Madeleine Deininger took over the role of board chair at Stockton University just as a crisis involving the longtime president was deepening. An attempt to expand the campus’ footprint onto a former casino in Atlantic City precipitated the situation that swept the president out—much to the surprise of Deininger and the rest of the board in 2015.
As the president pushed for the expansion, the faculty grew more and more anxious. His tenacious desire to see the project through—“a management style that had previously served him well,” according to Deininger—proved to be too much for the faculty. “I think [they] just got to the point that they felt nobody was listening to them and the only way they could be heard was by pulling together a no-confidence vote,” she said.
The events at Stockton typify a growing problem on campuses nationwide: faculty votes of no-confidence in university leaders. An online database compiled by Sean McKinniss, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on shared governance, shows a total of 185 no-confidence votes in college and university presidents since 1989, with two (so far) in 2018. Such votes are six times as frequent as a decade ago. Reasons for the votes run the gamut, from a belief that the president is unfit, to claims that the president is a micromanager, to an “avalanche of faculty grievances.” Throughout the archive, concerns about shared governance and communication proliferate, as they do in conversations with presidents, board chairs, and others working in the sector today.
Experts in higher education governance explain that a vote of no confidence typically involves a breakdown of trust and communication between the president and the faculty, and often a belief on the part of faculty that the president is acting in a high-handed, non-transparent fashion, cut-ting them out of important decisions that have traditionally been the faculty’s purview. This may be exacerbated by financial pressures on the institution, dictates to the president that he or she must be a change agent, demands from the board to move decisively and quickly toward remaking the institution, and a feeling of powerlessness on the part of the faculty. At the same time, the board’s lack of understanding of shared governance and how it works, coupled with the faculty’s lack of knowledge of the financial realities facing the institution, can further inflame the situation.
One board chair at a small, private university in the Midwest described a scenario in which there were rumblings of a no-confidence vote on a new president from several faculty who were upset that an outside candidate had not been chosen (the new president had been the internal candidate). The institution had no formal shared governance policy at the time but is writing one now. Talk of ousting the president has subsided.
Another president of a small liberal arts college in New England, who has been praised by some and criticized by others for being a “change agent,” believes the notion of a no-confidence vote has lost its original meaning. Instead of a rebuke of the president, it is now used more as a sign of rebel-lion by faculty who don’t like the direction the institution is taking.
Today, the elements of shared governance have been blurred by rapid changes in technology, student markets, the faculty workforce, and the types of credentials colleges and universities are able to offer. For example, institutional leaders need to consider the unique characteristics of millennial faculty members in developing plans to engage them in shared governance. As Steve Bahls, president of Augustana College, pointed out in his summer 2018 Trusteeship article, “Many of these characteristics affect their willingness to [participate] in the traditional committee structures that undergird faculty governance.”
All of this has only been accelerated by the need to improve the bottom line. Considerations traditionally within the purview of faculty—whom to admit, what to teach, how to teach it—are now central to business decisions about courses of study and instructional delivery. How these decisions are made and who gets consulted in the process are increasingly among the most contentious issues facing higher education.
CHANGING ENVIRONMENT, CHANGING ROLE
Any discussion of conflict between presidents and faculty members must acknowledge each group’s evolving role on the modern campus—which isn’t always a physical campus anymore. As the environment in which the business of higher education is conducted has been radically altered—with enrollment challenges and increased tuition discounting confronting private institutions, while declining state support and public skepticism of the value of a college degree is roiling the entire sector—the role of the president has been redefined.
In The 21st Century President: A Call to Enterprise Leadership (AGB, 2017), Terry MacTaggart, AGB senior fellow and former chancellor of the Minnesota State University System and University of Maine System, identified a host of challenges today’s presidents face, including an eroding value proposition, flawed and failing business models, a resurgence of student activism, fraying campus shared governance, the ubiquity and power of social media, and future technological revolutions.
In a 2012 Trusteeship article, MacTaggart listed a number of “drivers” of no-confidence votes. Among them are resistance to change, failure to pursue effective strategies or bring positive change, militant unions, egregious or ill-timed actions, and, at the top of the list, arrogance and failure to communicate.
But when asked about the causes of no confidence votes, MacTaggart said, “I question the view that communications is typically the problem. It is unrealistic to believe that better presidential communications alone will resolve the conflicts that spur no-confidence votes. The more fundamental problem stems from the need to change and the very uncomfortable, often painful, decisions that an executive and the board must make.”
More and more, presidents are brought onto a campus by boards steeped in corporate culture and looking for a change agent who will take action in short order. That invariably entails making decisions directly touching upon the core business of higher education—academic programming, which traditionally is an area of faculty responsibility.
As Merrill Schwartz, senior vice president for AGB Consulting, explained, “It’s whom do you teach? What do you teach? And how do you teach it? Those kinds of things are now business decisions.” They’re also “the holy trinity of faculty rights,” Schwartz added. “Those are areas in which they consider themselves to have a leading voice in shared governance, and that’s been challenged.”
Historically the prerogative of the faculty, decisions about whom, what, and how to teach are increasingly considered part of the business model of the institution. Boards and administrations are now making decisions about things that faculty have long regarded as exclusively their turf. The three questions have broad impact:
• Whom do you teach? This encompasses which students are admitted; to what student markets the institution directs its resources (e.g., online, residential, adult, veterans, minorities, economically disadvantaged); and whom the institution is serving.
