Downturn Threatens the Faculty's Role in Running Colleges

We keep hearing the phrase "Never waste a crisis," and that seems to be running through everyone's heads these days. Robin Wilson describes how some faculty are concerned that the current crisis will be leveraged to decrease the faculty's role in higher education governance:

Professors are losing their grip. Tough economic times are leading administrators to propose swift changes that short-circuit faculty governance, long a prized principle that gives professors wide-ranging authority over educational matters.

The results, faculty members say, are hastily conceived plans that reorganize academic programs, decrease professors' roles in shaping the curriculum, and jeopardize tenure applications — all done with little advice from the faculty, in the name of saving money.

. . .

"A decline in resources has made administrators more interested in becoming independent movers and shakers," says Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors.