Academic Governance and Democratic Processes: The Entrepreneurial Model and Its Discontents

Abstract

Institutional power over the decision-making process in post-secondary institutions has traditionally been concentrated in the academy itself and, to a lesser extent, in state regulatory offices. Recently, however, this type of governance has been challenged and, in many places, replaced by a new, entrepreneurial model emphasizing more control by college administrations, increased involvement by outside “stakeholders,” and the use of competition among and within schools for students and resources as the main criterion for determining investment and curricular priorities. This article describes the entrepreneurial model of academic governance, then shows it in action through a detailed examination of the presidential succession crisis at the University of Virginia. This case study reveals many aspects of the discourse of entrepreneurial governance and illustrates the utilitarian nature of the model. The article proceeds to consider the reasons why such a discourse developed, tying the entrepreneurial model to the promulgation of neoliberal ideologies that are remaking social institutions more generally. The effects on the role of education in democratic politics in the United States are then analyzed. The conclusion of the article speaks to the difficulties of addressing these effects and recommends ways of analyzing responses to the model by the institutions and individuals involved.

Notes

¹ Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 152.

² Paul J. Demaggio and Walter W. Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Journal of Sociology 48 (1983), pp. 147–160. They define an organizational field as “…sets of organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life; key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that produce similar services or products (p. 148).”

³ For an overview, see Franz van Vught, Patterns of Governance in Higher Education: Concepts and Trends (Paris, France: UNESCO, 1993).

⁴ Jochen Fried, “Higher Education Governance in Europe: Autonomy, Ownership, and Accountability—A Review of the Literature,” in Jurgen Kohler and Josef Huber (eds), Higher Education and Governance: Between Democratic Culture, Academic Aspirations, and Market Forces (Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe, 2006), p. 87. Fried's figure is based on work by Harry de Boer, Jurgen Enders, and Uwe Schimank, “Orchestrating Creative Minds. The Governance of Higher Education and Research in Four Countries Compared” (Unpublished paper, University of Twente, 2005).

⁵ Fried, “Higher Education Governance in Europe,” p. 85.

⁶ It is worth remembering that the vast expansion of both public and private education in the US was supervised largely by a combination of faculty members working as administrators and state regulators. California's experience in building what is still generally considered the best public university system in the world is illustrative. See Aron Bady and Mike Konczal, “From Master Plan to No Plan: The Slow Death of Public Education,” Dissent (Fall 2012), pp. 10–16, for an excellent short history.

⁷ Carol S. Wood, “Remarks of Rector Helen Dragas, Meeting With Vice Presidents and Deans, June 10, 2012,” UVA Today, June 10, 2012,  < http://news.virginia.edu/node/18791?id = 18791>.

⁸ An exceptionally complete record of the entire affair with appropriate comments from principals and interested parties can be found in the Fall 2012 issue of the University of Virginia Magazine, “17 Days in June: From Resignation to Reinstatement” (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Alumni Association, 2012).

⁹ William Wulf, “Message From Bill Wulf,” < http://sullivan.lib.virginia.edu/items/show/148>.

¹⁰University of Virginia Magazine, “17 Days in June,” pp. 12–13.

¹¹ Hawes Spencer, “Dragas to Kingdon: ‘Why We Can't Afford to Wait,”’ The Hook, June 20, 2012, < http://www.readthehook.com/104310/dragas-kingdon-why-we-cant-afford-wait>.

¹² Countney Stuart, “Dragas Shrugged: Defiant Rector Hires PR Firm,” The Hook, June 18, 2012, < https://www.readthehook.com/104274/dragas-shrugged-who-rector>.

¹³ It is possible that Dragas did not write this document. It has been reported that it was written by her recently hired public relations firm (Stuart, “Dragas Shrugged”). For a blistering analysis of the basic incoherence of the BOV's explanations of Sullivan's dismissal, see Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Strategic Mumblespeak: Er, UVA's Teresa Sullivan Was Fired For What?” Slate, June 15, 2012, < http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2012/06/teresa_sullivan_fired_from_uva_what_happens_when_universities_are_run_by_robber_barons_.single.html>.

