This was written in response to a new report of the Association of Governing Boards on governance, a statement designed to replace the AAUP statment on governance which the AGB had "commended" to its members several decades ago. As the reader can tell, the new AGB statement is a vast change from the earlier AAUP statement which they had supported.
By JAMES T. RICHARDSON
Colleges and universities abroad that have the opportunity to throw off ideology-ridden bureaucracies recognize the value of America's tradition of shared governance in higher education. So why is it that our own Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges is blind to that value?
One wonders whether obliviousness, indifference, or hostility is responsible for the association's recent "Statement on Institutional Governance," which is sadly out of touch with internationally recognized standards of cooperative decision making in academe. The statement is also at odds with management strategies increasingly adopted by the private sector.
Invoking "changes in the landscape of American higher education," the association's document reveals college and university overseers' uneasiness with allowing faculty members a significant say in how their institutions are run.
The statement suggests that the need for greater accountability, the demands of technology, and shifting requirements within the academic job market require a different form of decision making -- one that shared governance, with its deliberate and collegial practices, is no longer capable of rendering. While cautioning against a tendency toward micromanagement by governing boards, the association's recommendations emphasize the need for central authority, essentially diminishing the role of faculty members as crucial constituents in the process of governance.
Coming at a time when administrations are consciously "de-tenuring" America's faculties through the increasing use of part-time and non-tenure-track faculty members, the association's attack on shared governance is especially troubling.
U.S. representatives at international academic meetings, such as the recent United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Conference on Higher Education, in Paris, have sought to export democratic notions of education: accessibility, equal opportunity, respect for diversity. (A report from this meeting is at http://www.education.unesco.org ) But here at home, the thinking behind the association's declaration, issued in November, threatens the very framework that underpins those ideals -- the inclusion of faculty opinion in university governance -- as well as such particulars as the right of faculties to unionize and bargain collectively.
Granted, many college and university governing boards have always had a problem with faculty "intrusions" into management -- a terrain that boards feel they are best equipped to navigate, given the success of many of their members in the business world. And college and university presidents have always been annoyed at having to wait for faculties' seal of approval in important matters. But, by and large, the concept of sharing governance has been commonly accepted since 1966, when the American Association of University Professors'"Statement of Government of Colleges and Universities" gave faculty members a substantial voice in key institutional decisions. At that time, both the governing boards' association and the American Council on Education "commended" the statement, even if they didn't take the further step of "endorsing" it.
The A.A.U.P.'s statement was never a vehicle to give college and university faculties dominant power, but was meant to establish a balance of powers. It was an acknowledgment that governing boards' hardheaded business skills, coupled with faculties' insistence on scholarly excellence, breed a constructive, if not always easy, tension.
For some three decades, faculty members have accepted the fact that boards of regents or trustees have final, fiduciary responsibility for their institutions and a role in arbitrating controversial disputes. But faculty members also have asserted that boards must delegate substantial authority to the professoriate in educational issues -- curriculum, student grading, admissions, and professional standards. Faculty members have understood that administrative decisions affecting them will not always be to their liking, but will at least be informed by faculty advice -- through peer review, faculty councils, and the like.
Such an approach to shared governance is consonant with methods now being embraced by the private sector. The notion of "flat" management structures -- in which all employees are able to draw on their experience in determining goals, regardless of where they fall in traditional hierarchies -- has gained great momentum in the business world. But while business and industry absorb such ideas, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges would have those of us in higher education give them up.
The association is attempting, stealthily, to rewrite the book on institutional governance with a statement emphasizing central control, demands of the marketplace, and a general suspicion of faculty members and their concerns. The statement pays lip service to shared governance, but would distribute power among internal "stakeholders," including non-academic staff members; students; non-tenure-eligible part-time and adjunct faculty members; and external parties, such as elected officials, statewide coordinating boards, and officials of charitable foundations. In this scheme, the "stake" held by faculty members would be so ill-defined -- and so diffused -- that power would be concentrated in the hands of a strong president, and defended by a no-nonsense board that would hire and fire presidents with little or no faculty consultation. Even now, for example, boards increasingly are turning to outside "headhunter" companies to conduct presidential and high-level administrative searches. The faculty's role in such searches is often limited to commenting on candidates already selected by the headhunters.
True, the statement exploits the rhetoric of democracy, and advises against the increasing politicization of boards by members with ideological designs on their institutions. But the association's wording reflects a group congenitally averse to giving real power to faculty members, especially faculty members who belong to unions.
"In institutions with faculty or staff collective-bargaining contracts," the association's document reads, "internal governance arrangements should be separate from the structure and terms of the contract. If a collective-bargaining contract governs the terms and conditions of faculty and staff employment, the board should consider a policy regarding the role of union officials in institutional governance. Specifically, the board should articulate any limitations the existence of a bargaining agreement may place on participation in governance by union officials."
The governing boards' association apparently perceives labor unions as inevitably opposed to the long-term vitality of colleges and universities. That seems a strangely ideological position for an association ostensibly wary of board politicization. It is also a position out of step with international academic practice. It is worth remembering that many of the world's college and university faculties are unionized, a fact recognized and encouraged in a 1997 Unesco declaration.
The association should consider revising its statement to include a better understanding of how academe benefits from the labor movement's democratic principles. Grievance procedures, fair representation for all faculty members, and the contract-ratification process all insure that faculty members on unionized campuses have a genuine voice in determining how their institutions are governed.
As a practical matter, if the association truly fears unionization, it should consider the fact that collective bargaining most often comes to campuses where faculty members effectively have been shut out of the governing process.
More important, the association should understand that shared governance is not a narrow, institutional convenience, but a broad, societal good. It is in the collegiate setting that many members of democratic societies are formed and trained; where they learn not only about disciplines, but also about how to be good citizens, how to balance the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and how to work with others. Boards and administrations should actively sponsor the robust institution of shared governance, not just to make their colleges and universities operate effectively, but to set an important democratic example.
James T. Richardson is president of the American Association of University Professors and director of the judicial-studies program at the University of Nevada at Reno.