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The following op-ed appeared June 21, 2007, in
The Boston Globe.
The debate about governance at the University of Massachusetts, motivated by President
Jack M. Wilson’s vision for “one university,” has paid scant attention
to the history of state university systems. In states across the nation, we
have a laboratory of experiments that enable us to draw conclusions about the elements
necessary to achieve the highest level of educational excellence. Massachusetts
has a less mature state university system than some other states. Undoubtedly
because of the large number of outstanding private colleges and universities located
within it, Massachusetts created a state university system relatively recently -- in
1991, several decades after such systems were created in places like California,
New York, Texas and Illinois.
The experience of those states demonstrates that systems
need to give considerable independence to individual campuses to achieve the best
results. The University
of California is a case in point.
Arguably the best state system of higher
education in the country, its ten campuses are at once parts of a single university
and substantially independent. By
contrast, states in which a single individual serves at once as chancellor of the
flagship campus and president of the system, like Michigan, tend to have single university
systems in which the other campuses are clearly subordinate branches.
Throughout its history, the University of California has repeatedly given greater
independence and authority to its campuses. The system began in a form that
resembles President Wilson’s vision; the entire university was governed from
Berkeley--its medical campus in San Francisco, its agricultural experiment stations
in Davis and Riverside, and the outpost, the “Southern Division of the University
of California,” later known as UCLA. In the early 1950’s, Berkeley
and UCLA assumed greater independence with the creation of chancellors for the two
campuses. When the Berkeley Chancellor, Clark Kerr, became President of the
University in 1958, he worked to realize a vision of nine independent campuses, each
distinctive and excellent. In the eight years in which he served president,
he gave more independence to existing campuses and created new ones--in San
Diego, Irvine, and Santa Cruz--to form the extraordinary group of universities
we know today.
Kerr recognized that the independence of the campuses was essential both to realizing
excellence and to shaping distinctive identity. Change in large organizations
is inherently difficult; anything that reduces bureaucracy and levels of governance
makes them more nimble in responding to problems and opportunities. Furthermore,
university governance, of its very nature, is highly participatory; you cannot motivate
and accomplish change without an immediate relationship to the faculty. Effective
leaders need to know their communities and the resources and opportunities they present,
and their communities must know them and trust them to act on their behalf.
To build collaboration among campuses with strong leaders and distinctive identities,
you need to institutionalize regular communication at every organizational level. At
the same time that the University of California gave authority to the chancellors,
it created annual system-wide conferences of students and of faculty to build stronger
unity among the campuses. It built system-wide councils for chancellors, provosts,
vice chancellors, and faculty senate leaders. You cannot decree unity; you
need to build it, among those immediately responsible for decision making on the
campuses. It is a human as much as a policy task.
What, then, is the system-wide role? The system, in extensive consultation
with the campuses, should develop policies for the entire university in matters such
as intellectual property, tenure and promotion, construction financing, compensation
and benefits. It should take the lead in governmental relations, both at the state
and federal levels. It should build community among the campuses, lobby for them
and help them achieve the excellence to which they aspire.
There are few more important questions than the future of public higher education
in the state of Massachusetts. Massachusetts lacks a master plan for higher
education, and it needs one. Such a plan will better ensure educational opportunity
for its students. Its development must be a highly public process, conducted
by a body with broadly representative and respected membership. Only in such
a public conversation can we arrive at wise decisions and policies with the legitimacy
to guide higher education for decades to come.
Carol T. Christ is president of Smith College and former executive vice chancellor
of the University of California, Berkeley.
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