University Business - September 2011 - (Page 36)

her husband is based on data collected in 1999 by Stanley Rothman, a professor emeritus at Smith College (Mass.), it described a trend that has continued. “The newest chair at the table is government,” adds Matthew Woessner, especially at public universities such as his. “In return for its loan guarantees and funding, the more government will demand more results and efficiency. And it will have a lot more influence on the testing [of students] that we will be doing.” And recent legislation barring faculty from collective bargaining is further evidence, says April Woessner, that lawmakers and even the general public are taking a diminished view of the role of professors. “Somebody outside of the university system does not understand the notion of shared governance,” she says. “We’re just employees.” What Ever Happened to Shared Governance? It’s the Economy Financial pressures have also left their marks on shared governance practices, and not just during the economic crises of the past three years, Nelson says. “State funding of higher education has steadily declined over a 20-year period, so there’s been more conflict over the budget.” He points to Florida State University’s large-scale downsizing of its anthropology department this past year and the State University of New York, Albany’s elimination of multiple language programs. “There were no consultations with the departments or with the faculty senate, so shared governance failed,” Nelson insists. “In the past five or 10 years, many campuses have seen deep, deep budget cuts that have eliminated faculty positions and entire departments,” points out Salisbury’s Dudley-Eshbach. “That makes the conversation very, very difficult.” What’s also become more difficult, faculty senate veterans say, is sharing governance over areas such as whether to put up and how to design new academic buildings, how the budget is allocated, and what say the faculty have over new academic programs. And they offer up examples that they agree could be chapters in a textbook of how not to conduct shared governance. Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, cites an initiative by its former chancellor to start a new program promoting capitalism, for which the board consisted mainly of pro-business, largely conservative members and just one UI professor. “They were going to appoint visiting faculty, fund course development, and award research grants to faculty agreeing with their ideology,” he says. “It was an absolute breach of the faculty handbook, and when it became public, the whole thing fell apart.” Nelson recalls that UI faculty were similarly bypassed when administration launched an online learning site called Global Campus three years ago. “They didn’t know about online education,” he says, particularly that the UI students most likely to take online courses were those already enrolled in degree programs on campus. UI administration, he continues, envisioned a degree earned entirely online. “It was a curriculum innovation, and that’s officially a 36 | September 2011 t some public universities, giving collective bargaining rights to faculty has become part of the shared governance equation. that equation changed this past winter in Wisconsin and ohio, as newly-elected governors and state legislatures enacted laws cutting the benefits of all public employees—university faculty among them—and eliminated most collective bargaining rights. Faculty members protested in the capitals of both states, and faculty senates passed resolutions condemning the new laws. At Ohio University, which does not have collective bargaining, the faculty senate passed a resolution challenging the presidents at other state universities to oppose the law as it was being considered. “it seemed among faculty that columbus was exercising control that it hadn’t in the past, and there was a lot of displeasure when we saw that the university presidents in ohio agreed with the law,” says Joseph mclaughlin, an english professor and president of ou’s faculty senate. “When we pressed our president, he wasn’t opposed. that rankled faculty.” in Wisconsin, a controversial budget repair bill championed by republican gov. scott Walker survived court challenges and in June was deemed constitutional by the state’s supreme court. the decision was especially galling to the professors at Wisconsin’s state universities who had only received the right to bargain three years earlier. michael Draney, who heads the faculty senate at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay notes that the faculty there had already lost a 2 percent pay raise and lost another 3 percent for the past two years due to furloughs. “the faculty were very unhappy. We felt that not only did we take a pay cut and lose rights, but we were underappreciated,” says Draney, who was organizing a faculty union just as the new law passed. “We felt that the administration was being very quiet and that they were not on our side.” Draney adds that the school administration was largely at the mercy of political forces. “it definitely put us under a strain initially. they were really constrained by what they could do. We don’t see them as collaborators with the state government. “As soon as they realized how unhappy we were, they made A Discord in Wisconsin and Ohio faculty responsibility. The Global Campus closed down, and $25 million went down the drain. And it was because of the administration feeling that they knew best.” John Lachs, a Vanderbilt University (Tenn.) philosophy professor since 1967 and a former president of the school’s faculty senate, has gone so far in his recent writings to declare shared governance a myth. “The myth is that faculty constitute the heart of the university and are in certain respects self-determining. We really imagine that we have an impact on how the university operates, what its universitybusiness.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - September 2011

University Business - September 2011
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Financial Aid
Money Matters
Internet Technology
Shared Governance
Acknowledging Achievement
Looking Back
Spotlight on Procurement
EduComm 2011
End Note

University Business - September 2011