Determinación del terreno

Many of these challenges of change are common to public and private institutions.

But there are some unique in either nature or intensity to public higher education.

Politics-Driven versus Market-Driven

Many of the most powerful forces driving change in higher education come from the marketplace: new societal needs, the limited availability of resources, or the emer-gence of new competitors such as for-profit ventures. The broader higher education enterprise, and particularly private universities, are sensitive and responsive to these market forces.

Public universities often find themselves in a more conflicted position, because the most formidable forces controlling their destiny are political in nature–from state government, governing boards, or perhaps public opinion. Unfortunately, these bodies are not only usually highly reactive, but they also frequently constrain the institution or drive it away from strategic objectives that would better serve society as a whole and toward special interest agendas.

The Nature of Public Governing Boards

American higher education is unique in its use of lay boards to govern its institutions.

In the case of private institutions, these are typically self-perpetuated by the board itself or elected by alumni. In public institutions, regents are generally either ap-pointed by governors or elected in public elections, usually with highly political overtones.

Most governing boards of private institutions approach their role first and foremost as trustees, responsible for the welfare of their institutions. In contrast, politically selected board members for public institutions tend to view themselves more as governors or even legislators than trustees, responsible to particular political constitu-encies rather than more narrowly confined to the welfare of their institution. Instead of buffering the university from various political forces, they frequently bring their politics into the boardroom. Public boards tend to focus on narrow forms of account-ability to the particular political constituencies represented by their various mem-bers, spending far too much of their time concentrating on administrative rather than policy issues.¹⁹

The political process involved in selecting public governing boards alienates many individuals with the experience and ability necessary to understand the complex nature of the modern university. Inexperienced boards too often become captivated by the illusion of the quick fix or by the intoxication of power. As a result, many public university presidents and higher education organizations see one of the most serious threats to public higher education today as the deterioration in quality of their governing boards, due in large measure to the powerful political forces swirling around these boards, shaping both their membership and their agendas.

The Breadth and Capacity of Public Universities

Public universities, whether at the campus or the system level, are generally charac-terized by a size and complexity far beyond that of most private institutions, in direct relation to their more complex constituency needs. For example, most flagship state universities have enrollments in excess of 30,000 students and offer programs cover-ing the full spectrum of academic disciplines and professions. This magnitude gives the public university more resilience in facing the day-to-day challenges of higher education, but it also creates an inertia that inhibits dramatic change. In a sense, the modern public university is like a supertanker, which requires careful strategic navigation long before it approaches its destination. Unfortunately, neither the political environment nor the political character of most public governing boards tolerates such long-term strategic agendas.

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The Uncontrolled Accretion of Risk

All of higher education shares the problem that it is far easier for a university to take on new missions and activities in response to societal demand than to shed missions as they become inappropriate or threaten the core teaching mission of the institution.

This is a particularly difficult matter for public universities because of intense public and political pressures that require the institution to continue to accumulate mis-sions, each with an associated risk, without a corresponding capacity to refine and focus activities to avoid risk.

University presidents sometimes joke that the academic programs at the core of the university are a fragile enterprise, delicately balanced between two great and usually opposing forces on the modern university campus: the Department of Athletics and the University Medical Center. These two large and growing activities of the con-temporary university provide good examples of the types of risks associated with our multiple missions. They sometimes trap us between a rock and a hard place. The high visibility of intercollegiate athletics can sometimes distort the perception of the university and threaten its academic integrity. At the same time, the financial challenges faced by health-care delivery, education, and research can threaten the financial integrity of a university, particularly if it happens to own a hospital system.

Despite their differences in mission, financing, and intellectual content, both inter-collegiate athletics and academic health centers have some commonalties. Both reflect the evolution of the modern university to serve societal needs (i.e., public entertainment and health care). Both involve values and principles quite different from those governing academic programs, and both have been buffeted by an un-precedented degree and pace of change. Both can also pose considerable threats to the university. Yet few public universities have been able to take the actions neces-sary to reduce the risk associated with these enterprises, such as downsizing them, spinning them off, or building firewalls to better isolate their risks from the rest of the institution.

There are many other examples of risk accumulation—e.g., equity interest in spinoff companies, real estate ventures, economic development—all exposing the university to considerable risk, and all subject to strong political forces.

Populism

Universities are not exempt from the forces of populism that rise from time to time to challenge many other aspects of our society—a widespread distrust of expertise, excellence, and privilege. Americans too often are suspicious of, even hostile to, excellence and high achievement, particularly intellectual achievement. We settle for the lowest common denominator rather than honoring and supporting achieve-ment. Dr. William Hubbard, former dean of Medicine at Michigan and then CEO of Upjohn, used to point to one of the great character flaws of the Midwest as “our extraordinary intolerance of extreme excellence.” Unfortunately, many universities, faculty, and university administrators have made themselves easy targets by their arrogance and elitism.

One lesson we should have learned during the 1980s is the importance of quality in everything we do and in everything we buy, sell, and produce. It is this culture of competence—a set of attitudes, expectations, and demands—that is often missing in America today. Ultimately, competence requires that people and institutions be held accountable for their performance; and high performance requires competition. Too often, however, we spend our time trying to protect ourselves from accountability and competition.

