A Question of Autonomy: The View from Salzburg

For eastern European and former Soviet universities, the quest for academic freedom is complicated. Greater institutional and faculty autonomy has brought more dependence on external funding.

By Martin D. Snyder

For four days, the participants, basking in the luxury of Schloss Leopoldskron, the seminar’s eighteenth-century headquarters, ruminated over the meanings of autonomy in European and American higher education and the implications of those meanings for university governance.1 Given the abstract nature of the seminar theme and the diversity of educational systems involved, it is hardly surprising that the consensus that emerged was of a general nature. Still, the conversations illuminated facets of autonomy well worth the examination.

At first glance, the definition of autonomy seems clear enough. Derived from the Greek words for "self" and "law or customary usage," the word describes the practice of self-government that we consider the right and responsibility of colleges and universities. But the issue is not so simple. As the seminar’s cochair, C. Peter Magrath of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, pointed out, autonomy is always relative. What colleges and universities should seek, he suggested, is reasonable, not absolute autonomy. Total autonomy, total independence and separation from society, is simply impossible. The degree of an institution’s autonomy varies according the nature of its relationships. Perhaps, then, it is most useful to think of multiple autonomies or degrees of autonomy. Consider some of the relationships that affect an institution’s ability to govern itself.

The issue of college or university autonomy inevitably raises the question of the purpose of autonomy and the purpose or purposes of colleges and universities themselves. Institutions of higher learning have always served their societies; they have never been the isolated "ivory towers" of popular imagination. Since their inception, they have engaged the issues of their day, discovered and distributed whatever was at the time deemed "useful knowledge," and established various, often idiosyncratic, financial relationships with patrons, donors, and governments. These relationships suggest varying degrees or types of autonomy.

Luc E. Weber argued in his 2000 contribution to Responsiveness, Responsibility, and Accountability: An Evaluation of University Governance in Switzerland that the mission of a university is twofold. It must be both "responsible" and "responsive." The former involves the long view of the university’s mission and society’s needs. The latter addresses the immediate strategies for meeting the short-term economic and social requirements of the community.

Degrees of Autonomy

Yet another, arguably unique, responsibility is also entrusted to colleges and universities: to provide an enduring and credible vehicle for social criticism. To criticize requires perspective and independence that come only with a high level of autonomy. To be fully integrated into a social context and to be controlled by the structures and mechanisms of that context make independent criticism virtually impossible. As members of the former East-bloc universities at the Salzburg Seminar were quick to point out, their institutions’ autonomy depended on the willingness and ability of the professoriate "not to notice" what was going on around them. Universities in name only, such institutions functioned not as true universities but, in Magrath’s words, as "ideological factories that were the handmaidens to the dictatorship." To serve as true critics of society and to provide principled intellectual leadership, even in the face of official opposition—that is, to be truly responsible—colleges and universities require the highest degree of autonomy possible.

Institutions of higher education serve their societies in other, more immediate ways as well, and in modern times, these other services have become more vital. The number of colleges and universities has steadily increased, their size has greatly expanded, the knowledge base to be studied and distributed has risen exponentially, and the population served has grown from the privileged few to a mass audience. Higher education is almost universally viewed as the route to individual and social success. It is virtually unthinkable today that colleges and universities would fail to acknowledge the vital role they play in all forms of development. In Luc Weber’s terminology, institutions of higher education must be "responsive" as well responsible.

The inevitable recognition of the need to be responsive informs such matters as curriculum, pedagogy, and delivery systems. Colleges and universities may be relatively free to decide how, but rarely whether, to respond to issues of social engagement. The pressures and inducements to respond are enormous. For most institutions, failure to respond would, in fact, contravene their mission to prepare students for life after graduation. For institutions dependent on tuition and enrollment, not to engage the social and economic realities of their societies is a sure prescription for closure. Inevitably, some measure of autonomy is sacrificed as social engagement increases.

Contemporary criticism of higher education most often focuses on the issue of responsiveness—although, at times, criticism of institutional responsiveness masks dissatisfaction with the college or university’s exercise of its responsibility to provide social criticism. Corporate and political "stakeholders" have criticized American colleges and universities for being too slow to accommodate the rapid pace of change.

Not even venerable Oxford University has been spared. It has been accused of being "snobbish, tradition-bound, excessively introverted, and unwilling to engage with the country at large, let alone the outside world," according to the January 25, 2002, edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The university now accepts the fact that it must, in essence, re-create itself and find a way to become more fully integrated into the contemporary world. As Oxford’s vice chancellor put it in the same Chronicle article, "Universities have never been separate from their societies, nor have they been impervious to changes in their own societies—they change with them, and I think that it would be unusual if one thought that a university of our prominence did not shape itself accordingly." In short, Oxford has agreed to become more responsive; in so doing, however, it has not abdicated its obligation to be responsible as well.

Market Competition

However rich their endowments, higher education institutions require a steady stream of funds to fulfill their missions. These funds are generated largely from external sources, government support or subsidies, foundation and corporate grants, and, increasingly, tuition. This latter source of support, long familiar in the United States, has become a controversial innovation in the former East-bloc countries.

The old adage remains relevant: "Who pays the piper calls the tune." In the new market economy, how do colleges and universities compete for scarce resources from public and private sectors without compromising their integrity and autonomy? How do institutions grow more dependent on student tuition and fees and not become the creatures of a customer-based, market-driven economy? Is there a danger that the growing financial pressures from external sources will lead to significant compromises and "accommodations" in their intellectual autonomy?

