Response on University Governance-BECKER

My comment was criticized as being too complacent about an American system of higher education that is better than others, but is clearly far from perfect. I agree it can be improved-I caution in my entry not to be complaisant- but I am dubious of most proposals to change procedures that have stood the test of experimentation and alteration. And many experiments have passed into the dustbin of history. For example, after the student riots of the late 1960’s, some American universities gave students a much larger role in choosing faculty and even presidents. These have largely been discarded because they did not work well, and students were not even interested in such “power”. One criticism made is that I am inconsistent because I was willing to offer a radical new proposal for the immigration system even though America has benefited greatly from immigration. But the present immigration system has obvious defects, measured say by the large number of illegal entrants, the long waiting times to get green cards, and the arbitrariness of admission criteria. And there is no competition within the US for the admission of immigrants. The weaknesses of the American university system are less striking, the desired changes are less clear, and the competition is fierce. Still, I do criticize universities all the time-including my own!- but I am also aware that the American system of higher education offers a remarkably diverse portfolio of choices, and it has performed extremely well. So many of my criticisms and those by others are what game theorists call “cheap talk”. I mainly wanted to caution against accepting proposed changes in university governance too easily. To be concrete, I am skeptical of giving trustees more power, or giving faculties much less. In between these positions, I readily admit there is considerable room for change. For example, I believe it is often desirable for a president and provost to take over weak departments and put in their own chairmen. Unfortunately, this is done less often than appears necessary even at the strongest universities, although I may be wrong and the reluctant administrators right. It was pointed out correctly that the reputation of universities, good or bad, often greatly lag reality. Clearly, applicants often do not know the current situation, and universities sometimes live off of their past reputations. This lag shows up in the unusual stability over time of the ranking of different universities compared to the rankings of companies in say the steel or grocery industries. So competition among universities may not work so quickly as in profit-making industries to weed out those performing poorly, and replace them by dynamic new universities. But still, Stanford, Chicago, Berkeley, and UCLA all rose to prominence during the 20th century, while prominent universities of a century ago, like Clark and Johns Hopkins, declined. Moreover, as one of the comments indicated, innovators like the University of Phoenix and completely online colleges have emerged in very recent years, and are enrolling hundreds of thousands of students. Some of comments drifted into an interesting discussion of the protections afforded free speech at universities. This is a relevant aspect of university governance. I will just indicate my belief that universities have to defend strongly the right to speak on campuses, including the right to speak by those on the far right as well as those on the far left. That said, I cannot understand why any university group would invite someone like Ward Churchill to speak, or believe he has anything to say that is worth hearing.

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