Breaking down the jobs of faculty governance (opinion)

People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill—they want a quarter-inch hole, the Harvard University marketing professor Theodore Levitt famously said. The point he creatively made is that it’s the job the customer wants done that matters, not the device. Higher education doesn’t give enough intentional attention to the variety of jobs of faculty governance.

Most of the talk about faculty governance, instead, centers on roles and responsibilities (stay-in-your-lane discussions, faculty handbooks), relationships between faculty and administrators (how to make them better), and power dynamics (how to change them or overcome them). But by focusing on the work itself, institutions will be able to construct more comprehensive and meaningful agendas for faculty governance.

Faculty governance is a fundamental element of higher education decision making. It was codified in the American Association of University Professors’ 1966 Statement of Government of Colleges and Universities that was jointly formulated by the American Council on Education and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Faculty have the deep professional expertise that is fundamental to the central functions of universities, including in determining and implementing strategy. In this way, higher education institutions operate differently from most other organizations, with exceptions being hospitals and legal and consulting firms. Professional authority is central, but the ways that authority is put to work matter.

The Jobs of Faculty Governance

There are three operational jobs that faculty governance should provide their institutions—supporting academic work, advocating faculty priorities and advancing institutional objectives—and one cultural job, the stewardship of institutional values. Faculty leaders should be intentional about the balance of time and effort expended across these domains. Time is finite, and leaders must make wise and intentional choices among priorities.

The first domain of work is to support the academic functions of the institution. This work should be familiar to most involved in faculty governance and includes areas such as curricular reviews, course approvals and teaching evaluations; academic policies such as academic integrity, grading and academic leave; research; and faculty appointments and the likes of promotion and tenure. These areas are the primary domain of faculty, and the 1966 statement denotes them as such.

The second area of work focuses on advocacy work on behalf of faculty, but also staff and students depending on the institution and its governance approach and culture. Examples include compensation and working conditions, professional development, and faculty roles in decision-making. A watchdog function, when warranted, can also be part of this work, holding the administration accountable for its decisions and asking for justifiable rationales.

The final area of work is advancing institutional priorities that benefit from faculty perspective and capacity. This work includes strategic planning, accreditation, input on budgets and capital projects, or perspective on co-curricular experiences or athletics. It includes work on timely and emerging issues such as free speech and student protest policies. COVID response is another recent example.

Beyond these often big-ticket issues are smaller areas that benefit from faculty involvement. For example, one institution I worked with engaged the Faculty Senate in the work of reviewing its bookstore and its services. Another institution developed a joint faculty-administrative tree-and-canopy committee related to the institution’s sustainability commitment.

Faculty should be intentional about the allocation of efforts across these three domains. Depending on the context and the situation, faculty bodies may spend more or less time across each, but they should be working on all three. While advocating for faculty is essential, if this is the only or overwhelmingly dominant focus, faculty governance risks becoming seen as one-note by administrators and the board and as overly self-focused.

As for the third domain, advancing institutional priorities, faculty leaders often are bothered by the fact that they seem to be reacting to administrator priorities rather than getting out in front. There are institutional issues on which faculty have taken the lead, but more likely than not they are responding to administrative agendas. This tension can be explained by a number of factors: Faculty are primarily focused on their disciplines, classrooms and labs. Those are their areas of expertise, interest and engagement. They are busy and committed. Administrators, on the other hand, spend the majority of their time on the institution and the higher education sector. Their job and its associated networks and sources of information (including Inside Higher Ed) provide them with a view and depth of expertise on administrative topics that most faculty typically don’t have. For example, financial administrators will know more about the budget and things financial because of their training and education, their long professional experience, and their professional networks and ongoing professional development opportunities. Faculty who are doing faculty work don’t have the same time, knowledge or access.

So, while it might be difficult to get ahead of the curve, faculty leaders can get to the front of that curve (although for some Freudian reason my fingers twice typed “curse”). Have a meeting at the beginning of the academic year with the president and other senior campus leaders about their priorities for the year. State of the university addresses also are insightful. Look at accreditation documents or strategic plans. Then discuss with faculty leadership the ways faculty can move forward those agendas. For example, the Faculty Senate can create study groups on difficult problems; it can convene faculty focus groups for broad input; it can conduct surveys and look to its in-house expertise. Talk about process and outcomes and engage administrators. Campus administrators face great challenges, and faculty can play important roles advancing the institutional work in constructive collaborations around agreed-upon priorities.

Routine and Nonroutine Decisions

It is important to note that not all types of decisions faculty senates face are the same. And most likely a senate is structured and practiced to make some decisions better than others.

To understand the types of decisions faculty governance is called upon to make, the following framework might be helpful:

• Routine decisions are those that need to be made on a regular and ongoing basis. Many of these types of decisions are driven by the academic calendar. Examples include curriculum updates and new course approvals.
• Episodic decisions are those that are made infrequently and on a nonroutine schedule. They may be novel or unique, but need not be—for example, strategic planning or a presidential search, which is done only every few years (hopefully).
• Furthermore, some decisions are strategic in nature, broadly affecting the institution or its strategic positioning. The creation of a new school is an example, or the development of off-site academic programs or online degrees. Decisions that fall into substantive change requests by accreditors are examples.
• Finally, there are those decisions needed for the operations and ongoing work of the college. For example, course approval decisions or those related to promotion and tenure might be considered operations or maintenance.

These four types can be combined into a two-by-two matrix: Routine/Operations; Routine/Strategic; Episodic/Operations; Episodic/Strategic. In most instances, faculty governance works very well for Routine/Operations decisions. Processes exist to carry out such work as promotion and tenure, academic program review, curriculum revision, or course approval. These are continually used but also refined over time.

Decisions that are infrequent and fall outside familiar processes are more challenging. This is particularly the case for Episodic/Strategic decisions, such as those involving strategic planning, the creation of new schools or colleges, and program closures. They often tend to be of high stakes. Time-tested processes do not exist and institutions often need to create new approaches in real time.

Some of the frustration faculty feel with Episodic/Strategic decisions is about expectations. Faculty expect these decisions to be routine or at least follow routine patterns. Some thus infer that decisions are happening elsewhere and without faculty input. The result is a call for more transparency. Yet the core issue might not be transparency, but instead the timing of decisions and the need to better explain and contextualize decisions and requested input.

Embodying Institutional Values

Robert Birnbaum wrote 20 years ago in his essay on hard and soft governance, “The greatest danger to higher education may be not that decisions are made too slowly because of the drag of consultation, but that they are made too swiftly and without regard for institutional core values.” Advancing institutional core values is the fourth area of work for faculty governance. Faculty governance becomes the neural network connecting ideas, people and disciplines, and the core functions of colleges and universities.

To update Birnbaum’s point, time and values need not be in conflict, but the observation that decisions are reflections of core values is important. Faculty governance becomes the arena through which such values are reaffirmed, tested, contested and replaced. Faculty leaders should recognize that their work is not simply instrumental. The stewardship of institutions is a heavy responsibility, and recognizing this should shape how academic leaders approach their work, engage with administrators and the board, and are accountable for their actions.