Get rid of the college president role

[methodsman]

It is now clear to everyone that the role of the president is largely a symbolic, nonproductive, and performative farce which is simply the last hurrah for academics who have clawed their way to the top so that they can retire comfortably in their mountain or beach house.  Rarely do presidents who retire do anything valuable afterwards which should tell you everything you need to know. Their completely grotesque outsized salaries and endless junkets are a total insult to the staff who actually do the work of the institution. Consider that a university can go without a permanent president (or provost even) for months or even years. Interim presidents (and provosts) are even more of a joke. 

It's time for the faculty and staff who are the permanent full-time backbone of the institutional community to stand up, demand that the structure change, and that the balance of shared governance power shift to those who know and are faithful to the institution. They should get the word out to the taxpayers that senior administrators (Vice presidents and Deans included) are a totally and completely overpaid bunch of ass kissing Machiavellian climbers who are only looking for their next and higher paying position. 

mm

[dismalist]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/us/college-campus-president-antisemitism.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

It is now clear to everyone that the role of the president is largely a symbolic, nonproductive, and performative farce which is simply the last hurrah for academics who have clawed their way to the top so that they can retire comfortably in their mountain or beach house.  Rarely do presidents who retire do anything valuable afterwards which should tell you everything you need to know. Their completely grotesque outsized salaries and endless junkets are a total insult to the staff who actually do the work of the institution. Consider that a university can go without a permanent president (or provost even) for months or even years. Interim presidents (and provosts) are even more of a joke. 

It's time for the faculty and staff who are the permanent full-time backbone of the institutional community to stand up, demand that the structure change, and that the balance of shared governance power shift to those who know and are faithful to the institution. They should get the word out to the taxpayers that senior administrators (Vice presidents and Deans included) are a totally and completely overpaid bunch of ass kissing Machiavellian climbers who are only looking for their next and higher paying position. 

mm

That's the first post on the board that is intelligent about university governance.

However, I would add that it's not about the President alone; it's about the whole structure of governance. The greatest failure is in the concept of shared governance. If it's shared, who the hell is responsible for anything? Shared governance is better called "free riding".

The next greatest failure is in the idea of a powerful administration. What the hell do they know, except  their own interests? How the hell did they get this way?

The diciest part, perhaps I should have put it first, is that the Boards have no skin in the game. What's failure to them? Nothing.

My tentative partial governance reform proposal is that the tenured faculty determine the administration and the President. Faculty has the knowledge of what's to be taught and what's to be researched. That must be used to attract students. If we fuck up, we go down the tubes, as we should.

[spork]

Most of the faculty I know couldn't govern their way out of a soggy paper bag. If they were in charge, they would take five times longer to make the same crappy decisions that our highly paid administrators make now.

Anecdote: pre-Covid pandemic, I had a conversation with a former university president about the region's declining number of high school graduates. The former president said "Eighteen years ago, everyone knew how many 18-year olds there would be today." The thought that immediately went through my head, which I did not speak aloud: "Eighteen years ago, you were president, and you did nothing."

As I've mentioned previously in other threads, Thorstein Veblen wrote about ineffectual and misguided corporate management of universities over one hundred years ago.

[sinenomine]

Most of the faculty I know couldn't govern their way out of a soggy paper bag. If they were in charge, they would take five times longer to make the same crappy decisions that our highly paid administrators make now.

I was thinking the same thing! In my combined faculty and admincritter role I've been working with faculty who allegedly want more involvement in governance, and the progress is laughable. Many of them get a glimpse at what it entails and back away quickly.

[dismalist]

Most of the faculty I know couldn't govern their way out of a soggy paper bag. If they were in charge, they would take five times longer to make the same crappy decisions that our highly paid administrators make now.

...

As I've mentioned previously in other threads, Thorstein Veblen wrote about ineffectual and misguided corporate management of universities over one hundred years ago.

Most of the faculty I know couldn't govern their way out of a soggy paper bag. If they were in charge, they would take five times longer to make the same crappy decisions that our highly paid administrators make now.

I was thinking the same thing! In my combined faculty and admincritter role I've been working with faculty who allegedly want more involvement in governance, and the progress is laughable. Many of them get a glimpse at what it entails and back away quickly.

I've just skimmed Thorstein's The State of Higher Education, 1918, for the first time. His fundamental point about the "corporate model" guiding the university, at least nowadays, is fundamentally inapplicable. There is nothing corporate or neo this or that running contemporary universities.  A McDonald's that has as much waste as a university would be competed away, today, not tomorrow.

Problems of governance are much deeper than what Thorsten identifies. But nobody is going to do anything about this, for it's in nobody's interests to do it.

Be that as it may, I didn't mean for faculty to actually run an institution, but to elect or to choose an  administration. Can't be worse than the Boards do now.

Before Thorsten, 1918, there was Adam Smith, 1776, about whose opinions of higher education was written:

"...He found nothing of value there [Oxford]. He summed up his experience there in his description of the average university as a "sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection, after they have been hunted out of every other corner of the world."
--Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, MJF Books, 2001, p. 198, [referring to  Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1.]