These character flaws resurface when it comes to key investments in our people, such as education and worker training. We seem determined to insist on bargain-basement prices, even if it means bargain-bargain-basement quality in the performance of our institutions or in our products and services. A few years back a senior state official in Michigan told one of us in a moment of candor that quality was a luxury that students had no right to expect from a public university. If they wanted quality, they could pay the extra price to go to a private university. Worth noting is that the individual who said this had gone to Harvard. In a sense, this was a contemporary version of “let them eat cake.”

Deconstructionist Politics

Most of America’s colleges and universities have suffered the consequences of ill-thought-out efforts by politicians to influence everything from what subjects can be taught, to who is fit to teach, and who should be allowed to study. Too often, such interference is a short-sighted effort to exploit public fears and passions of the moment for immediate political gain. The long-term cost to citizens is high because politically motivated intrusions into academic policy lead, in the long run, to educa-tional mediocrity.

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A good example is provided by the efforts in many states to dismantle affirmative actions programs in admissions, hiring, and financial aid decisions in public colleges and universities. This intensifying political pressure on our nation’s great public universities is a threat to their unique historic role of providing a world-class educa-tional opportunity to all students who have the will and ability to succeed. And, if politics is allowed to influence university admissions policies, what will be targeted next? Curriculum? Faculty hiring? Research?

The special interest politics of our times has a post-modernist, deconstructionist character that aims not simply to challenge, but at times actually to destroy our social institutions and commitments. This slash-and-burn approach offers little in the way of alternatives. It also has a decidedly anti-intellectual character. In the past, educa-tional institutions were buffered from such attack politics, both by their governing boards and the media. Today, however, these groups now serve to focus and magnify political attacks on our campuses, rather than shielding us from them.

The Role of the Media

In earlier times, the relationship between the university and the press was one of mutual trust and respect. The many values common to the profession of journalism and to the academy helped journalists, faculty, and academic leaders build strong ties. The press understood the importance of the university, accepted its need for a degree of autonomy similar to its own freedoms, and frequently worked to build public understanding and support for higher education.

Today times have changed. The media seems largely ignorant of the nature and missions of the contemporary university, continuing to portray it much as it was during the pre-World War II era. At a time when all societal institutions have come under attack by the media, it is not surprising that universities should also face an increasingly hostile press. This is no doubt due in part to an increasingly adversarial approach taken by journalists toward all of society, embracing a certain distrust of everything and everyone as a necessary value of investigative journalism. Such antagonism is also fueled by the arrogance of many members of the academy, univer-sity leaders among them, in assuming that the univeruniver-sity is somehow less account-able to society than other social institutions.

In recent years the press has gone beyond simply accusation and investigation to use its formidable powers to manipulate and control public institutions. Relying on powerful weapons such as sunshine laws and first amendment freedoms, the press has brought strong pressure to bear on public universities in an effort to control who,

what, and how they teach. In sharp contrast to earlier times when it helped to protect academic institutions from inappropriate intrusion in academic affairs by governments or private groups, today the press actually intensifies and focuses political pressures on the university.

Perhaps more dangerous are those editors who believe that the press should be used as a tool to achieve certain objectives, well beyond simply reporting the facts or contributing to the corporate bottom line. There has been an alarming tendency in recent years by the press to attempt to control social institutions through the power-ful tools at their disposal. While we have grown accustomed to this type of social control through editorial pages, the more direct political manipulation, including threats and intimidation, is a new development. Threatening elected public officials with editorial retaliation if they oppose sunshine laws is one example. In public higher education we have seen efforts to control our affirmative-action policies, our athletics programs, and most recently, our presidential searches.

There is a certain self-righteous nature to this effort. Many editors argue that since a public university is owned by the people, the press has every right to exert control on behalf of the public. But, as we all know, the public is rarely represented by the press with any accuracy. For the editors of major papers to presume that they speak for the public when they attempt to control public institutions is dangerous, indeed.

As the profession of journalism merges with the entertainment industry, it has traded off journalistic values and integrity for the sake of the quarterly earnings statement, and it does not have the charter or the expertise to attempt to manipulate or control public institutions.

The Capacity for Change

There is a significant difference in the capacity that public and private institutions have to respond to today’s challenges of change as they struggle to adapt and to serve a changing world. The term “independent” used to describe private universities has considerable significance when it comes to the ability to change.

Private universities are generally more nimble, both because of their smaller size and the more limited number of constituencies that have to be consulted—and con-vinced—before change can occur. Whether driven by market pressures, resource constraints, or intellectual opportunity, private universities usually need to convince only trustees, campus communities (faculty, students, and staff), and perhaps alumni before moving ahead with a change agenda. Of course, this can be a formidable task, but it is a far cry from the broader political challenges facing public universities.

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Public universities must always function in an intensely political environment.

Their governing boards are generally political in nature and frequently view their primary responsibilities as being to various political constituencies rather than to the university itself. The university also operates within a complex political environ-ment at the local, state, and federal level. In addition, the press is generally far more intrusive in the affairs of public universities, portraying itself as the guardian of the public interest.

As a result, actions that would be straightforward for private universities, such as enrollment adjustments, tuition increases, and program reductions or elimination, can be formidable for public institutions. As noted earlier, the actions taken by many public universities to adjust to eroding state support through tuition increases or program restructuring have triggered major political upheavals that have strongly resisted the change.²⁰ Although the pressures for change in higher education are great, many public universities may not be able to respond adequately because of political constraints.