Shared Governance, Academic Freedom, and Tenure

Reactions to Brian Rosenberg's "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It"

Last week, Inside Higher Ed featured an interview with former Macalester president Brian Rosenberg. It was titled “Higher Education as its Own Worst Enemy” and carried the subtitle “In a wide-ranging discussion about his new book, Brian Rosenberg explains how shared governance, tenure and other practices stifle change on college campuses.”

I shared the story on Facebook. Not surprisingly, my academic friends were troubled (as I was after reading the IHE story). Since faculty-administration relationships are the focus of the chapter I’m currently working on, I decided I should buy the book and confront his argument.

First of all, I have to admit that I think I’d really like having a meal with Brian Rosenberg. As the president of a well-respected liberal arts institution with a clear sense of its identity, his experiences are closer to those I’ve had as faculty member and administrator at Christian Universities that would be true for someone from an R-1 State System flagship or an Ivy. And it is certainly more nuanced than the comments from state legislators or conservative pundits. Rosenberg has no love for those politicized culture war tropes.

He does reflect the vantage point of a president, albeit one from the academic ranks (he’s a specialist on Dickens’ Little Dorritt). So the subhead in the IHE story is telling. If you view the president as some kind of transformational leader, the issues he addresses in the book are impediments for rapid change. Some are baked in to academic life. Others could be modified in ways that protect faculty independence against a capricious administration.

He rightly observes that there can be differing incentives between departments and the institutions in which they are hired. He says that any question is answered from the viewpoint of the department (what’s good for sociology or english) and not the college as a whole. He suggests that faculty are “less like a baseball team and more like an all-star team”. In the latter, individual stars want what is best for them regardless of how it impacts others.

Anyone who has been around higher education can attest to this tendency. Even within departments, it is possible to have a faculty member focused on “my research” and “my classes” instead of what’s in the interest of the department or the university. I would submit that this isn’t a failure of structure but a failure in hiring and the incentives for continuation. In my administrative days, I favored hiring generalists who could cover particular classes as opposed to specialists who stayed in a narrow lane.¹ Regular dialogue between academic administration and the faculty member might just uncover ways for the faculty research interests and the institutional needs to align. Maybe not every time, but often enough to make a difference.

Through his chapter on Shared Governance, he affirms the importance of faculty oversight. He argues that curricular matters involve faculty lines which makes responding to shifting markets difficult. As STEM programs take an increasing share of the student enrollment, how do the faculty structures respond? Here’s a pet peeve of mine: institutions known for the liberal arts identity who shift too heavily into STEM and professional fields without acknowledging the mission drift it might represent are losing their way. To his credit, Rosenberg critiques such efforts to create “The New Liberal Arts” as a branding move.²

Much of the chapter tells the story of a very difficult attempt to make changes in response to market. There were some practices unique to Macalester that created the difficult. First, there had long been a practice that each department with a major had to have three tenure lines (which encumbers institutional funds). Second, elimination of a department, no matter how small its enrollment, must be approved by a vote of the full faculty. The curriculum committee argued for the power to recommend phasing out of a small program unless overruled by 2/3 of the faculty. When things came for the full faculty vote to eliminate the program in question, the vote was 100 to 47 (68%). Sometimes, these votes happen by semi-informed faculty members. Other times, they issues are clear but personal loyalty wins out.³

I would argue that the problem isn’t with shared governance on curriculum, but on rules that were established that make change impossible. Admittedly, the troublesome rules pre-dated Rosenberg becoming president. But institutions need to do the hard work of establishing workable protocols and not just blame the faculty when the existing ones are followed. Rosenberg writes:

A history of shared governance and transparent decision-making can create a reservoir of trust that can prove invaluable in moments of crisis. And taking the time to gather input from a variety of constituencies can prevent an instituion from making hasty and ill-considered changes.

The flip side of these strengths is that share governance can prevent an institution for making any substantive changes at all, even when they are urgently needed. Shared governance within higher education is far better at guarding against disruptive change than it is at encouraging and enabling such change.

I don’t disagree with his assessment, but in my experience the changes prompted by the latest trend⁴ or the newest idea by a trustee or by what the college down the road is doing are often not easily accommodated within the existing structures. When they are forced, institutional identity is muddied and quality faculty members start reading any Chronicle jobs they can find.

A regular review of shared governance practices, not to squeeze through the latest proposal, but to insure best practice is essential. And that must be collaborative as well.