• What do you teach? This encompasses what programs are offered, including who decides what programs to add or cut, and who decides what new faculty to hire when programs are added or modified.
• How do you teach it? This encompasses how academic offerings will be delivered (e.g., on campus, remotely, nights and weekends); who will teach those offerings; and what technology will be used.
When faculty members feel they’ve been pushed entirely out of the decision-making process about these three critical areas of responsibility, a vote of no confidence in the president—or even in the board—is often the result.
“Shared governance is a key issue,” said AGB Consultant Ellen Chaffee, president emerita, Valley City State University and Mayville State University. In her experience working with institutions in crisis, she has encountered both close-minded presidents who do not seriously engage with faculty and faculty who participate in shared governance to advance some personal, often negative, agenda.
A presidential change agent who has been brought in to make difficult decisions, some of which will intrude upon faculty responsibilities, may be getting set up (or setting himself or herself up) for a confrontation over shared governance.
“You’re really putting the person in a situation where either he or she is perceived to be abandoning the academic leadership role or must make unpopular decisions,” Chaffee said. Communication is necessary but not sufficient in all cases.”
What is an absolute requisite, Chaffee and others point out, is an approach based on a mutually understood practice of shared governance that both the faculty and the board buy into.
SHARED GOVERNANCE?
In a 2017 white paper, Shared Governance: Changing with the Times, AGB provides the following definition of the practice:
Shared governance is the process by which various constituents (traditionally governing boards, senior administration, and faculty; possibly also staff, students, or others) contribute to decision making related to college or university policy and procedure. When done well, shared governance strengthens the quality of leadership and decision making at an institution, enhances its ability to achieve its vision and to meet strategic goals, and increases the odds that the very best thinking by all parties to shared governance is brought to bear on institutional challenges. When done well, shared governance engenders an institutional culture of collective ownership and accountability for the institution’s present and future.
Adding a layer of complication to these relationships is the fact that at least half of faculty today are serving on a part-time or contingent basis. This changed workforce has had an impact on the voice and organization of faculty, leaving the work of shared governance to fall to a smaller—and often older—segment, according to Schwartz.
“If institutions are looking for partners in change, they are leaving out a significant source of ideas and energy if they define ‘faculty’ as only tenured and tenure-track, in terms of participation in shared governance,” she said. “Boards need to examine and update related policies.”
Joe Burke, president emeritus of Keuka College and an AGB consultant who has worked with several institutions to launch shared governance initiatives, described the campus relationships as a “triangle”: president-board, president-faculty, and board-faculty. “All [of these relationships] are critical to a no-confidence vote,” he said. “If it’s coming out of the faculty, the board could probably have done more on expectations, communications, and interactions on all three of these relationships.”
Burke echoed Deininger’s points about faculty feeling that a vote of no confidence in a president is often a move of last resort. “Where faculty really step up and come forward in a forceful matter is when they feel they have no say or they’re diametrically opposed to what the president is doing. Both can be solved with a lot more discussion between the two,” he said. Even given that, he adds, “We’re probably going to see more of this as the economic model becomes more stretched.”
CONFIDENCE IN WHAT?
Back in New England, the liberal-arts college president who is considered a change agent takes a somewhat controversial view of no-confidence votes. He believes that instead of the kiss of death for a president, they’ve become more of a badge of honor. This is not to suggest that serious concerns about legality or morality should be dismissed. But boards and presidents should be
on the same page when it comes to determining whether a complaint is legitimate or the faculty simply don’t like a decision that is within the president’s purview.
“Previously, the president’s job was constituency management, to protect the status quo, to deliberate ad nauseam. When you are a college with a huge endowment, your job is to steward resources,” he said. “But most colleges are trying to adapt to the changing environment and trying to generate resources and not just steward them. Most faculty operate in an environment where you steward resources.”
Presidents, he said, must negotiate a radically changed environment if they want their institutions to survive. “They’re no longer just constituency managers or glad-handers. Now it’s about how to create value. If you can’t touch the product—the curriculum—if you can just nibble around the edges,” you may be doing the institution a disservice in the end.
If, in fact, the higher education environment has permanently changed, then all parties need to learn to work together, MacTaggart advises. Both sides must “strenuously” endeavor to make shared governance a reality as the institution continues to sustain itself.
“If that doesn’t succeed, then the executive and board need to go forward together and continue to march. Certainly, if more skillful and transparent communications from the administration would help ameliorate the situation, it should do that and achieve more relative peace in the valley,” MacTaggart said. “But these days, for most institutions, you can’t put peace in the valley ahead of sustainability.”
Reflecting on the situation at Stockton, Deininger recognizes that a confluence of events, including a lack of board awareness of faculty concern, led in part to the president’s fall. In her 10 years of service on the Stockton board at the time of the no-confidence vote, she said the board had never confronted such faculty frustration. It was a pivotal moment. Board members knew they had to make some changes and did so, including instituting a task force on shared governance.
The board also began setting aside time at each meeting for the head of the faculty senate and faculty union to report on hot-button issues from their constituents. Board members also successfully nominated a retired faculty member to join their ranks. State law prohibits active faculty from serving on the board.
Stockton recently had a ribbon cutting for its new Atlantic City campus, and the university’s former provost is now the president. “It all worked out, though not without great turmoil,” Deininger said. Until that incident, the board had considered the president a strong leader and good steward of the institution. “That coin bank should have been filled with a lot of good will, but it wasn’t.”
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