Shared Governance in Crisis: When Universities Become Corporations (#758)

Higher Education - Shared Governance - Faculty Rights

Consider the erosion of faculty influence, the rise of corporate management, and the growing appeal of unionization in American higher education.

For generations, American universities have embraced a principle that distinguishes them from most other large institutions:

Shared governance.

The idea is straightforward. Universities exist to advance knowledge through teaching, research, and public service, and those responsible for fulfilling that mission should have a meaningful voice in decisions affecting it.

Faculty members are not simply employees hired to deliver a product. They are scholars, educators, researchers, and custodians of their institutions' academic integrity.

University administrators, meanwhile, are entrusted with managing resources, providing leadership, and ensuring institutional sustainability.

Shared governance recognizes that neither group can fulfill the university's mission effectively without the other.

But what happens when financial pressures, political interference, and increasingly corporate approaches to university management begin to undermine this relationship?

And what happens when faculty members conclude that their participation in university governance has become little more than a ceremonial exercise?

These questions are becoming increasingly important across American higher education.

The Financial Crisis and the Erosion of Shared Governance

Universities are facing substantial financial pressures. Declining enrollment at some institutions, rising operating costs, uncertain government funding, and changing political priorities have forced administrators to make difficult decisions.

Academic programs are being eliminated. Faculty positions are disappearing. Departments are being consolidated. Some institutions face the possibility of closure.

Financial challenges are real, and university administrators have a responsibility to address them.

But financial difficulties can also provide an opportunity to circumvent traditional governance procedures.

Decisions that would ordinarily involve extensive faculty consultation may instead be presented as urgent administrative necessities.

Faculty committees may be informed that there is insufficient time for deliberation.

Consultants may be engaged to recommend restructuring, while faculty members with decades of institutional experience are excluded from the process.

The argument is often that extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary measures.

Perhaps they do.

But financial urgency does not eliminate the obligation to govern responsibly.

Indeed, the more consequential a decision becomes, the stronger the argument for meaningful consultation with those who will live with its consequences.

A university facing financial difficulties needs the confidence, cooperation, and expertise of its faculty more than ever.

Excluding them may accelerate a decision, but it can also undermine the institution's ability to implement that decision successfully.

Financial Exigency: A Convenient Justification?

One particularly troubling development concerns the concept of financial exigency.

Traditionally, financial exigency has referred to a severe institutional financial crisis that may justify extraordinary actions, including the termination of tenured faculty appointments.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has long maintained that such circumstances require rigorous examination, transparency, and meaningful faculty participation.

Tenure was never intended to guarantee employment regardless of an institution's survival.

Rather, tenure protects academic freedom by ensuring that faculty members cannot be dismissed simply because their teaching, research, or opinions are inconvenient.

But when financial exigency is interpreted loosely, the distinction between genuine institutional necessity and administrative preference becomes blurred.

An institution experiencing a budgetary shortfall is not necessarily facing an existential crisis.

Yet the language of financial emergency can be used to justify actions that would otherwise encounter substantial faculty opposition.

The danger is not that universities will make difficult financial decisions.

The danger is that administrators may increasingly decide, without adequate independent scrutiny, what constitutes a financial emergency and which sacrifices are necessary.

Who examines the financial evidence? Who evaluates alternative solutions? Who determines whether administrative expenditures have received the same scrutiny as academic programs?

If those questions are answered exclusively by the administrators proposing the cuts, shared governance has already been compromised.

The University President as Corporate CEO

Another development is the increasingly corporate character of university leadership.

Modern university presidents and chancellors are expected to oversee enormous organizations, manage substantial budgets, raise philanthropic support, negotiate political relationships, and supervise complex construction projects.

These responsibilities require considerable managerial skill.

But the university is not a conventional corporation.

Its success cannot be measured exclusively through financial performance, operational efficiency, fundraising totals, awards, or institutional rankings.

A university's most important contributions often emerge over decades.

Fundamental scientific discoveries, intellectual development, academic freedom, and the education of future generations do not always produce immediate financial returns.

Corporate management models tend to emphasize executive authority, hierarchical decision-making, strategic efficiency, and accountability to governing boards.

Shared governance, by contrast, emphasizes deliberation, distributed responsibility, academic expertise, and institutional accountability.

These approaches need not be incompatible.

The problem arises when university administrators begin to regard faculty consultation as an obstacle rather than an essential component of responsible decision-making.

A corporate executive may be accustomed to making decisions and then informing employees.

A university administrator should understand that informing faculty of a decision is not the same as involving them in making it.

Consultation after a decision has effectively been made is communication, not shared governance.

The Rise of Faculty Votes of No Confidence

When faculty members believe their concerns are being ignored, they sometimes resort to votes of no confidence in university presidents, chancellors, provosts, or deans.

Such votes are frequently dismissed as symbolic gestures.

In one sense, they are. A faculty vote of no confidence does not ordinarily compel a university governing board to remove an administrator.

