Shared Governance: For Better and For (Much) Worse

The writer is a current president.

I’ve yet to become fully desensitized to the vitriol, incivility, and histrionics that characterize the behavior of faculty in senate meetings: the bandying of terms such as “unethical,” “dishonest,” and “incompetent” to describe administrators who are attempting, in the face of headwinds that are apparently not understood or appreciated, to make difficult decisions to ensure the institution’s viability. 

The saving grace is the realization that what at first blush feels like the behavior of “the faculty” is, in reality, the unchecked performance of a predictable handful of individuals who come prepared to attempt to squash or undercut any new proposal or idea. 

The maddening part of this is that, after these meetings, I invariably hear from other faculty who remind me that the loudest voices are not necessarily representative. I can’t help but ask why these other voices are never heard. Further, it seems that even the bad actors know that they are simply enacting a predetermined part in the drama. They’re often heard telling administrators they’ve recently attacked in very personal terms something like, “I hope I wasn’t too tough—we’re all just playing our roles, you know.”

The writer is a current president.

Effective shared governance depends on three interlocking parts: strong faculty governance, strong board governance, and a president and cabinet who work together as a team to pursue shared goals. If any one of these three is weak, the system falters. If two or more are dysfunctional, governance becomes untenable.

At the core of effective shared governance is trust. The pandemic reshaped how we interact, often weakening those personal connections that sustain trust. Faculty are less present on campus; boards meet more frequently on Zoom; and faculty, staff, and trustees are less likely to know one another personally.

I recall as a new faculty member being shocked by the intensity of debates in faculty meetings—until I attended faculty gatherings and saw those same colleagues, moments later, laughing together and sharing family stories. That human connection transformed my view of governance.

Shared governance is never easy, but when it works, it strengthens our institutions immeasurably.

The writer is a former president.

As everyone in higher ed leadership knows, the practice of shared governance has expanded far beyond core academic matters. This is not a critique of faculty; I still consider myself one. I have nothing but admiration for the intellectual power, commitment, and impact our faculty have on students, society, and on our collective future. But admiration doesn’t mean preservation of outdated models.

Faculty should be consulted about curricular decisions and lead on idea generation when it comes to the academic enterprise. They are best positioned to envision the next great program, the next research direction, the next pedagogical innovation.

But whether those ideas become reality and how they are resourced, launched, staffed, and sustained must fall under the purview of leadership, because hard trade-offs are now required in higher education that require data, planning, marketing, branding, financial modeling, and risk management that extend far beyond subject-matter expertise.

The practice of shared governance, however, means that now faculty often expect to co-govern on matters of finance, enrollment strategy, facilities planning, student support, and long-term investment.

That model has become dangerous. Virtually every institutional function requires highly specialized knowledge. It is imprudent, and frankly unfair, to ask nonspecialist faculty to co-manage at this level of complexity. We don’t hire physicists for their expertise in net tuition revenue models. Faculty are hired to teach, to mentor, to produce new knowledge. That’s where their genius lies.

There are additional problems. Faculty governance proceeds on academic time. That isn’t necessarily bad, but it is, by design, not agile. Yet agility is exactly what institutional management requires. Crises erupt in real time. Interest rates change without regard for consultation calendars. Opportunities open and close quickly. Strategic pivots can’t wait. Faculty input is essential—but it must occur at a tempo that allows the institution to operate.

Further, shared governance confers tremendous responsibility, but often without corresponding accountability. When faculty have authority over instruction, what’s the recourse when that instruction falls short? What happens when pedagogy is outdated, disengaging, or produces inequitable student outcomes? At too many institutions, nothing. Teaching and learning centers are voluntary. Faculty development is optional. Poor practice goes unaddressed for years.

We don’t talk about this. We pride ourselves (quietly) on how effective tenure processes are at weeding out unsuitable candidates. They are. That’s why the vast majority who come up for tenure get it. But post-tenure review? It shelters rather than supports the improvement or exit of faculty who burn out or fail to scale into their roles.

There’s limited accountability for department chairs, too. They oversee budgets, course assignments, evaluations, and departmental strategy. But most are neither selected nor trained for management, nor held accountable through expectation-setting and performance evaluation.

That has to change. If you are responsible for people and resources, you are in management. Full stop. You should be supported, trained, compensated, and evaluated accordingly. If that’s an oversight by administration, why do academic personnel manuals in nonunion shops, and collective bargaining agreements in unionized ones, insist so strenuously that chairs remain in the faculty line?

In practice, shared governance often rests in the hands of a very small subset of faculty. A handful of leaders carry the governance mantle, sometimes for decades. But do they represent the full faculty? Do they seek broad input? Sometimes, but often not.

In some institutions, shared governance becomes coercive. Faculty leaders with authority over course schedules or workloads wield that authority in ways that chill dissent. I’ve seen cases where speaking up led to less desirable course assignments or subtle professional penalties.

We have been good in higher education at growing through addition. We are less good at growing through substitution. And that’s what’s required now. If we’re going to say yes to something new, we have to say no to something old. That’s a management function.

If we want our institutions to thrive, not just survive, we need governance models that match the complexity, urgency, and tempo of the moment. What those will look like is the zillion-dollar question.

The writer is a current president.

Since stepping into my first academic leadership role as department chair, I have been committed to strong shared governance and transparency. Now, as president, I have taken great care to keep faculty and staff fully informed about our finances, enrollment, long-term sustainability initiatives, and the ways they can contribute.

Recently, a faculty member emailed to inform me that an advisee had heard a harmful, false rumor circulating among students. When the faculty member discussed it with the student, the student used a jargon-laden phrase that no one would expect students to know. The student did not know the origin of the rumor, but it was clear that it had come from a faculty member.

Given the current landscape of higher education, it is more important than ever for administrators, faculty, and staff to stay informed, to ask questions, and to work collaboratively to strengthen our institutions. Combating misinformation and disinformation is already difficult enough; why compound the problem by spreading rumors, especially when they can harm enrollment and when multiple avenues exist to verify the facts?

Various faculty in senate meetings show their astonishing ignorance of both higher education’s and our university’s particular context, all the while confidently expressing their doubts and strong disagreements with senior leadership’s decisions to address them. This is not strong shared governance.

The writer is a current president.

A single person influential in a faculty governance setting can derail progress for an entire organization. At a previous institution, I encountered one faculty member who so hated the idea that our community was described as “family” he stood up in Senate, pointed at his colleagues, and declared, “I am not related to you, and I am not related to you, and I am not related to you.” He said he didn’t trust anyone, everyone should be like him, and no one should trust the administration. The time he wasted, and the progress he single-handedly stalled or killed, was astounding. 

When I asked why no one stood up to him, I heard, “He’s a bully, but he’s our bully.” No other industry would tolerate such behavior, but this toxic guy had tenure. The secret of managing, as Casey Stengel said, is to “keep the folks who hate you away from the ones who haven’t made up their minds yet.” In shared governance, if only we could keep those who hate the institution away from everyone else. Why we are somehow bound to tolerate such individuals and keep them around because they have tenure is something that, if fixed, might fix a lot of what holds the higher education sector back in true service to others.