There have been several recent articles by former presidents of private liberal arts colleges who are opining on the inability of colleges and universities to realize needed transformational change, no matter the nature or the urgency of the existential threat. Their writing is frank and honest, but also sensitive and balanced. They express their thoughts, as they led their institutions, with humility, frustration and disappointment at times, and even humor (disarming and self-deprecating). Significantly, nearly all their points, concerns, and warnings were the same as those being ascribed to public research universities, about which I and others have written in recent years.
There are, of course, differences between private liberal arts colleges and public research universities. And there is a spectrum of important institutional types on which those two categories sit. But it seems evident that the combination of economics, public opinion, political pressures and polarization, enrollment trends and projections, student expectations, employer expectations, AND the very structures and processes that have come to define American higher education (including shared governance, tenure, academic calendar) have rendered both type of institutions unable to realize needed change. Now, at least for some (smaller private) institutions, the question has become “is it too late?”
Brian Mitchell, former president of Bucknell University and Washington & Jefferson College, draws on his experience to offer insight in his newest Forbes contribution. He also offers a stern warning: “Boards, administrators, and faculty must wake up to the new realities they now face… the faculty can no longer live in a world that no longer exists… institutional change will happen at a speed to which they are unaccustomed and potentially unwilling to accept.” President Mitchell then goes on to offer some immediate steps that can be taken. Perhaps the most important is to “abandon the approach to governance where trustees are updated in their periodic board meetings.”
Also just published was the book, “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education” by Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College. Articles on Rosenberg’s observations, analysis, and cautions have appeared this month in both The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed, the two leading higher education publications in the US.
Rosenberg, who described shared governance as a drag on any movement for change, a kind of anchor weighing institutions down, offers this frank commentary in his Inside Higher Ed interview: “Shared governance is a system designed, in my view, to make sure that any changes are very slow and very incremental. Anytime you work toward consensus within a large, heterogeneous group, you going to probably end up taking a lot if time – and with an outcome that is least objectionable to the most people, which is antithetical to anything revolutionary or transformational.” This, of course, against the backdrop of the many converging challenges facing higher ed. The need for transformational change in our nation’s colleges and universities has never been greater or more urgently needed.
President Rosenberg also speaks frankly if not apologetically about how college presidents think about shared governance versus how they speak about it on their campuses and to their constituencies, saying “shared governance is one of those things that if you ask any college president off the record, they’ll probably express their frustration, then they’ll go back to their campus and wax poetic about the wonders of shared governance, because that’s what they have to do to survive.” Damning but accurate. Shared governance, one of the most treasured and fiercely protected tenets of US higher education, is also its third rail. Leaders must tread carefully and be exact with their words. They must be respectful, if not deferential, and find lanes of cooperation that will allow some progress to be achieved. But that progress is (by design) slow. Incremental change is possible, but transformational change may not be.
Therein lies the conundrum about which Rosenberg writes in his new book. Higher ed’s own systems are inhibiting needed transformational change. Rosenberg wrote an essay adapted from his book that appeared this month in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Higher Ed’s Ruinous Resistance to Change: The academy excels at preserving the status quo. It’s time to evolve.” In his essay, he shares disappointments, at times frustrations, from his own experience as Macalister’s president, summarizing: “Not only was there resistance to change, there was resistance to talking about change. Simply raising the subject was seen by many faculty members as an assault on the values of the college.” The response always follows a formulaic pattern, he adds, “shock, grief, outrage, protests… sometimes a vote of no-confidence.”
Such absolutism (or absolute obstructionism) should not be assumed to exist only at small liberal arts colleges. It can be found on most campuses, whether small teaching-focused institutions, or (in pockets of) large public research universities. President Rosenberg adds, “If maintenance of the status quo is the goal, higher education has managed to create the ideal system,” and then seemingly concedes, “virtually any administrator or faculty member who begins with an idea for transformational change will eventually reach the same conclusion about the battle: it’s not worth it.” He cites example after example, not with an accusatory tone but with humility, some head-scratching, and even humor.
Rosenberg also offers comment on the apparent “return to (pre-pandemic) normal” objective and now realized goal of many colleges and universities, not with relief but with the recognition of missed opportunity provided by the pandemic. The internal pressures driving this phenomenon have been written about by others. Rosenberg offers a similar view, “the pandemic years are more likely to be viewed … as an interruption than as a permanent shift in direction.” Kansas State University’s David Rosowsky refers to this as a lost opportunity and examines the likelihood of seeing real disruption in the sector. Stanford University’s John Mitchell shares his frustration that most colleges and universities have “turned their backs on all we learned.” He adds, “There are no broad efforts by college leaders to codify what we have learned or leverage the resourcefulness, ingenuity, empathy, and understanding we gained by powering through the pandemic. It’s as if we spent two years building the foundation for a new future, only to abandon it for the familiar discomfort of a system widely in need of reinvention.”
Rosenberg concludes with a sadly accurate summary of where we landed post-pandemic before reminding us of the urgency of transformational change at our nation’s colleges and universities, writing: “One would be very hard pressed to find a traditional, in-person college that has announced a permanent shift to more online of asynchronous instruction or one with a physical campus that has decided to rely less on its buildings. Most of the revisions to the academic calendar that were made during the pandemic – summer sessions or divided semesters – are being reversed. Students are back to taking graded examinations. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
What is making former presidents like Mitchell and Rosenberg (and others) come forward at this time? Perhaps it’s the rising sense of urgency or the observations from their post-presidential perches that (1) nothing has changed, and (2) the institutions themselves (their culture and processes, pace and arrogance) are to blame.
Maybe the even more perplexing question is why are the views of former college and university leaders so diametrically opposed to those of sitting presidents? One group points to the urgency of needed change and the rapidity with which the existential threats are closing in on higher educational institutions (and the institution of US higher ed itself). The other asserts with inexplicable confidence (80% of those surveyed) that “their institution will be financially stable over the next decade.” UNC Wilmington’s Kevin McClure refers to this as “operating more on hope than on strategy.” Others are far less gentle in describing this disconnect from reality with sitting presidents having to balance leading their institution, addressing myriad challenges, managing change, respecting shared governance, and keeping their jobs. They are walking a thin line, endeavoring to balance optimism and realism – the former to build support and lift morale, the latter very carefully metered so as not to invoke a challenge.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with the saying “the only constant in life is change.” Change has been a constant since the dawn of humanity. So, too, has been the fear of change. But without change there is no progress, no growth, no adaptation, no evolution. While far less philosophical, I have asserted in my own writing on higher education that “refusal to change – in a changing world – is not a strategy.”
And in the words of Benjamin Franklin, “when you are finished changing, you are finished.”
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