[kaysixteen]

So why was it that 150 years ago, American colleges largely all had faculty members serving as president, and generally serving effectively?

[Ancient Fellow]

So why was it that 150 years ago, American colleges largely all had faculty members serving as president, and generally serving effectively?

I think this is a perceptive question. Perhaps getting to the bottom of the problem isn't about which group's representative is currently the best choice to lead a university. Is there something that has changed among faculty characteristics or motives (group and individual) over the last 150 years? Can hiring committees isolate for that characteristic or motive?

Of course, not all universities had model presidents back in the day, see Catharine Stimpson on BMC President Carey Thomas, https://doi.org/10.2307/4021960.

[marshwiggle]

So why was it that 150 years ago, American colleges largely all had faculty members serving as president, and generally serving effectively?

I think this is a perceptive question. Perhaps getting to the bottom of the problem isn't about which group's representative is currently the best choice to lead a university. Is there something that has changed among faculty characteristics or motives (group and individual) over the last 150 years? Can hiring committees isolate for that characteristic or motive?

Among other things, 150 years ago the percentage of people qualified to be a university president would have been drastically smaller. When a large segment of the population didn't even finish high school, the proportion with postgraduate degrees would have been tiny. Now, everybody and his dog has a degree, and there are even tons of fluffy "graduate" programs, so the theoretical hiring pool is immense.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Universities are obviously suffering from administrative bloat and cutting some of these positions would be fine by me. However, as a faculty member I want to focus on teaching and research, not managing the university. Having administrators of various ranks to fill out the paper work, manage the programs, raise money, etc., is a necessary evil from my perspective, although I would generally prefer that those people come from a faculty background - which they mostly do at my place.

[ciao_yall]

Universities are obviously suffering from administrative bloat and cutting some of these positions would be fine by me. However, as a faculty member I want to focus on teaching and research, not managing the university. Having administrators of various ranks to fill out the paper work, manage the programs, raise money, etc., is a necessary evil from my perspective, although I would generally prefer that those people come from a faculty background - which they mostly do at my place.

With the growth in adjunct faculty, there will be fewer tenured faculty available to step into leadership roles.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Universities are obviously suffering from administrative bloat and cutting some of these positions would be fine by me. However, as a faculty member I want to focus on teaching and research, not managing the university. Having administrators of various ranks to fill out the paper work, manage the programs, raise money, etc., is a necessary evil from my perspective, although I would generally prefer that those people come from a faculty background - which they mostly do at my place.

With the growth in adjunct faculty, there will be fewer tenured faculty available to step into leadership roles.

Sure, there is truth to this in general terms, but at my place the large majority of faculty are full timers and the majority of full timers are tenured or tenure track, so there is not really a dearth of tenured faculty to step into these roles. Moreover, we are very unlikely to have our university president come from within the institution - and this is mostly the case for deans or provosts. The bigger threat here is that we hire some "interesting" and "innovative" people from the private sector to come into leadership roles to shake things up, but thus far that rarely happens in practice.

[apl68]

So why was it that 150 years ago, American colleges largely all had faculty members serving as president, and generally serving effectively?

Well, in fairness a lot of early colleges didn't make it long-term, so there's some survivorship bias there.  Also, a century and more ago we were a growing nation with a youthful and continually growing population.  And colleges cost far less to run back in the day.  Today higher education is a crowded industry, with decades of failure to control massive increases in costs, and now facing a demographic crunch.  This is a set of problems that would tax the best management imaginable.

Alma Mater has been by and large very fortunate in its leadership for many years now, and it has by and large been run by presidents with academic backgrounds.  Our President when I was there even still taught part-time--I took a class with him (And he had written a standard textbook in the field that we were able to use!).  His successors all seem, from what I've seen, to have been pretty competent.

None of which has kept the school from making occasional missteps.  They embarked on too much borrowing and building in the 1990s, when everybody was doing it, though they were careful enough not to bankrupt the school.  They've had to reduce liberal arts programs due to declining student demand, though so far not to the point where they no longer qualify as a SLAC.  They've had to hustle to find new major programs that will keep drawing students.  And they face all the challenges of maintaining their religious mission--their "brand," to put it crudely--in a society that is rapidly becoming more and more hostile to the values the school is supposed to represent. 

How much longer will they successfully keep zig-zagging through the minefield without getting blown up?  I guess none of us knows.  I wish them the best.  Other colleges are blowing up and sinking all over the place.  There are mines to avoid everywhere, and schools make for hard-to-steer ships.

[secundem_artem]

My take is that of Ivan Illich.  His thinking was that any institution created to solve a problem (health care, education, the military) eventually gets to the point where it causes the very problems it was meant to address.  The "mission" slips further and further into the background.

* Health care produces iatrogenic disease.
* Education now seems to produce as much ignorance as it does learning.  It's primary
  function is rapidly turning into a business, not a center for higher learning and
  scholarship
* What's a military for except to fight - so every president needs his war.  Sort of a
  peace through violence model I guess.

As to the need for a president - somebody needs to hand out diplomas and shake all those hands.  It ain't gonna be me.