An audible sigh and a "here we go again" were my involuntarily reactions as I read an article last spring in The Chronicle about the "thankless" job of a department chairman.
Oh, how chairmen suffer. The article reports how their days are occupied with fighting for money, shuffling paperwork, and coping with recalcitrant colleagues. They struggle to deal with faculty drug addictions, lecherous behavior, dishonesty, and even threats of bodily harm. Fearful of lawsuits, they are consumed by the legal obligations of personnel policies. They feel the heat of the legislature or the board through deans and central administrators who, in turn, require careful watching. Worst of all, chairmen have no time for their scholarship.
In other words, a chair has to behave like an administrator, a position that involves the management of people, foibles and all, and money, rarely plentiful and usually scarce.
The leadership of a department is generally viewed as a short-term duty, to be rotated among one's colleagues. Given the fact that, in most cases, the appointment results from election or consensus, it is disheartening to hear such negative views expressed. The participatory manner of choosing a chairman should engender pride in those selected. To participate in the selection of administrative leaders is a salute to basic academic values of academic freedom and self-governance.
I was considerably relieved a few weeks later to read some letters to the editor about the story. Several chairs wrote in about the satisfactions and benefits of leadership responsibility, albeit in an academic, therefore difficult, environment. All of the letters challenged the notion that the position ends or postpones scholarship. One writer, echoing my strong belief, wrote, "If one expects that this position will be a burden, it will be," and took note of the extraordinary exit strategy available -- a tenured life away from the cares of organizational responsibility.
I have directed my attention to the positive and negative aspects of the administrative life in this space before. I too suffered the initial trauma of a chairmanship. Administration is not what most of us are trained to do, or even something most of us aspire to, but it is a necessary part of life anywhere. To perceive of the function as thankless or undesirable is not only a misperception but counter-productive to the health of colleges and universities. Moreover, it clearly suggests a lack of appreciation for the benefits of such responsibility. Some people are simply not cut out for leadership or decision-making. As with most skills, a small percentage of people are really good at it.
Higher education is one of the most important and costliest enterprises in the nation, primarily delivered today in huge institutions through a system of departments, schools, colleges, central administration, and statewide political institutions. The fantasy of each campus as a community run by selfless professors requiring minimal organization is just that -- a fantasy that never existed and never will. This fantasy is enhanced by a belief that faculty members are not like other people in terms of social and interpersonal behavior and that they require minimal or even zero "management."
Indeed, "management" is one of the most politically incorrect words in academe. A recent dispute involving a T.A. union that resulted in the firing of a department head caused the leader of a national graduate-student caucus to issue the following statement: "[The firing] reveals the managerial logic of the corporate university, which demands that faculty behave as managers of their own and (more importantly) other people's labor." This preposterous statement captures in a few words the flight of fancy regarding administration that our profession conveys to its progeny.
We apparently convey these perceptions of academic life to the public at large and to the political and economic leaders upon whom we depend. It is not unusual for professors to denigrate "the administration" in the classroom. Nor is it unusual to find negative stereotyping of faculty-administration relationships among ordinary citizens and business people, as sort of an inside joke about the ivory tower.
Common sense should dictate that higher education would be a highly desirable place to hold an influential position. But that's not how people perceive it.
The much-heralded annual freshman survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at U.C.L.A. asks students to identify "probable career occupation" from a list of 44 options. The highest percentage (8.8 percent) chose "business executive, management, administrator." The lowest (0.0 percent) was for "college administrator/staff." Minimal percentages were also reported for "school principal or superintendent" (0.1) and college teacher (0.5). Given the enormous prominence and visibility of higher education, I consider these findings troublesome. We work hard as a profession to win public and private support but apparently we have conveyed nothing about careers in colleges and universities.
Just as "all politics is local," so is administration. A central leader may provide a vision but only effective "local" administration can make the vision a reality. A central administration can provide positions and money but must depend upon the local leader to manage the details. These truisms seem lost upon many department heads who see their function as that of fighting the college dean or central administration to minimize interference. Skill at fighting for your department is part of the chairman's job but it is not the purpose of academic leadership.
Strong departments have strong, respected leaders, who best serve their colleagues by earning the respect of those who control the purse strings. Weak, grumbling chairs speak volumes for their department while demeaning themselves and impeding the professional lives of their colleagues. A poorly run department can endanger the entire university, exposing it to lawsuits caused by sloppy attention to laws and regulations.
Too often, however, chairmen and chairwomen resist the idea that there are management skills they need to bring to bear in running their departments. Several years ago, when I was a chief academic officer, I decided to gather all department heads and program directors at a weekend retreat. The purpose was twofold: first, increase understanding about the changing nature of colleges and universities in the nation and the changing culture of our own campus, and second, improve the training of chairs to better meet their managerial and legal responsibilities. Guest speakers and moderators were invited. The results were not what I had hoped.
While I confess that I inadequately prepared the attendees for what was to come, it was clear in the course of the meeting that they were not interested in the first objective and resented the second. "Training" in meeting "managerial responsibilities" was disdained by most of them as inappropriate, if not insulting. It was a classic case of the law of unintended consequences.
What the attendees failed to see is how much we can learn from the business sector, where leadership talent is honed through training programs and formal education. Some of the national education associations conduct leadership-training programs for chairmen and deans but, with few exceptions, these tend to be short-term events held after appointment. The American Council on Education Fellows Program provides a better model because participation is based on nomination by senior administrators and lasts a full year.
The lack of commitment to sound management in academe is a serious flaw, played out, in my opinion, in the low esteem and poor economic standing of our profession. In spite of our social importance, collective talent, huge numbers of participants, and enormous costs to taxpayers, the profession is commonly viewed as people with soft jobs and poor accountability who have individual protections not available to most people.
A reversal of this situation must begin, not with some single charismatic voice in the administration building but with bottom-up commitment to effective management. Surely there are enough faculty members ready to assume and enjoy the responsibility of shaping academic policy, identifying and solving problems, encouraging and supporting good performance, and managing inadequate performance.
A thankless task? If money is the issue, much of academic life is thankless. But what can be more rewarding than to be asked by your colleagues to lead and manage the daily business of departmental scholarship and teaching? Moreover, the experience of a chairmanship can add significantly to the maturation and education of the individual selected.
With the proper, positive attitude, buttressed by love for the academy, administrative experience broadens one's vision of higher education, provides new perspectives on one's colleagues, stimulates greater understanding of student needs and affords an opportunity to give direction to the standing of your academic discipline in the university community. Finally, it may, as it did for many prominent academic leaders, open new vistas for career development without forfeiting one's professional standing.
