Managing Harvard: A New Deal?

Editor’s note: President Derek Bok, who wrote annual reports on the University during his service from 1971 to 1991, did so again at the end of this year of interim service. The report begins with a review of the year’s events and ends with discussions about teaching, assessing student learning, and developing future academic leaders at the decanal level—issues covered as well in a conversation with Bok (see "Interim Accomplishments"). His written observations on how Harvard might better manage itself in pursuit of its academic mission are excerpted here. The full 33-page text is available at www.harvardmagazine.com/go/Bok_report07.

Are universities, as currently organized and governed, truly capable of responding quickly and effectively enough to the challenges that confront them? Skeptics are not difficult to find. As I was once told by a wise older colleague, the late Milton Katz: “Leading a large university is like trying to steer a dog by its tail.” Recent reports on higher education make much the same point, albeit in less colorful language. A group of past and current presidents from major research universities has announced that “many observers of university life (including the authors) believe that the environment is now changing too rapidly and some external constraints, like the financial constraints, have become too strong to maintain the present decision process.”…[A] report from the National Commission on the Academic Presidency has concluded: “At a time when higher education should be alert and nimble, it is…hindered by traditions and mechanisms of governance that do not allow the responsiveness and decisiveness that the times require.”…

Such questions have been much on my mind this year as I have worked my way through my brief, unanticipated return to academic administration.

Listening to discussions about reorganizing universities, I have discovered that much of the talk comes down to a desire to expand the power of university leaders at the expense of the faculty.…The most common justification is that the world is changing so fast…that there is simply no time to engage in widespread faculty consultation without missing out on important opportunities. As the former president of the University of Michigan, James Duderstadt, puts it: “The academic tradition of extensive consultation, debate, and consensus building…will be one of our greatest challenges, since this process is simply incapable of keeping pace with the profound changes swirling about higher education.”

Such pronouncements sound plausible; they play upon a pervasive unease that changes are sweeping over America that existing institutions are unable to address adequately. Nevertheless, the diagnosis does not ring true to my experience. In four decades of observing the world of higher education, I have yet to encounter a significant problem that developed at anything approaching…a speed too rapid to allow for thoughtful deliberation.…

Looking further at proposals to strengthen the hand of those in charge, I suspect that they proceed from an unspoken premise that unilateral decisions by the leadership will somehow be bolder, sounder, and more creative than decisions arrived at through faculty debate.… Countless tales have been told through the years about the inherent conservatism and political infighting of university faculties. When asked why he gave up the Princeton presidency to enter public life, Woodrow Wilson famously replied that he “left the hard politics of Princeton for the easier politics of Washington.”…

It is certainly true that professors can resist change and that, like most human beings, they are often loath to give up their prerogatives. For all that, however, American universities have fared quite well over the past 50 years, the very period when faculty power reached its zenith.…Moreover, when I try to recall serious errors of judgment on the part of universities, I find it easier to think of examples beyond the customary purview of faculties, such as the excesses of intercollegiate athletics or the money lost through expensive forays into for-profit distance education, than to list comparable mistakes at the hands of professors.

It is also well to remember that there are severe limits to what one can accomplish by adding power to the administration. In universities like Harvard, where professors do not belong to unions, the most important activities under faculty control have to do with teaching and research.…No one ever raised the level of scholarship by ordering professors to write better books, nor has the quality of teaching ever improved by telling instructors to give more interesting classes. In these domains, good work depends on the talent and enthusiasm of professors. Much of the time taken up by faculty deliberation, however frustrating it may seem, is…a necessary process for generating the sense of ownership and shared commitment that is needed to elicit the best teaching and research.…

A much more substantial issue about increasing the effectiveness of universities involves the appropriate division of authority between the center and the several faculties. Among universities, Harvard has long been known for its high degree of decentralization. The president can hire and fire the deans and review appointments to tenure, and the central administration must approve the budgets of the faculties and their plans to launch new fund drives and construction projects. Within these limits, however, the several schools have traditionally enjoyed great autonomy in devising their own curricula, setting priorities for teaching and research, hiring and deploying their administrative staff, buying supplies, and more.…[D]eans are largely responsible for raising their own revenue and keeping their budgets balanced. As long as they do so successfully, they are left relatively free to develop in the way they see fit.

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