26 Ohio faculty and administrators were presented with a set of shared governance models and asked to indicate which model best suited the needs and culture of Ohio University.
Faculty dominate; faculty rotate into administrative positions: (Votes: 4, 15 percent)
Some administrators put decision-making largely in the hands of faculty; faculty in charge not only of academic matters, but also have large influence in how money is spent. (Votes: 4, 15 percent)
What we have now: Administration retains control over finances, facilities, management. Faculty control academics/curriculum. (Votes: 15, 58 percent)
Corporate model: Top-down structure with administrators making all final decisions. Faculty would still give input over academic/curricular issues, but administrators could give input and make decisions. (Votes: 0, 0 percent)
No Vote: (3, 12 percent)
Quotes from articles and authors
Stanley Fish: Author of Shared Governance: Democracy is Not an Educational Idea and professor of law at Florida International University.
Quotations from Post Interview with Stanley Fish
Efficiency and ... 'getting things done' dictates management be in the hands of the administration.
Academics simply believe - without ever arguing the point - that it's a natural right of professors to run the workplaces in which they labor.
The ideal form of governance is geared to a very small operation ... What you have (at OU) is not this idealized liberal arts landscape - you have something that is very like a big business.
Many university administrators hoard information and that's bad - that allows conspiracy theories to flourish.
(The base of faculty distrust is) that they don't know what is going on but questions of their professional lives are being decided in back rooms to which they have not been invited.
You have to be able to poke fun at yourself and address faculty in a way that doesn't come across as pompous and magisterial.
In my view
faculty want to be given the right or the power to make decisions but they don't want to do the work. This is not true of all faculty of course.
From the article: As long as the 'unimpeded pursuit and dissemination of knowledge' are acknowledged to be at the center of the university's mission everyone in the chain of command
however it is configured
should foster it.
Quotations from Shared Governance: Democracy is Not an Educational Idea
It is the withholding of information
not of responsibility
that leaves faculty members feeling left out
taken for granted and generally disrespected.
Jerry Gaff: Senior scholar at the Association of American Colleges and Universities and author of What if the Faculty Really Do Assume Responsibility for the Educational Program?
Quotations from Post Interview with Jerry Gaff
Board members tend to bring a corporate mentality - which is what they know - and they don't understand the mentalities that characterize students and faculty on college campuses.
In your ideal world
(administrators) would be sensitive to the academic mission and the distinct qualities of the university and how it differs from a corporate organization or a legislative organization or a political organization.
It does seem to me that you need a kind of cooling off period.
Quotations from What if the Faculty Really Do Assume Responsibility for the Educational Program?
While the faculty are generally responsible for academic decisions
they are seldom held accountable either for student learning or for the fiscal results of their decisions.
There have been too few efforts among administrators to bring faculty members into the national dialogue about improving the quality of education.
In practice
however
