A question of steering
Dr. Richard Kool, President, Confederation of University Faculty Associations, BC
November 2012The University of Northern BC Faculty Association, in cooperation with the UNBC President, organized a day of conversation about academic governance in mid November. An afternoon panel discussion about academic governance was held with Ellen Schoeck (past University Secretary, uAlberta), UNBC faculty members Drs. Margo Mandy and Erik Jensen, and Rob Clift. I opened up the discussion with these thoughts (slightly edited from the original).
Let’s start with the origins of the word “governance”. Governance and the term ‘cybernetics’ share a common origin; both are derived from the Greek kybernitiki, the art of steering and controlling (Johnson, n.d.). Changed into Latin, it becomes gubernetes, which translates into pilot, and from which we get the term ‘governance’. The work of governance is the work of steering. But there are two parts to steering: there is the person with their hand on the the wheel (what Aristotle would call ‘the efficient cause’), and then there is the person, and not always the same person, who makes the decision as to which way to go. Steering is teleological: there is a purpose in those decisions as to direction (Aristotle’s ‘final cause’), and the range of potential decisions, and who gets to make and enact them, can have powerful outcomes on a ship and its crew.
The history of academic governance is a history of discussion about who steers the university “ship” and who makes the decisions on its direction and purpose. Those who make the decisions on which way the ship goes have operative power as long as the one turning the wheel listens to instructions. While the governance of a ship may be based on rules, it also has to have at its core a sense of trust. The hands on the wheel has to trust the brain making decisions, and vice versa. And the passengers must have trust in both. So within our various institutions, who is making the important academic decisions? Is it a ‘me’, an individual decision of a president or Provost; is it a ‘we’, an academic Senate involving faculty and librarians, staff, students and administration; or a ‘they’, often in the form politically-appointed Governing Boards, government itself, or corporate interests.
In the realm of academic governance, the faculty, through long tradition, had both their hands on the wheel and their brains involved in decision-making relating to the educational part of the enterprise. Yet increasingly, faculty and librarians, likely due to workload pressures and a reward system that does not adequately recognize service to governance as much as it may recognize other parts of the job, are either being shut out of or are retreating from an active engagement in academic governance.
Who directs, who steers, and to what purpose: these were the questions brought up both in medieval and contemporary discussions of academic governance. Any discussion of governance in an institutional context also has to ask the question about the purpose of the institution, as it seems clear that as an institution is governed, so does it become; governed as a university, it remains a university; governed as a corporation, and it becomes a corporation (Birnbaum, 2004).
Here is one way of understanding what a university could be, penned by Stephen Leacock, Principal of McGill, who wrote,
If I were founding a university- and I say it with all the
seriousness of which I am capable- I would found first a smoking room; then
when I had a little more money in hand I would found a dormitory; then after
that, or more probably with it, a decent reading room and a library. After
that, if I still had more money that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor
and get some textbooks. (Leacock, 1922, p. 55)
Organizations, like organisms, seem to move towards differentiation, and organizations, like organisms, seem to move towards hierarchical differentiation. In both organizations and organisms, there are large systems and small systems, slow cycles and fast cycles, systems of various levels of control. Early in their development, universities, like other organizational systems, also became differentiated. Why has this differentiation in organizational structure not changed appreciably over modern times?
I’d posit that things haven’t changed, in part, because there are certain aspects of the structure of these ancient organizations that have worked, and worked well, and are lost at the very peril of the idea of the university. And one of those critical structures, differentiated centuries ago, was the concept of shared governance. When we are told that governance structures need to be changed, the message tends to be that the faculty need to worry less about being involved in the operation and direction-setting of the university, less in the steering, while leaving that to the Boards of Governors and the professional managers (Birnbaum, 2004).
Governance is a means to an end; the ends, the purposes of the university, are what we have to keep our eyes on. Shared governance in the steering of the university, shared between boards, presidents, academics, students and staff, has worked to protect the ends, which are the idea of the university as place of teaching and learning and research. But change the means- change the forms of governance, slowly reduce collegial and shared academic decision-making, minimize the active and meaningful engagement of faculty and librarians in the governance of the institution- and the ends of the institution will change too and what a university has been and is, will be changed.
So the issue before us is not just about academic governance, but about the whole idea of the university, about whose hands are on the wheel, and about who decides on direction and course, and how those decisions are made.
Johnson, Barnabas D. (n.d.). The
cybernetics of society: The governance of self and civilization. from http://www.jurlandia.org/cybsoc.htm
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