.”

            He’s got his share of accountability these days. Dr. Thornburg this month became associate provost. He is just one of three professors who led the charge to oust President Diamandopoulos and who have now moved into administrative posts at Adelphi. The union’s former leader on the campus now serves as dean of arts and sciences, and a former senate leader sits as provost.

            The irony is not lost on the current provost — or the former one.

            “It’s unusual that you have an institution that is completely run by the faculty,” says Igor Webb, the former provost, who was forced to step down last year but remains on the faculty. “Adelphi now is as close to that as you’re going to get.”