His chapter on Tenure includes his thoughts about Academic Freedom. To his credit (because I’ve made the argument for years) he makes clear that the latter doesn’t depend on the former. I was encouraged by how vociferously he critiques conservative states’ attacks on tenure and academic freedom.

He observes that the 1940 AAUP statement on tenure is really a statement of academic freedom protections, which blurs the difference between the two. He believes that academic freedom must be protected within the context of classroom activity, research agenda, and disagreeing with the administration. Of course, it’s not a blanket permission for one to talk about anything at anytime.⁵

It’s important for administrators frequently to make this commitment crystal clear. This is especially true when faculty members are raising questions about administrative decisions. If administrators truly were invested in shared governance, they would seek out those opinions, even when they know they won’t like the answer.⁶

Rosenberg’s approach to tenure is interesting. He observes that tenure decisions were always carefully made at his institution. They were usually successful and based on teaching evaluations with some focus on research. In my experience, liberal arts colleges want to see some evidence of scholarly activity but aren’t caught up in the journal and book counting facing research institutions.

He addresses some concerns about tenure. First, not surprisingly, is the limitation that tenure places upon strategic choices. Once tenured, a faculty members is expected to continue in the institution.⁷ I always argued that tenure was about the ways in which the professor was invested in the college’s mission and the professor is an expression of that mission.

Another challenge arising from tenure is the difficulty in addressing incompetent or those who are bad colleagues. Post-tenure reviews, now expected by most accrediting bodies, provide the raw materials to deal with such issues. I once tried to get a promotion and tenure committee to consider a pathway through which one might lose tenure. They didn’t go for it because some future administrator might use it capriciously. This underscores the ways in which trust between administrators and faculty are key to overcoming existing obstacles.

Rosenberg raises an interesting point with regard to non-tenure track faculty. As many institutions have increased the number of NTT faculty, he points out that they are left out of governance in many cases. They can be as invested in the long-term interests of the institution as their tenured counterparts. I think you could imagine tenured faculty as key leaders in governance with additional responsibilities and NTT faculty as invested faculty members. Like not yet tenured faculty members, these need to have their governance skills developed. He writes:

They are less likely than are tenured faculty members to speak up at faculty meetings, and certainly less likely to challenge the views of a senior colleague. (Full disclosure: I was unusually and perhaps foolishly outspoken as an assistant professor and was told by the holder of an endowed chair, “You can always leave if you don’t like it here.” I didn’t leave.⁸

Rosenberg ends the book with reflections on African Leadership University, a group he has worked with. It is an illustration of how a university could form that is agile, not being constrained by the norms that he thinks limits creativity in higher education.

It is certainly true that new models of higher ed can be more flexible. But I’m not sure they would ever celebrate liberal arts in the ways we would desire.

While I haven’t agreed with everything that Rosenberg argues, I’m glad that I read it. It will be very valuable as I think through what proactive partnership between faculty and administrators could look like and why it would benefit students.

1. In my first institution, still a faculty member, we interviewed a potential faculty member who would teach political science theory plus a section of gen ed American Government. He balked at this latter piece, arguing that “he was already prepared to cover the curriculum of an east coast classics department.” He didn’t get the job.

2. He observes that Hiram College in Ohio actually trademarked this empty phrase!

3. I once had a department bring up an underdeveloped proposal. The curriculum committee ducked a hard choice and threw it to the full faculty. I was hopeful that wisdom would prevail. The first comment out of the gate was “I don’t understand this proposal, but I know XX worked hard on it, so I’m in favor.” We were done before the discussion started.

4. Here are two examples that impacted CCCU schools like the ones I served. Back in the late 1980s, Indiana Wesleyan carved out new space to offer degrees to working adults (helped by the fact that Indiana didn’t have a community college system). Suddenly trustees from other institutions were sure they could get in on that market (even though the same conditions did not apply). These programs have, as a rule, never lived up to their hype and unduly complicated institutional decision making. The second example involves Online Education (pre-Covid). The University of Phoenix, Southern New Hampshire, Liberty, and Grand Canyon had cornered the market. Far too many schools came to the table a decade late and then wondered why their online programs struggled.

5. Once had a professor of music sharing his views of why people shouldn’t use birth control. That is not covered by academic freedom.

6. The temptation for administrators to treat dissenting faculty members as an opposing voting block to be overcome rather than a source of better decision making is very real.

7. Unless, of course, the administration threatens to do away with your major (speaking from experience).

8. I shared the same habits.