In some ways, the Communist regimes in eastern Europe were not so bad for the universities. Some seminar participants described the time before the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allied regimes (not without a substantial hint of irony) as "the good old days." Much was clearly wrong with the East-bloc universities in those days, but funding, particularly in the theoretical and applied sciences, was dependable and adequate. These same institutions must now compete fiercely with other constituencies for state funds and with one another for private resources. They have little experience with free-market economies or models of private education to guide them. And student resentment over the introduction of tuition fees has been intense. The temptation to sacrifice autonomy for sorely needed cash is strong.

In the United States colleges and universities have traditionally maintained a healthy level of institutional autonomy. Even in states where some measure of centralized coordination, if not control, has been imposed through the creation of state-wide higher education systems, individual institutions have remained largely independent and free of government interference. Certainly, private colleges and universities have provided consistent examples of institutional autonomy.

The European experience, except for that of the United Kingdom, has been different. Traditionally controlled by ministries of education exercising strong, centralized authority, European universities, particularly those in the former East-bloc countries, have a much weaker tradition of institutional autonomy. In the past decade and a half, new, "reformed" models of the university have begun to grant institutions much larger measures of autonomy, but greater autonomy has been accompanied by decreases in state financial support and an increased insistence on institutional accountability, efficiency, and engagement with the local corporate and industrial community. For many European academics, greater autonomy has turned out to be a mixed blessing.

From the perspective of external relationships, "institutional autonomy" may mean different things and have several degrees of application. Different functions require different levels of autonomy.

To the extent that institutions must act as truly responsible agents in the long-term interests of society, they require the maximum amount of autonomy possible. When they seek to address the community’s short-term demands, however, they inevitably sacrifice a measure of autonomy in favor of social engagement. When they pursue external funding, as they must, they run the most serious risk of substantially compromising their autonomy. If college or university autonomy is to be diminished or corrupted, the likely point of entry will be financial. The question is whether institutions will abdicate their responsibility to society in return for much-needed but string-laden cash. The challenge of preserving a requisite level of institutional autonomy in the face of mounting financial pressures and competition for increasingly scarce resources is daunting indeed.

Academic Freedom

Since its inception in 1915, the AAUP has argued that colleges and universities serve the common good through learning, teaching, research, and scholarship and, in particular, that the fulfillment of this responsibility rests upon the preservation of the intellectual freedoms of teaching, expression, research, and debate. In other words, even as the institution requires autonomy to fulfill its responsibility to society, so the faculty also requires autonomy, that is, academic freedom, to meet its responsibility. Both require autonomy, the one at the macro level, the other at the micro level, for the same reason: to serve the greater good of society. Institutional autonomy, however, ultimately and fundamentally is grounded in the academic freedom of the professoriate.

In this country, the protections of academic freedom have been hard won over the years thanks largely to the efforts of the Association. The courts have recognized the validity of such protections only in relatively modern times. By contrast, European universities often operate under explicitly stated legal protections of academic freedom. For example, article 5 of the German constitution expressly states that there shall be freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and that "art and scholarship, research, and teaching shall be free." Both American and European university models, however, recognize that the faculty’s individual intellectual autonomy (academic freedom) is the core principle in the absence of which the institution cannot fulfill its social responsibility.

Academic freedom, of course, has never meant that faculty members are free to do anything they please. Faculty have always recognized the need to be responsive (in Weber’s terminology) as well as responsible. The needs of students, colleagues, and the institution itself modify the aspirations and activities of the professoriate. Faculty design and teach courses that serve the interests of students, not their own. They cooperate with colleagues within their departments and schools in curricular and other matters, often modifying their own particular desires to achieve consensus. (The multisection course with a common syllabus is often a true test of collegiality.) They develop educational programs and research agendas to further the long-term goals of their institutions. In short, like colleges and universities themselves, faculty members have an obligation to be responsive as well as responsible. They also have the important but always delicate obligation to find the proper balance between responsibility and responsiveness. Where to draw the line, when to recognize that a fundamental aspect of academic freedom is threatened, however benign in appearance the threat may be, requires prudence, good judgment, and sometimes the help of the AAUP.

In practical terms, the greatest current threat to both institutional and faculty autonomy comes from the structure and adequacy of funding. The pressure to compromise institutional autonomy and individual academic freedom for scarce resources is strong and pervasive. Public institutions, lured by the promise of a generous infusion of cash, may seriously consider privatization and with it a narrowing of their sense of social obligation. (The recent debate over the privatization of the Oregon Institute of Technology may be a harbinger of things to come; see "Public Institution Considers Becoming Private" in this issue of Academe.) Faculty researchers, funded by private corporations, may feel compelled to direct their work toward corporate rather than social goals and publish only those results that support the corporate agenda. When the desire to be responsive becomes a need to be responsive, autonomy, both institutional and individual, is in jeopardy.

End Note

1. Although legal conflicts between institutional autonomy and individual academic freedom have begun to emerge in American higher education, this issue was not of concern to the European participants of the seminar, whose respective legal systems have not produced this incipient dilemma. For a discussion of the relevant legal issues in the United States, see David M. Rabban’s article, "Academic Freedom, Individual or Institutional?" in the November–December 2001 issue of Academe. Back to text.

Martin Snyder is AAUP director of planning and development. Before joining the AAUP staff, he was president of Molloy College and professor of classics at Duquesne University.

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