But dismissing these votes because they lack direct legal authority misses their significance.

A vote of no confidence represents a breakdown in institutional trust.

It indicates that faculty members no longer believe university leadership is adequately representing the institution's academic interests or respecting established governance principles.

A university can continue operating after such a vote.

But can it continue functioning effectively?

Research, teaching, curriculum development, graduate education, and professional training depend on faculty engagement and goodwill.

When trust disappears, cooperation becomes more difficult. Faculty members may withdraw from voluntary institutional service, become reluctant to participate in committees, or seek employment elsewhere.

A university may retain its administrative structure while gradually losing the collegial culture that once sustained it.

The result is an institution that remains operational but becomes increasingly dysfunctional.

From Shared Governance to Collective Bargaining

Perhaps the most significant development described in the accompanying material is the growing interest in faculty unionization.

Traditionally, faculty senates and academic councils have provided mechanisms through which faculty members participate in institutional governance.

Their authority varies considerably among institutions. Some exercise substantial delegated powers over academic matters, while others are primarily advisory.

At the University of California, for example, the Academic Senate possesses important delegated authority over admissions, curricula, degrees, and related academic matters.

Nevertheless, many consequential decisions involving institutional finances, construction, philanthropy, and administrative organization remain largely under executive authority.

When faculty members believe that their governance bodies lack sufficient influence, collective bargaining can become increasingly attractive.

The distinction is important.

A faculty senate generally seeks to influence institutional decisions through established academic governance procedures.

A union seeks to negotiate enforceable agreements concerning employment matters within the scope permitted by law.

The former relies heavily on institutional traditions, delegated authority, and cooperation.

The latter can provide contractual obligations and legal remedies.

If faculty members conclude that university administrators can simply disregard their recommendations, the attraction of collective bargaining becomes understandable.

Why continue relying on consultation if consultation produces no meaningful influence?

Why participate in governance committees if the most consequential decisions have already been made?

Why trust assurances of transparency when important information is withheld until commitments become irreversible?

Unionization can provide protections that traditional faculty governance may lack.

But it also raises an uncomfortable question.

What happens to the university's tradition of collegial self-governance when relationships between faculty and administrators become increasingly adversarial?

The Paradox of Faculty Unionization

A 2012 dissertation by Rene Castro, Faculty Unions and Their Effects on University Shared Governance, examined this question through the experiences of faculty senators at several California State University campuses.

The study explored whether the growth of faculty unions diminished the influence of traditional faculty governance bodies.

Importantly, the research recognized that earlier studies had produced mixed findings. The relationship between unionization and shared governance was not straightforward.

This is a crucial distinction.

Faculty unions do not necessarily undermine shared governance. In some institutions, they may reinforce it by protecting faculty participation and ensuring that administrators respect established procedures.

In others, tensions may develop between union representatives and academic senate leaders, particularly when responsibilities overlap.

The concern is that academic decision-making could become divided into two separate processes:

Collective bargaining over employment conditions and administrative decision-making over institutional policy, with traditional faculty governance marginalized.

But that outcome is not inevitable.

Indeed, one might argue that unionization is sometimes a response to the deterioration of shared governance rather than its cause.

When faculty members turn to collective bargaining, the appropriate question may not be why they have abandoned traditional governance.

It may be why traditional governance failed to protect their legitimate interests.

Philanthropy, Financial Dependence, and Administrative Authority

There is another dimension to this discussion that deserves particular attention:

The growing importance of private philanthropy in public universities.

As public funding becomes more uncertain and institutional costs increase, universities increasingly depend on major donors to support academic programs, construct buildings, and expand facilities.

Philanthropy can accomplish extraordinary things.

But major gifts can also create significant financial and governance obligations.

A donation toward a new building may require an institution to raise or borrow substantially more money to complete the project.

A naming agreement may create long-term commitments involving institutional identity, recognition, and public representation.

A gift designated for a particular purpose may constrain future decisions about academic priorities or resource allocation.

None of these arrangements is necessarily improper.

But they are consequential.

Consider a hypothetical university that accepts an $80 million gift toward a $327 million teaching hospital.

The gift is undeniably substantial.

Yet it leaves $247 million to be financed through other sources.

Who determines whether the project represents the institution's highest academic priority?

Who evaluates alternative educational models?

Who assesses the implications for faculty recruitment, staffing, operating costs, debt service, and other academic programs?

And when should faculty members participate in these discussions?

Before the institution commits itself?

Or afterward, when reconsidering the decision may threaten a major philanthropic agreement?

These are questions of shared governance, not merely fundraising.

A gift may be generous and beneficial while still requiring rigorous institutional scrutiny.

The responsibility of university leadership is not simply to secure philanthropic support.

It is to ensure that accepting that support serves the university's long-term academic mission.

Confidentiality Is Not a Substitute for Consultation

Major institutional decisions sometimes require confidentiality.

Donor negotiations, personnel matters, legal advice, and sensitive financial discussions may legitimately involve restricted information.

But confidentiality and secrecy are not synonymous.

Confidentiality protects information for a legitimate purpose.

Secrecy can protect decisions from scrutiny.

The distinction becomes especially important when faculty representatives are consulted under strict confidentiality requirements.

A small committee may be asked to review a proposal while being prohibited from discussing it with the faculty members it represents.

Such arrangements can be justified in limited circumstances.

But they create an obvious tension.

How can representatives meaningfully represent their constituents if they cannot consult them?

And how can faculty members exercise their responsibilities under shared governance if they are unaware that a consequential decision is being considered?

The answer cannot simply be that a committee was consulted.

Meaningful consultation requires adequate information, sufficient time for deliberation, and a genuine opportunity to influence the outcome.

A ten-minute discussion by a faculty executive committee may satisfy a procedural requirement.

However, it does not necessarily constitute meaningful shared governance.

The critical distinction is between following the formal steps of consultation and honoring the underlying purpose of consultation.

What Should Faculty Do?

The erosion of shared governance presents faculty members with difficult choices.

They can continue participating in established governance structures, hoping that administrators will respect their recommendations.

They can demand clearer policies, stronger procedural protections, and greater transparency.

They can organize collectively to negotiate enforceable rights.

Or they can withdraw from institutional governance altogether.

The last option may be the most damaging.

When experienced faculty members conclude that participation is pointless, university governance loses precisely the expertise and institutional memory it most needs.

The answer, therefore, should not be to abandon shared governance.

It should be to strengthen it.

Faculty governance bodies must be willing to ask difficult questions, insist on timely access to relevant information, and distinguish genuine consultation from retrospective endorsement.

Administrators, in turn, must recognize that shared governance is not an inconvenience to be tolerated when circumstances permit.

It is a fundamental feature of the university.

And governing boards must understand that effective leadership cannot be assessed solely through fundraising success, construction projects, financial performance, or favorable publicity.

The quality of an administration's relationship with its faculty is itself an important measure of institutional health.

The Ultimate Irony

There is a profound irony in the current predicament of American higher education.

Universities teach students to question assumptions, examine evidence, challenge authority, and think independently.

They celebrate intellectual freedom, critical inquiry, and open debate.

Yet some of these same institutions increasingly make their most consequential decisions through centralized administrative processes that limit opportunities for faculty participation.

They teach the importance of transparency while restricting access to information.

They praise collaboration while concentrating decision-making authority.

They celebrate academic freedom while weakening the structures that help sustain it.

And when faculty members object, their concerns may be characterized as resistance to change.

But questioning authority is not necessarily resistance to change.

It may be an expression of responsibility.

Shared governance was never intended to prevent universities from making difficult decisions.

Shared governance was intended to ensure that those decisions benefited from the collective wisdom of the academic community.

Financial pressures do not make that principle obsolete.

They make it more important.

Conclusion: When Consultation Becomes Ceremony

The central question is not whether universities need strong administrators.

Of course they do.

Nor is the central question whether faculty members should possess unlimited authority over institutional decisions.

Of course they should not.

The question is whether university leaders genuinely believe that faculty participation improves decision-making, or whether they regard it as a procedural obligation to be completed before implementing decisions already reached.

That distinction determines whether shared governance remains meaningful.

A university can have a faculty senate, a faculty executive committee, elaborate consultation policies, and carefully documented governance procedures while still failing to practice shared governance.

The existence of a process does not establish the integrity of that process.

And the fact that a decision has been formally approved does not necessarily mean that it has been responsibly made.

Perhaps the increasing interest in faculty unionization should be understood as a warning.

When faculty members seek legal protection from the administrators with whom they are supposed to share governance, something important has already gone wrong.

The tragedy would be to respond by weakening faculty participation still further.

Universities do not become stronger by silencing disagreement.

They become stronger by creating institutions in which disagreement can be expressed, considered, and resolved before decisions become irreversible.

Shared governance is not a privilege granted to faculty by university administrators.

Shared governance is a responsibility shared by everyone entrusted with the university's future.

And when that responsibility is abandoned, the institution may continue to call itself a university.

But something essential about the meaning of a university has been lost.

Further Reading

1. American Association of University Professors. Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities (1966), jointly formulated with the American Council on Education and the Association of Governing Boards. https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/2025-07/Statement_on_Government_of_Colleges_and_Universities.pdf

2. American Association of University Professors. Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure, particularly provisions addressing financial exigency. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/financial-exigency-academic-governance

3. Castro, Rene. (2012). Faculty Unions and Their Effects on University Shared Governance. California State University, Long Beach. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, publication number 3530669. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1112886561?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses

4. University of California Academic Senate. Standing Orders of the Regents, particularly Section 105.2, concerning the powers and duties of the Academic Senate. https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/governance/standing-orders/so1052.html

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