A tale of two models: rethinking shared governance

The involvement of faculty in the running of universities has long been espoused as a critical component to institutional success and stability. However, many scholars and practitioners argue that there has been a decline in shared governance, as universities have become increasingly bureaucratic organisations.

The need to efficiently and effectively manage thousands of employees and numerous departments that have potentially little to do with direct classroom education necessitates that universities develop mechanisms to handle large organisational challenges. As the complexity of institutions has increased, the need for additional staff has similarly grown. Many of these roles have been filled internally by faculty who take on full- or part-time administrative assignments. Here we discuss how the growth of faculty-turned-administrators has complicated the traditional view and execution of shared governance.

The traditional role of faculty in higher education governance was to participate in faculty senates or serve on committees where they could provide insight or even vote. While this structure is still very much in use, the increased hiring of full- and part-time academic administrators has resulted in a diminished role of the general faculty in the shared governance process.

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For example, issues that were once discussed and debated by faculty are now discussed with an academic administrator and then presented to the faculty body. While this has many advantages, including an increased nuance that the professional administrator contributes from time spent focusing on specific issues rather than balancing administration with teaching, and the administrator’s professional duties adding contextual understanding of very specific functions of a university, it can also lead to a loss of broader faculty input. Similarly, these faculty administrators can more fully analyse and engage with complex issues that faculty committees may not have the bandwidth to do, but this in turn leads to limiting the perspectives in decision-making.

The evolution of shared governance, from faculty bodies being involved in decision-making to the rise of faculty administrators, presents the need for increased understanding of these different roles and an intentional hybrid approach. The role of faculty senate needs a fresh perspective that maintains its overarching goal of providing voice to faculty while also taking advantage of the added faculty administrator.

Shared governance should not be restricted to an antiquated formal structure that limits its role to an advisory capacity but should be engaged in active agendas seeking the betterment of institutional life that can be worked on in collaboration with faculty administrators. This hybrid approach offers a great opportunity if the general faculty body can avoid the common “us versus them” that often develops at institutions of higher education. Rather, faculty bodies can do three things to take advantage of this new hybrid approach:

First, actively seek out and develop faculty leaders who have experienced both the traditional shared governance model and are interested in managing complex organisations. When hiring presidents and provosts, there is a tendency to identify external hires, but for assistant or associate provosts and deans, internal candidates are often identified, which, again, can become part of this refreshed model of shared governance through connection to faculty governing bodies.

Second, the refreshed model of shared governance should utilise informal relationships of power and influence that exist between faculty in the department where the administrator comes from. Before being drafted into the administrative class, these individuals were faculty members. In their function as faculty members, they interacted with several colleagues in the home department, developed personal and professional relationships, voted on tenure and promotion. Each of these relationships as well as many others create networks that faculty can use to create shared governance once that individual becomes an administrator. This principle works well if the administrator is promoted from within the university they worked in as a faculty member.

Finally, faculty need to re-engage in institutional governance. In a recent (currently unpublished) study on shared governance, it was found that for many faculty senate presidents, there were often no faculty willing to lead their faculty senate or participate in the process. The addition of new faculty-administrator roles provides even more opportunities for faculty to fully engage, but if those positions go unfilled, external candidates may be hired, reducing the potential benefit of this refreshed model where the traditional faculty senate and committee approach can work in tandem with the faculty-administrator to benefit the lives of institutional stakeholders.

Ryan Litsey is a librarian and the assistant dean for user-centred services with the Texas Tech University libraries. His research focuses on faculty governance and relationships of power in university departments.

Jon McNaughtan is an associate professor of higher education and the faculty senate president for Texas Tech University for the 2023-24 academic year. His research focuses on leadership in higher education.

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