Some Branches Were More Equal Than Others
One state university system found that when faculty members from flagship and branch campuses started talking to each other, they could work out fair governance standards for all.
By Richard Veit
Most American colleges and universities profess commitment to the principles of shared governance, but the degree to which those lofty ideals are actually applied varies considerably from institution to institution. That disparity became apparent to me during the two terms I served as chair of the Faculty Assembly of the University of North Carolina—the representative body that brings together faculty delegates from the university’s sixteen campuses. Shared governance was thriving on most of our campuses, including the large research schools such as Chapel Hill and North Carolina State, but I soon learned that it was considerably less robust at some of the smaller schools in our system.
Some faculty members complained that administrators routinely made curricular decisions on their campuses without any faculty consultation. Some first heard about changes to tenure policies only after the changes had been ratified by their institution’s board of trustees. Some lamented that the recommendations of grievance and appeals panels were regularly ignored. Many of these complaints came from the system’s five historically black campuses, which have a long history of top-down governance.1
The Faculty Assembly has little authority over the individual campuses that make up our state university system. If the faculty senates on the sixteen campuses can be compared to the parliaments of national governments, then the assembly is the United Nations—a forum that permits members to consult with one another, share information, and seek to sway opinion but not to exercise direct control over the internal affairs of any of its member states.
As assembly chair, I approached senior administrators of the university’s central administration for help in bringing more participatory governance to our smaller schools. The administrators sympathized but hesitated to intervene, perhaps because, as one administrator put it, “cultural traditions” were involved. This argument did not persuade delegates, especially not those from the historically black campuses, who were the most vocal in calling for more participatory governance.
Minimum Standards
Lacking power to intervene directly, the assembly used its more indirect tools. We proposed to gather and share information to help faculty determine if their situation was atypical and whether to demand from administrators the same rights enjoyed by faculty on other system campuses. The assembly also had the authority to formulate a statement on the standards of shared governance we expected to be in place on all sixteen campuses. Although it would not be legally binding on any administration, such a document, we reasoned, could have considerable moral force. We put the proposal to the assembly delegates, who authorized a survey of system campuses. After the faculty officers of all sixteen campuses completed a lengthy questionnaire, we posted the results on the assembly Web site.
We asked fifty questions touching on the autonomy of the senate (Who determines the representatives? Does the chair get released time? Is the budget adequate? Can the senate amend its bylaws?); the faculty’s role in academic policy making (Who determines tenure and promotion policy, graduation requirements, the establishment of new departments and majors, and grade-appeal procedures? Who selects faculty members of committees?); and the role of administration (Do senior administrators appear before the senate when asked to answer questions? Does the chancellor typically sustain recommendations of faculty tenure, hearings, and grievance committees? Does the faculty participate meaningfully in the selection of academic administrators? Does the faculty evaluate administrators?). Many questions in our survey were adapted from a survey tool the AAUP developed called “Evaluation of Shared Governance.”
As expected, results varied considerably from campus to campus. Typical of the spread was the response to the final question: “In your opinion, on a scale of 1 (most authoritarian) to 5 (most collegial), how do the faculty on your campus regard the relationship between administration and faculty?” The responses: two 5s, six 4s, four 3s, three 2s, and one 1.
The survey confirmed that some of our campuses needed help in gaining governance rights that most of us took for granted. We began to formulate a statement on shared governance that would spell out minimum standards. A draft was circulated among assembly delegates and sent to the campuses for feedback. We received many suggestions that we ultimately incorporated into the statement.
We titled the document Standards of Shared Governance, and its preamble began with the affirmation, “A strong tradition of shared governance is essential to the excellence of any institution of higher learning.” The document included sections on faculty senates, faculty governance responsibilities, and administration-faculty collegiality.
Each section included a series of “must” statements such as, “Members of the senate must represent the academic units of the institution and must be elected directly by the faculty of those units.” The contributions of English and law professors were apparent in wording that aimed for both clarity and precision. For example, the section on faculty responsibilities stated, “The university’s curriculum is the responsibility of the faculty. The faculty, acting as a committee of the whole or through representatives elected by the faculty or designated pursuant to procedures established by faculty legislation, must give approval to academic policies prior to their implementation, including but not limited to the following.” Fourteen specific prerogatives were then listed, from “graduation requirements” to “the elimination or consolidation of degree programs” to “course-repeat policies.”
Compliance Issues
During the drafting and review stage, only one area proved seriously controversial: the section on compliance. All agreed on how the section should begin: “It is the responsibility of the faculty of each campus to advocate, seek, and monitor the campus’s adherence to the Standards of Shared Governance. When a campus is not in compliance with one or more standards, faculty should seek resolution through processes at the campus level.”
But what should happen if the faculty’s best local efforts failed to achieve results? One group wanted to authorize the assembly to appoint an investigating panel modeled on the AAUP committees that investigate alleged violations of governance. A careful process would allow facts to be set forth and would provide the local administration both incentive and opportunity to bring its practices into compliance. As an ultimate step, if all else failed, the assembly could vote to sanction the noncompliant administration. Like AAUP sanction, the action would have no legal force but could be expected to generate media coverage that administrators would find unwelcome and might go to some lengths to avoid.
Others disagreed strongly, however, and argued that such steps went well beyond the assembly’s charter and interfered with local campus prerogatives. In cases of noncompliance, they preferred that the assembly limit itself to forwarding campus complaints to the UNC president. The more activist group countered that leaving the matter to administrators would not necessarily result in change that satisfied the faculty.
After considerable deliberation, we arrived at compromise language: “However, when the faculty’s sustained efforts to secure compliance have not been successful, the faculty, through its senate or the chair of the faculty, is encouraged to consult with the officers of the Faculty Assembly, who will bring the matter to the attention of the president and work with all parties to achieve a resolution.”
Following its approval by the assembly’s Governance Committee, a final draft of the policy was brought before the assembly in April and received unanimous approval and considerable praise. The chair forwarded copies to all system chancellors and senates, and the UNC academic vice president commended the document to the chief academic officers of the sixteen campuses. We hope that the statement will prove both a bulwark to preserve good governance where it currently exists and an effective stimulus where change is needed.
Note:
1. The sixteen campuses that make up the University of North Carolina system include two major research universities, three other doctoral-granting universities, nine comprehensive universities (including the five historically black institutions and one Native American campus), a designated undergraduate university, and the specialized School of the Arts, which enrolls high school students through graduate students. Back to text.
Richard Veit is professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
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