¹⁴ Helen Dragas, “Statement of Helen E. Dragas, Rector, University of Virginia,” June 21, 2012, < http://www.virginia.edu/presidentialtransition/120621dragas.html>.

¹⁵ Dragas, “Statement.”

¹⁶ Teresa Sullivan, “Message From President Sullivan to the Board of Visitors,” June 18, 2012, < http://www.virginia.edu/president/speeches/12/message120618.html>.

¹⁷ Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980), p. 37.

¹⁸Power/Knowledge, p. 131.

¹⁹ For a widely influential exposition, see Chapter 12 in Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2008). Bok's title makes the utilitarian emphasis that Foucault describes as self-evident.

²⁰ Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974).

²¹ The explosion of the use of adjunct faculty, easily replaced and largely interchangeable, is the obvious result of this process. See Nicolaus Mills, “The Corporatization of Higher Education,” Dissent (Fall 2012), pp. 6–9. For an overview of the effects of these changes on academic governance itself, see Adrianna Kazar, Jamie Lester, and Gregory Anderson, “Challenging Stereotypes That Interfere With Effective Governance,” Thought and Action (Fall 2006), pp. 121–134.

²² Perhaps the best indicator of why this strategy is necessary here is the difficulty in finding a coherent definition of the concept of academic governance. See Jurgen Kohler, “Higher Education Governance—Background, Significance, Purpose,” in Kohler and Huber, Higher Education Governance, pp. 17–32, for an overview of the many ways governance has been conceived for higher education. Like many analysts faced with this problem, I have opted for a description of the features of the discourse rather then trying to give any general conceptual overview.

²³ Bady and Konczal, “From Master Plan to No Plan.”

²⁴ William Bostock, “To the Limits of Acceptability: Political Control of Higher Education,” in John Biggs and Richard Davis (eds), The Subversion of Australian Universities (Wollongong, NSW: Fund For Intellectual Dissent, 2002), pp. 19–40. http://www.bmartin.cc/dissent/documents/sau/index.html.

²⁵ Bostock, “To the Limits of Acceptability.” See also Bob Bessant, “A Climate of Fear: From Collegiality to Corporatization,” in Biggs and Davis, The Subversion of Australian Universities, pp. 51–84.

²⁶ Horace Mann, Report Number 12 of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1848), < http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/democrac/16.htm>. Indeed, the very idea of a responsibility for political education has largely disappeared in post-secondary educational institutions in the US. See Barry Checkoway, “Renewing the Civic Mission of the American Research University,” The Journal of Higher Education 72:2 (2001), pp. 125–147.

²⁷ Bady and Konczal, “From Master Plan to No Plan.”

²⁸ See Neal Caren, Raj Andrew Ghoshal, and Venesa Ribas, “A Social Movement Generation: Cohort and Period Trends in Protest Attendance and Petition Signing,” American Sociological Review 76:1 (2011), pp. 125–151. Their findings indicate that the majority of Americans who have either attended a protest or even signed a petition is very low overall and dominated by the cohort that came of age in the 1960s.

²⁹ Kevin Kiley, “Don't Mess With Texas,” Inside Higher Education, May 14, 2012, < http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/14/university-texas-community-rallies-behind-austin-president-dispute-politicians#sthash.8z2jxa4I.dpbs>.

³⁰ OECD, Education at a Glance, 2013: OECD Indicators (OECD Publishing, 2013), < http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2013-en>. It is revealing that the US spends twice as much on “ancillary services” (transport, room, and board) for post-secondary education than its nearest OECD competitor (the United Kingdom).

