The fall of faculty: the rise of all administrative university and why it matters

Author:  Benjamin Ginsberg, Oxford University Press, 2011

April 8, 2014

It is well recognized that higher education institutions are adding more and more administrators to their payrolls over years.  The reasons for doing so are allegedly numerous, ranging from meeting government mandates, serving new student demands to creating jobs for faculty spouses, among some others. So far, the consequences of more administrators on campus have not been well addressed. This book draws on much of the author’ personal experience and professional training to discuss why the rise of administrators on campus matters and how it relates to power distribution between administrators and faculties.

The book starts with numerous cases where faculty members have been more and more disadvantaged in exercising power on campus issues and the shared governance model has not been well respected by incumbent administrators. A good case in point has been the strong attacks on faculty tenure from higher education administrators. In contrast, universities have demonstrated a universally sharp increase in deploying the number of administrators, with the rates being as high as 240% during the past four decades. Numerically speaking, higher education institutions are now dominated by administrators, with a shrinking share going to faculties. This numerical imbalance has significant implications.

The author proceeds to discuss the functions of administrators on campus. Not without personal bias, it is claimed that administrators are mainly engaged in the following activities: meetings, retreats and conferences, planning, polishing image and fundingraising. Satirically, the author presents a great deal of cases in these regards, which expose the negative sides of administrative efforts. The book adopts the theory of public choices, contending that administrators are self serving individuals, who maximize their own power and resources at the cost of other groups, mainly faculties’. All the functions administrators engaged in are to serve their best interest and expand their power and resource basis. The author ignores the positive functions from administrators, despising them as unwanted, self serving grits on campus.

Along the same line, more cases are presented regarding managerial pathologies, including administrative sabotage,shirking, squandering, corruption, theft and academic fraud, among others. Scandals after scandals are used to prove that all administraitve university will suffer significant management problems due to administrators being full time and fully dedicated to their own interests, which often come at the expense of faculty autonomy and public interests. No doubt that administrators may be engaged in these activities and that monitoring and better governance may be needed,  nevertheless it would be too arbitrary to judge the group purely based on their negative efforts.

The discussion further touches on sensitive issues such as race and gender. The proliferation of women studies programs, African American studies, and multicultural programs are argued as efforts on the part of administrators to please those well organized groups and efforts to expand their own control over academic issues. To further expand their power basis, administrators are claimed to encroach the traditional territories that faculties often are protected with: faculty recruitment. By imposing faculty diversity, administrators now are able to wield more power on recruitment decisions. Administrators also resort to speech and civility codes to mitigate possible reluctance and lack of cooperation among faculties, even these codes may not be supported by the courts. Administrators create shadow curriculum to rip faculties of power in core academic functions. Together, the traditional autonomy faculties enjoy are largely encroached by administrators, who use these opportunities to further marginalize faculties’ power on campus.

One of the most controversial issues on campus is tenure. Both proponents and opponents have legitimate reasons. Chapter 5 explains how the tenure system evolves and has been institutionalized on campus. The main driving forces are that administrators, in face of great increase on student enrollment in the first half 20th century, need faculties to be cooperative in either performing core functions, or serving parttime management duties. The tenure is the reward and motivation for faculties members to be cooperative and committed to higher education institutions. Now, with more fulltime administrators, the need of faculty cooperation is lessened, and the attacks on tenure rise.Regarding teaching and research, significant shift is being witnessed on campus with all administrative nature. Teaching is being asked to incorporate out of classroom teaching, which is largely coordinated by administrators. Core curriculums are reduced, more shadow curriculums are created. Students are now being more and more taught by adjunct professors and even administrators.  Research is pressed to be more geared toward funding and income sources like paten and licensing. Alladministrative universities are claimed to push research in certain ways to maximize their overhead cost and income flows. It is certainly arguable whether the focus on more funding and revenues in research areas is purely driven by all administrative nature. Some evidence is posed suggesting that the shift toward more commercial consideration is shaped by multiple general social forces, including policy changes and others out of university domains.

Pessimistically, the author argues that it is too late to do anything for a large part of universities. However, he does offer some prescriptions, including that board members reassert public values, faculties fight for more power, alumnus be more attentive to ongoing status and parents and students demand better educational benefits. No doubt, the author has nostalgic feelings for those good old times. However, judging administrators with the old benchmark may per se is not a legitimate activity. As a political science professor, it reflects his own laments that he is lost in all administrative universities. There is certainly some truth there and the book is provocative and awakening, however, truth is still a little further away.

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