After serving as a provost for 11 years at an urban university, life for me as a professor now is far less chaotic. For the first time in many years, I have time to reflect on what I've accomplished in one of the truly unique positions in higher education.
Few people outside the academy know what a provost does. And, yes, over the past 11 years, I've found many inside the academy who don't know either. Frankly, there were days when I wasn't sure myself. But I followed a cardinal rule: Do what is right and proper. My academic training in counseling and psychotherapy also served as a valuable asset in dealing with the people and problems of the office.
The unique position of provost -- or chief academic officer -- has undergone some serious changes over my tenure. I contend that the provost's job is, by far, the most critical position for the success of an institution, but the position has been eroding in its influence and importance in recent years.
In their 1997 book, First Among Equals: The Role of the Chief Academic Officer (Johns Hopkins University Press), James Martin and James E. Samels agree that chief academic officers now face a more complex and intractable set of challenges than ever before and that "true provosts" have practically disappeared from the modern campus. They attribute this marginalization to several factors: high-profile presidents who have transformed the president's office into a celebrity-like operation; vice presidents for institutional advancement who wield power and influence necessary to generate large amounts of money for capital campaigns; deans who set up insular operations; and faculty members who are increasingly the dominant shapers of campus life.
To that list I would add the many federal and state offices, special commissions, and blue-ribbon panels dedicated to justifying themselves by asking for reams of data that are never used, as well as an overabundance of 26-year-old "expert" bureaucrats designing new curriculum ideas for colleges. Martin and Samels concluded that the chief academic officers are "left to the roles of advocate, clerk, colleague, and servant." Advocate and colleague, yes; clerk and servant -- not on my watch.
If the provost's role has been marginalized, provosts have themselves to blame as much as anybody else. They often do little to further their role professionally. Few national conferences deal with being a provost. At the few gatherings that do provide provost networking and training, the provosts who attend spend the majority of their time either duplicating what their presidents are doing or chasing a presidency.
It is very difficult to get provosts together to discuss common problems. In my 11 years, I almost never met with a group of my peers, locally, regionally, or nationally -- with one exception. The Urban-13, a unique group of some 20 or so urban universities, meets once a semester to consider common problems and solutions facing chief academic officers at urban institutions. These were the most productive meetings that I've attended and were just plain fun.
I can understand Martin and Samel's contentions about how provosts have been marginalized by the forces in and around the academy. One of the main reasons for that, I contend, is the high turnover in the job. The position has become a short stop-off point on the road to a presidency. And unless a provost devotes a large measure of time to nonacademic matters, as the president does, chances are slim that a presidency is forthcoming.
Instituting strategic planning, resource-allocation procedures, accountability initiatives, and the like takes time. Without several years to develop, refine, and implement, little real improvement takes place. Staying on the job for only three years leaves little room for constancy.
Also, and most telling, is the fact that universities are doing far more these days than just educating students. In fact, the education function is becoming less and less dominant at many institutions, almost like an auxiliary enterprise. Instead, institutions run research parks, major sports programs, museums, shopping malls, hospitals, economic-development centers, hotels, housing conglomerates, transit services, police departments, restaurants of all sorts -- the list is endless.
All of those enterprises, presumably developed to be profit centers for a nonprofit entity, often become money pits that fritter away university resources and waste energy on things unrelated to the higher education of students and ultimately cost many presidents their jobs. Thus, at any meeting with the university president and his or her cabinet, little time is devoted to the academy and to real academic matters. The task of the provost is often to compete for scarce internal resources with other administrators, many of whom run those glitzy operations.
Despite all this, I have felt that the provost's office, while not always the loudest voice, the most aggressive at finding outside resources, or the best supplicant for board members and presidents, is the place to get things done on the campus. An old academic story seems relevant here: A new assistant professor thinks that the chairman has the resources to get things done on campus. Once that professor becomes a department head, he or she soon realizes that it is the dean who has the resources to get things done. Once that person become a dean, it's obvious that the provost is the one who has the resources to get things done.
Become a provost and it's patently obvious who gets things done. Even the president knows that it's the provost. Presidents are hired because they have a vision and creative ideas. But it's the provost's job to sift through those ideas and prevent the president from sounding goofy. This is never easy since presidents typically prefer people who simply agree with them. My rule of guidance is to say no to a president only twice a day; otherwise, your opinion will not be sought in the future. And when you do say yes, remember that it then becomes your job to make it happen.
