BY ROBERT A. SCOTT
Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic this past spring prompted the rapid turn to remote teaching and learning; caused uncertainty about whether teaching and learning would continue in the remote mode this fall; resulted in dire enrollment forecasts for domestic and international students; and raised questions about what plans should be made for the spring semester. The policies and protocols developed to deal with the crisis added to the already tense relations between trustees, administrators, and faculty.
However, higher education’s serious fault lines were evident even before COVID-19 interrupted the spring 2020 semester. As a consequence, the disruptions were more severe than expected and the recovery will likely take longer.
Much has been said about the heavy reliance on student tuition supported by ever more student debt, increasing levels of tuition discounting, rising levels of campus debt for facilities, commitments to marketing and branding that exceed attention given to academic quality, and generally poor student-success metrics, among others. Much less has been said about two other dynamics in contemporary higher education. These dynamics, which have disrupted relations between and among boards of trustees, presidents, and campus faculty, have threatened the traditions of shared governance.
The first dynamic concerns the manner in which boards of trustees are composed. Under ten percent of American college and university trustees have professional experience in higher education. One cannot imagine Google or Amazon declaring that 90 percent of their directors did not know the characteristics, economics, and competitive landscape of their enterprise. Yet college and university trustees—whether selected and approved through a political process, as at public institutions, or selected and approved by a self-selected board at private institutions—are not selected for their knowledge of higher education or their governance acumen.
The second dynamic is the evolution of the college and university president’s role from chief purpose (or mission) officer to chief executive officer. CEOs focus on delegation, money, markets, customers, personnel, and labor. CPOs focus on mission, student success, and faculty as partners in a moral and noble enterprise. This change in the president’s role is due in large part to the focus on money, whether in the form of state appropriations, fundraising, debt service, or state and federal compliance requirements.
A third feature of the current campus environment is the failure of boards and presidents to commit to shared governance and to prepare faculty members for their roles in governance and leadership. After all, faculty are closest to the students we are chartered to serve and are integral to the fulfillment of institutional missions. Shared governance is only possible if the parties to it are prepared for their roles in it.
All three trends exacerbate the increasingly corporate style of higher education institutions. In order to change course, board members must be educated for their role; presidents must be encouraged and rewarded for service as chief purpose officers as well as chief executive officers; and faculty must be empowered to participate in governance. In addition, all three parties must monitor the alignment between mission and goals on the one hand and rewards and results on the other. By monitoring alignments, the parties to shared governance can ensure that the goals for student learning are supported by resource allocations and rewards.
The dynamics of the corporate university can be changed with appropriate incentives established by accrediting bodies and national associations. These dynamics can also be changed by employing the instruments available to train trustees, presidents, and faculty leaders. I examine these topics and more in my new article for the Journal of Academic Freedom, “Leadership Threats to Shared Governance in Higher Education.”
Guest blogger Robert A. Scott is president emeritus of Adelphi University and Ramapo College of New Jersey and author of How University Boards Work.
Read the complete volume of the 2020 Journal of Academic Freedom at https://www.aaup.org/JAF11.
