A Voice for Professors in Campus Planning

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By MARY BURGAN

Complaints from people in higher education about never having enough money are belied by the grand array of building projects at colleges across America. There is hardly an institution over which a crane does not hover, and few campuses are free of the muddy tracks of heavy equipment that herald the creation of a brand-new structure or the massive renovation of an old one. Indeed, one authority on the construction boom suggests that the acquisition of space for new buildings is more crucial than their design, pointing to the many vacant big-box retail buildings around the country as prime sites for future classrooms.

The continued emphasis on bricks and mortar calls for renewed reflection on the nature of campuses. Are they merely collections of buildings? Do their functions require special features of design or limitations of use? To what extent should the faculty members and students who spend the most time there have a say in their construction? Most important, should our campuses take pains to distinguish themselves from our other social spaces -- retail malls, department-store complexes, office blocks, resort hotels? And why?

From the beginning of higher education in America, it has been assumed that each college should have a local habitation and a name. Early campuses, most of them private enclaves, quickly established themselves as major entities in local towns and cities, changing the physical as well as the mental landscape of their places. With the Morrill Act, in 1862, the federal government enabled each state to provide land and financial support for public institutions that would serve as centers of research and learning within geographical reach of their citizens. Early manifestations of state pride in campuses as emblems of local power, farsightedness, and civic taste led to provisions to build distinctive academic buildings and grounds.

Thus just about every campus in the land began with some version of a towered "Old Main," monumental entry gates with inscriptions of welcome, and landscaped areas sacred to some rite of meditation, celebration, or retreat. There was always variety as well: the Federalist red brick of the University of Virginia, the Collegiate Gothic limestone of Indiana University, the native adobe of the University of New Mexico. Most state universities have reflected the history and aspirations of their cultures.

Further, the originating buildings made claims about their institutions and promised benefits to their particular neighborhoods -- and, in so doing, they embodied a social compact. For one thing, the massive investment in colleges arose from a sense that the next generation should have the advantage of leaving home, spending sequestered time in study, and mingling with representatives of a world wider than that of their local farm or town. For another, the Morrill Act's emphasis on developing practical skills out of a foundation of liberal learning signified a consensus that such education must be at the center of our nation's progress and welfare. Finally, unlike some European prototypes, many American campuses were designed not as retreats for the maturation of privileged late adolescents but as places of open hospitality to people of all ages and backgrounds.

Accordingly, campuses have been expected to generate activities that could be shared with the external communities that support them. Their chapels should be open to the congregation of a multidenominational citizenry when occasion dictates. Their lecture and concert halls should bring worldwide discovery and performance to the entire community. And their playing fields and gymnasiums should draw old grads and local citizens to strengthen identification between the institution and its adherents.

Yet although outreach has always been central to the growth of campuses and the health of colleges, the recent emphasis on turning institutions into instruments for those outside academe has become a threat to the founding ideas of American higher education. Putting classrooms in shopping malls to reach students who might find the location more convenient may seem a harmless form of geographical recycling, but the idea points to an alarming trend: the accommodation of our institutions to the signage and values of American consumerism.

At the same time, more and more traditional college buildings are named (or "branded") to reflect not only the generosity but also the interests of the corporate donors who have made them possible. Colleges' services are outsourced to franchises like Marriott and Pizza Hut and Subway. And efforts to attract student "customers" have led to residence halls with rooms that are spiffier than those on most cruise ships. Add that to the quest to serve a growing range of other constituencies -- alumni, legislators, sports fans -- and the result is a big question about whether colleges are pursuing their fundamental purpose.

And so the cranes and the heavy trucks may not betoken the healthy growth that expands access; rather, they may be intrusions by narrow, nonacademic interests. Such intrusions, even in the form of gleaming new structures equipped with the latest amenities, badly misconceive the nature and value of the places in which faculty members should teach, and students should live and learn.

One telling example of the shallowness of some current thinking about the role and importance of campuses has been the eagerness, in some quarters, to abandon the notion that a college education needs a campus at all. In 1998 the nonprofit Western Governors University was initiated. It grew in part from the reluctance of governors from states in the Southwest and the West to build campuses to accommodate projected influxes of populations -- including a large measure of minority, immigrant, and single-parent students. Those governors fastened onto the notion, eagerly sponsored by technology proprietors, that the computer could present a reasonable alternative to costly new campuses. Liberation from the requirements of expensive buildings and grounds has been a major theme for commercial distance-education schemes as well.

The building boom itself may be diverting even more academic attention and energy from the teaching of real students in real classrooms on real campuses. A leading example has been the creation and expansion of athletics facilities. Although the commercial takeover of intercollegiate sports has been the target of scathing critiques, the building of ever-more-spectacular arenas and stadiums, plus accompanying residences for star athletes, continues apace.

Other building initiatives, too, reflect a takeover of academic values by those of the marketplace. In his book Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education (Harvard University Press, 2003), David L. Kirp describes the issues in the corporate sponsorship of professional-school construction, especially business and law schools. And the expansion of academic medical centers in the 1980s and 90s has also created major financial problems for universities.

Many faculty members, however, are unaware of such difficulties. One reason is that the trend of locating such specialized enclaves on the margins of campuses puts them out of faculty sight -- and critique. Further, because the professional schools have been left to their own devices in raising money for expansion, rank-and-file faculty members are usually resigned to the fact that some colleagues can obtain fancy new quarters while the classrooms and offices of the college of arts and sciences become more and more shabby. The liberal-arts disciplines have no levers -- like the American Bar Association's accreditation system -- to demand investment in disintegrating physical plants.

When faculty senates question the academic building boom in an effort to address institutional priorities in vital areas like faculty hiring and student support, they may receive some sympathy from administrators. But college officials who "know better" usually make one of several observations: "An important patron donated the new building and his/her/its intentions cannot therefore be interfered with." Or: "The uses of the new building will make it pay for itself in time." Or: "Construction and financial matters are too complicated for the faculty to understand and are outside the purview of faculty governance, so they should be left to the vice president for operations." Or: "Professors do not understand the institution's need to keep up appearances so as to be competitive in the higher-education market."

Eventually campus planning seems too overwhelming to question, so faculty skeptics accept construction projects in a mood of resignation mingled with a flush of pride. On the one hand, how can new buildings be going up when salaries are frozen? On the other, at least the trucks and cranes indicate that the campus is a growing, if not a going, concern.

But resignation is not a responsible reaction. Campus governance must be revived to let faculty members participate in conversations about building needs, debates about priorities, and oversight of the uses for facilities. Professors have shown their expertise when asked to participate in the design of their classrooms, but their access should not stop there.

In the past decade, higher-education critics have worried about the decline of faculty governance. That decline has occurred in part because faculty senates and councils rarely have any real issues to chew on. But campus construction is a real, chewable issue, and faculty-governance bodies can be smart, shrewd, and even selfless when they get to confer on the state of their environment. It is time for our institutional leaders to invite them into the negotiations for funds, into planning sessions, and even into blueprint reviews before the bulldozers arrive.

Mary Burgan is a former general secretary of the American Association of University Professors and was an English professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. Her new book, tentatively titled Whatever Happened to the Faculty?: Who Decides in Higher Education, will be published next year by Johns Hopkins University Press.