The Gap Between Faculty, Presidents
Conflicts between faculty and administrators are not uncommon. In some cases, they escalate to the point in which faculty cast a vote of “no confidence,” usually against the president or chancellor of the institution. This action places the boards of trustees in the difficult position of either publicly backing or firing the chief executive officer of the college. But why does this happen?
To understand these conflicts, we must take a look of how the role of the president in American universities has evolved over time.
The first colleges and universities in Colonial America were under the strict control of the governing boards that selected their presidents. Those presidents, in turn, reported to those governing boards with little regard of what the faculty might have thought. This lack of accountability towards the internal constituencies also allowed campus CEOs not to be expected to perform at a very high level as long as they kept the boards happy.
Because of this system, presidents spent a lot of time getting involved in politicking, not only with the board itself but also with other members of the community who were affiliates of the same elite groups as those of the boards. The need for raising financial support – just as today – was also a major reason to get involved in those issues. By keeping the board and other influential people pleased, some institution leaders were astute enough to get appointed for life for all practical purposes.
flourish, particularly in rural areas. Presidents began to emphasize their public service by demonstrating their utility and accountability and how much they contributed to the local or state economies.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the profile of college presidents had changed. Transformations such as the need to increase recruitment make curricular offerings more appealing, and the necessity to fundraise required presidents to be more focused on external issues than on the day-to-day management of the institution. This led to them being sought out as leading members of their community involved not only in local, state, or even national affairs. Presidents started to serve on boards of other institutions. Their involvement in campus construction projects also became more intense, as the facilities needs were bigger and more expensive and the fact that such projects provided with excellent “naming” opportunities for donors.
Another phenomenon that influenced the changing roles of a campus leader was the appearance between the 1890s and the 1920s of alumni groups. These groups were gaining prominence when becoming targets of fundraising efforts and many of them began to occupy positions of power, particularly at the state level or in the corporate world. As consequence, presidents started to pay more attention to nonacademic experiences of students, such as athletics and other amenities, which in turn generated more dissatisfaction among faculty who saw that emphasis on these efforts and the subsequent redistribution of financial resources as contrary to academic traditions. By the same token the figure of the provost or vice president of academic affairs became reinforced because college presidents were no longer preoccupied with the day-to-day management of academic issues.
By the 1930s a number of state universities transformed themselves from one campus to multi-campus institutions. They also became more diverse in terms of academic commitments, initiating the process of becoming multi-purpose and comprehensive.
This growth in size and complexity drew university presidents even further away from what was their initial academic core and required them to be savvier business people, beginning the trend that has come to be known as the “corporatization of higher education,” particularly among public institutions. Universities started to compete for prestige, and for the relatively new state universities the fastest way to do so was to attract talent with great name recognition. To that end, they began to offer “start-up” packages to new and transferring faculty (particularly in the sciences) while “stealing” faculty who felt under-appreciated at their home institutions. They also developed non-profit branches in the form of foundations, which would enhance the flow of donations to the university while creating a managerial side for those operations.
During and after World War II, a number of events changed the demographics of American universities and their leadership and managerial challenges. First, the G.I. Bill of 1944 meant that the demand for higher education increased dramatically. Second, the “Sputnik shock” of 1957 meant that the federal government started to provide much more funding to higher education, particularly in the sciences.
Third, college sports became bigger and virtually professionalized with the help of the media (especially TV) which, in turn, created the illusion that such programs could generate more revenues while, in reality, very few are even self-sufficient. Fourth, the distinctive nature of medical, law and business schools, whose faculty could earn more money in the private sector, inflated salaries in those areas of universities while salaries stagnated in others. Fifth, the explosive growth in for-profit colleges took advantage of federal financial aid to students to lure students away from traditional institutions. All these factors pushed comprehensive universities away from a traditional definition of what an institution of higher education was and created new demands upon their leadership.
Consequently, their leaders needed to be more business-like (and in the case of public universities, more politically connected). The response was that these universities began to fill their ranks at the top with people who had had little if any academic experience. This, in turn, made the figure of the president even more divorced from the academic mission of the institution and even more isolated from the faculty. In the final analysis, the physical and intellectual distance between faculty and administrators grew larger and the chances for miscommunication even more insurmountable, which has led to the nickname of “M.I.A.”, or missing in action, for many of them.
The solution? To be continued.
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The Gap Between Faculty, Presidents