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[plunkett]

Maybe someone can add a link to the CHE article referenced by this CC dean (Inside Higher Ed piece below).  I agree with him about the lack of good administrators in the CC and state university ranks.  The future of higher ed (at the non-elite level) looks more and more bleak.

One weak link is that tenured faculty (the folks who are there for the long term!) don't have enough of a role in governance. (Duh.)   The short-timers (many administrators) have too much power; they change things for good or ill (too often for the latter), and then they disappear.

Why has shared governance died on the vine?

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions_of_a_community_college_dean/a_good_president_is_hard_to_find

[oldfullprof]

1.  Those compliance-driven positions are administrators.  I know the IE article's findings aren't true of any campus I've been on.
2.  I saw a cabal of management professors, other professors, and faculty-enlisted students drive a pretty good president away after I left Mafia Tech.  It wasn't part of "shared governance."  It was a conspiracy that started when the management school's slush fund was threatened.  The professors also wanted to preserve four day teaching weeks (M-Th); double-dipping by having complete, other full-time jobs (illegal);  disgraceful publication standards (bullet point articles, e.g.), and general corruption (e.g. the union "hiring" the business dean to give two one-hour talks hawking his financial management business for $1,000 a pop.) 

[gsawpenny]

Boy, when the higher Ed bubble pops it will be messy.