When I came to Washington almost 20 years ago, my accountant was still a classmate of mine from James Madison High School in Brooklyn. He was tough minded about his role and determined that his clients surrender no more money in taxes than was absolutely necessary. I decided that living as I now did, down the street from the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service, and with not one but two former IRS commissioners on my board of trustees, I needed to become a little friendlier to the regulators and I engaged a local accountant with cautious instructions to always keep me on the safe side of the street.

I determined that it made sense to pay a little more, if necessary, to sleep a little better. There is something about reading the front page of The Washington Post every day, with it’s above the fold headlines about the foibles of mankind, that focuses the mind.

But I am becoming concerned that we are increasingly embraced by regulations woven together like the floor of a jungle, that even the most earnestly forthright among us has got to be in violation of some rule at almost any time. This slightly paranoid apprehensiveness was reinforced the other day by a “Dear Colleague” letter from my university’s compliance officer writing to tell me about a statement of ethical principles recently approved that sets forth standards of conduct to which all persons ought to “aspire.”

And they are all virtuous and sensible! Reasonable people should exercise tolerance, act with integrity, respect the rights and dignity of others, be responsible for our positions, accountable for our actions, avoid conflicts of interest between our work and our personal affairs, support an environment in which harassment of others and abuse of power will not be tolerated, exercise responsible stewardship of university resources, report violation of laws, regulations, or university policies. Who can argue with any of this? Not I.

In fact, I’m certain that almost everything cited above was enacted during my presidential tenure! So why am I uneasy about the fact that the letter goes on to point out that the university’s central policy Web page contains over 180 university policies available to guide me in specific transactions and activities. Why am I not reassured when I learn that there is an actual guide designed to assist me in navigating this social contract? And why am I truly unsettled to learn — or to be reminded, since I actually already knew — that the regulatory compliance help and referral hot line is a 24 hour a day, seven day a week method for reporting suspected violation of laws, regulations or university policies? You can call in any time of the day or night, holidays included, and you may do so anonymously, if you wish.

David Riesman, the late Harvard professor who I referenced in an earlier posting, once called this sort of thing “the harvesting of grievances.” Obviously, universities have to do the right thing. We are special institutions and have a unique responsibility in society. At the risk of sounding like an exceptionalist, an elitist, I do hold institutions of higher education to a higher standard than many other entities in all sectors of society. But I can’t help but wonder if we wouldn’t be better served by having 10 really good commandments that we all know, honor, and celebrate, than 180 that we hardly remember much less understand.

My Orwellian musings were reinforced this morning by the Kelly Field article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reporting on a recently approved bill in the U.S. Senate’s education committee containing “at least 152 new reporting requirements” for colleges and universities. These federal regulations are the lawyers’ and accountants’ relief act of 2008. A companion bill in the U.S. House of Representatives contains 189 new reporting requirements. What will emerge from the conference committee? I underscore the word new since colleges and universities currently bear the obligation of about 200 existing federal regulations.

Compensation for the costs of compliance and reporting is rarely if ever made by the government. Quite the contrary, they go into the operating budget of the university and emerge at the other end as a driver of tuition costs. Obviously, we need regulations in our society and universities no less than others. No special pleading here. The recent embarrassments over individual excesses, malfeasances by financial aid offices or study abroad programs, tell us that university people have feet of clay no less frequently than doctors, lawyers, dentists, clergy, teachers, government officials, business people, and every other kind of human being from every walk of life. Even my Brooklyn pal, CPA Bernie!

And yet, I can’t help wonder when regulation becomes self-defeating? When cost-benefit tests start to conclude that more reporting and more record keeping takes us in the opposite direction of where we want to go. I’m starting to sound to myself like a libertarian or a regulatory Luddite, when all I really want is sweet reason. Balance. So I conclude with a piece of text I wrote back in the day, when I was still actually responsible for a university, that may cast some light on these dilemmas:

King Solomon had an easy time of it. In his own lifetime, he was renowned as proverbially wise, and has remained so to our day, because he judged that a woman who agreed to cleave a baby in two and take half could not be the child’s mother. A clear-cut case of common sense, we might say, but there is more reason to envy King Solomon’s ease in judgment.

The two women who came before him, each claiming the baby boy was hers, were both “harlots,” a fact presented at the beginning of the story in the first Book of Kings. Solomon does not, however, weigh the women’s past or speculate on outcomes, confining his judgment only to the question at hand — specifically, to who is truly the mother of this child?

Would that we could do the same! Anyone, particularly those of us required to make judgments from time to time, would gladly aspire to the “understanding heart” that enabled Solomon to “discern the good from the bad” and thus judge the present facts wisely. But Solomon was a king, an absolute ruler who also had God’s ear. His word was law; his decrees were final and exempt from appeal or protest. When he spoke, people heard him and behaved themselves. No university president — no matter how awe-inspiring and sagacious he believes himself to be — can so delude himself to think he has such authority. Proof to the contrary is palpably and daily evident.

The plain fact is that the 1960s campus slogan “Question Authority” has been superseded in 2008 by the less aggressive but more deflating question, “What Authority?” To compound the problem, our cultural ideas of equity require us routinely and habitually to weigh past circumstances and future consequences, though the former are not always clear and the latter are certainly unknown. Caught in the double bind of diminished authority and expectations of comprehensive understanding, any university president may be tempted to lose himself in longing for the simpler times of King Solomon, or just throw up his hands and exclaim, “What a world we live in!”

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Comments

1. I work as a college regulator for the state of Oregon, so my point of view is that of someone who has to enforce various regulations related to colleges. The problem of an excessively dense regulatory inversion layer sitting over our colleges is very real. It stems in part from the fact that rules are designed to deal with problems that exist largely at the bottom crust of the academic world.

   Most governments have been unable to muster the political vertebrae to formally classify colleges by types for regulatory purposes. Colleges, in practice mostly non-profits and publics, that can demonstrate good management and academic quality over time ought to be able to “earn” a lighter regulatory load. Our laws don’t work that way now.

   My office finds that almost all serious problems occur at for-profit colleges and colleges that do not have regional accreditation. We need to be willing to recognize this fact in public and design our oversight structures accordingly.

   I’m afraid that the problem of grievances is insoluble. There are people who go through life looking for opportunities to be offended, and many of them settle in university communities. I live in a community (Eugene, Oregon) which is a magnet for such people. For the most part, their issues are not legal so much as social, and can be resisted with adequate institutional leadership (which the University of Oregon has). Such leadership is rare these days.

   — Alan Contreras · Jan 22, 11:07 AM · #

2. When I was the special assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force we had lots of policies. But we had a set of core values that everyone could remember and that were a firm guide to conduct:
   Integrity first
   Service before self
   Excellence in all we do.

   That’s a pretty good start — and even easier to remember than the 10.

   — gerry kauvar · Jan 22, 02:18 PM · #

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