³¹ It is interesting to see how often these programs are justified as a tool for positively affecting “success” in meeting quantitative learning outcomes. Promoting civic engagement itself is seen as secondary, not as a goal in itself. See the symposium in Diversity and Democracy 15:3 (2012), < http://www.diversityweb.org/DiversityDemocracy/vol15no3/vol15no3.pdf>, for examples of this kind of thinking. The influence of the entrepreneurial model is plainly evident.

³² When students do get a voice in planning and carrying out service learning projects, the results are more encouraging. See William Morgan and Matthew Streb, “Building Citizenship: How Student Voice in Service Learning Develops Civic Values,” Social Science Quarterly 82:1 (2001), pp. 154–169.

³³ It is not that such initiatives do not have desirable effects; there is considerable evidence that community research and service learning do increase volunteerism and the desire to work within communities. However, the level of civic engagement reported, even after educational interventions, remains depressingly low. See the figures reported in The National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy's Future (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2012), pp. 5–7.

³⁴ See the contrast of views on p. 6 of Jean Johnson and Christopher Di Stasi, Divided We Fail: Why It's Time for a Broader, More Inclusive Conversation on the Future of Higher Education, (The Kettering Foundation, 2014), < http://kettering.org/wp-content/uploads/PA-KF-Divided-We-Fail-Final.pdf>. As can be seen, there is little support for many of the entrepreneurial model's ideas in the general public.

³⁵ Bronyn Davies and Eva Bendix Petersen, “Neo-Liberal Discourse in the Academy: The Forestalling of (Collective) Resistance,” Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences 2:2 (2005), pp. 77–98.

³⁶ James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1994), pp. 18–19.

³⁷ See the numerous emails to the Board of Visitors concerning the Sullivan affair included in Henry Graff, “New E-mails Give Insight Into Sullivan Ouster,” NBC29 News, September 26, 2012, < http://www.nbc29.com/story/19530076/new-emails-give-insight-into-sullivan-ouster>.

³⁸ It is quite likely that the same scenario will be repeated. See Kevin Kiley, “What's Up with Boards These Days?” Inside Higher Education, July 2, 2012, < http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/07/02/trustees-are-different-they-used-be-and-uva-clashes-will-be-more-common#sthash.HkX5QBpz.UHRHiPOC.dpbs for a useful overview of the factors involved>.

³⁹ Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine, p. 281.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Looking at the crisis at the University of Virginia, it becomes clear that the entrepreneurial model has neglected the concern that graduates of universities and colleges have for the value of their degrees, a value created by the integrity of the credentialing process mentioned earlier. Fears about the impact of Sullivan's preemptory dismissal on the university's national reputation—and, hence, the value of their degrees—was at the center of the outrage expressed by Virginia graduates as they threatened to withdraw their support from the university and castigated interference by the political appointees of the BOV. See Graff, “New E-mails Give Insight.”

⁴² For an overview of declining American social and political engagement that is particularly relevant to the themes in this article, see Theda Sckocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003).

⁴³ Kevin Kiley, “The Virginia Effect,” Inside Higher Education, September 25, 2012, < http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/25/reaction-unc-chancellor-resignation-shows-influence- virginia-controversy>.

⁴⁴ Kevin Kiley, “What's a Board to Do?” Inside Higher Education, August 17, 2012, < http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/17/uva-board-retreat-focuses-structure-and-attitudes>.

⁴⁵ An excellent example of this is former Senator Rick Santorum's tirade against expansions of collegiate education during the 2012 presidential campaign. See Scott Jaschik, “Santorum's Attacks on Higher Ed,” Inside Higher Education, February 27, 2012, < http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/27/santorums- views-higher-education-and-satan>.

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Tracy L.R. Lightcap

Tracy L.R. Lightcap is Professor of Political Science and Chair of Political Science at LaGrange College. He is the author of The Politics of Torture (2011) and co-editor of Examining Torture: Empirical Studies of State Repression (2014). He has published articles on torture and interrogation policy, judicial administration, comparative judicial politics, and judicial decision-making.