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ANAC
Presidents on the American College Presidency
When Jay Mathews, education reporter
for the Washington Post, queried ANAC presidents for his June 8
Post article on the role of college presidents today, he received
responses suggesting that their role has changed significantly,
as society itself has changed in major ways since the time of presidents
Woodrow Wilson, Robert B. Hutchins, James B. Conant, and Rev. Theodore
M. Hesburgh. It seems far too simplistic to conclude that today's
presidents are of diminished stature because they don't harness
media visibility comparable to that of their predecessors. Indeed,
medium, messenger, and message all appear to have changed markedly
in the American mass media in recent decades—phenomena that may
have little to do with the thinking, achievements, and stature of
today's college presidents. In this commentary, ANAC member presidents
analyze the roles of college presidents then and now.
To grasp just how fundamentally the college
president's role has changed, President Rita Bornstein of Rollins
College and President John Lahey of Quinnipiac University
are instructive. President Bornstein, who has made the study of
the American college presidency a personal research project, found
that President Hutchins accepted a hundred speaking engagements
yearly and published numerous popular and scholarly articles, in
part because he was able to leave the office every day at 5:00 pm,
never entertained or attended social events, and went to bed by
9:30 pm each night. Thus, he arose well-rested to write between
6:00 and 8:00 am each day. According to President Bornstein, Fr.
Hesburgh never attended parties or social events in South Bend from
the beginning of his presidency in 1952.
President Lahey on today's president, "Colleges and universities
are more and more like businesses today, with presidents serving
as CEOs with the never-ending pressure of any CEO: meeting a payroll,
negotiating with unions, developing physical plant maintenance and
replacement plans, and maintaining strong political and community
relations." He goes on to mention the relentless demands of
fundraising and alumni relations, even athletics.
Noting the role of earlier presidents in interpreting important
social and cultural issues of the day, President Lahey observes
that the world is far more complex than a half-century ago, making
it "extraordinarily difficult to become an expert on an issue
today and remain a fully involved CEO of the equivalent of a major
corporation." President Alan Harre of Valparaiso University
cites Thomas Homer-Dixon, who in The Ingenuity Gap (Knopf,
2000), argues that the complexity of society and institutions has
increased so rapidly that all leaders are scrambling just to keep
their complex systems operating and to "stay even with our
competitors."
Pacific Lutheran University President Loren Anderson echoes
presidents Lahey and Harre's views, "the job has changed. The
stakeholders are more numerous and more demanding, the tolerance
for error is smaller, the expectations for performance are higher,
the patience with failure is shorter, and the pressure to please
divergent constituencies greater." On the pressure to please,
President Bornstein's 1994 survey of 230 private college and university
presidents found 82 percent responding that they felt the need to
subordinate their personal beliefs to the interests of their institutions.
If presidents Lahey, Anderson, Harre, and Bornstein perceive a
presidential role shift from what might be called the "heroic
president"—a moral voice and opinion maker for the nation—to
today's CEO model-president as expert manager and decision-maker
adept at fundraising and constituent relations—President Jeanne
Neff of The Sage Colleges, maintains that the role is still
heroic. President Neff contends, "I believe that college presidents
are still playing a heroic role in American society—but not the
same role that was played by the Wilsons, Eliots and Conants of
their time. Today, many of us—especially those, like myself, with
campuses in urban settings—are fulfilling the roles occupied in
the past by chief executives of major businesses and industries
in becoming leaders in the economic development and revitalization
of our communities."
Citing the community planning groups and economic development commissions
that she chairs or where she holds membership, President Neff describes
Sage's role as a major investor in the future of the Troy-Albany
area. Indeed, as important new engines for community development,
ANAC members are investing through partnerships with schools, hospitals,
local governments, neighborhoods, and cultural institutions. Of
President Walt Harrison at the University of Hartford, the
Hartford/New Haven online visitor guide observes, "he does
a better job of drawing attention to the growth of Hartford's economy
than the municipal or state politicians have."
President Harre points to significant changes in society and higher
education that have inevitably influenced the presidential role.
He reminds us that presidents of the past educated the elite for
positions of leadership in business, banking, law, and government—roles
critical to the national welfare. Now, "for a variety of reasons,
public attention has shifted from an emphasis on higher education
as a national good to it being a private good"—a shift that
has reduced the perception of national importance accorded to higher
education. Moreover, Harre notes, "My sense is that the diversity
represented in the society has made it more difficult to lead the
society." Because people demand sensitivity to their "individual
uniqueness as people" amidst this diversity, it has become
"more difficult to lead a nation of people."
President Neff may have the last word in asserting that today's
presidents should be seen in no less light than their predecessors,
"Perhaps what makes this presidential role less broadly visible
is that where once the president was a solitary figure, orating
or writing from the elegant surroundings of a lecture hall or library,
the presidents who make a difference today in the lives of students
and communities are collaborators, working in the trenches. Their
public speech is in diverse settings, from committees to neighborhood
forums to op-ed pages of the newspaper to media sound bites. And
while we speak often about core values, the subjects are not abstract
but rather the real-world challenges of the larger society around
us."
The
Professoriate's Compact with Society
Representatives of faculty-related projects funded by The Pew
Charitable Trusts have been meeting since last summer in Washington,
DC, where many of the national higher education associations are
located. Participants have included Eugene Rice of AAHE; Jerry Gaff,
Ric Weibl, and Bridget Puzon of AACU; Tom Longin of AGB; Mary Ann
Rehnke of CIC; Jon Wergin, ANAC's frequent consultant from Virginia
Commonwealth University; occasional participants Richard Ekman of
CIC, and Robert Weisbuch and others at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation;
Ellen Wert of The Pew Charitable Trusts; and Linda McMillin and
Jerry Berberet from ANAC. The group developed the statement below
in an effort to enhance our sense of the faculty profession and
its purpose in society. Reader comments are invited and may be emailed
to me: anacjberb@aol.com.
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| Drury
Biologist Barbara Wing presents a best practice at the Summer
Institute "Marketplace." |
As a group college and university faculty
members, regardless of discipline or institutional context, constitute
a community of professional practice. This community shares certain
values and commitments that define faculty roles, rights, and responsibilities
as scholarly practitioners whose primary social function is that
of expert learner.
The professoriate, a time-honored profession, exercises a historic
compact with the larger society much like other professions, e.g.,
law, medicine, and clergy. Largely unwritten-perhaps in a vein similar
to the English common law—this compact is governed more by principles
of mind and behavior than formal laws. It is a tacit acknowledgement
of the reciprocal relationship between the professional person and
society. In exchange for certain safeguards, e.g., academic freedom
as a cornerstone of inquiry in a free society and a code of intellectual
integrity and self-regulation, the profession dedicates itself to
creation and dissemination of new knowledge through research, interpretation,
and teaching.
Some will argue that the compact has been eroded, if not broken,
in recent years (e.g., Derek Bok's "Reclaiming the Public Trust,"
the academic critique of the National Association of Scholars).
Yet, it is also clear that a variety of American higher education
initiatives are working to renew and sustain this compact, including
several faculty work projects supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts
(e.g., AACU's Preparing Future Faculty, AAHE's New Pathways, ANAC's
Faculty Work Project) which have affirmed a fundamental reciprocal
relationship between faculty and the larger community, as a necessary
covenant that will enable colleges and universities to adjust and
adapt to the educational challenges of a 21st century global information
society.
As a community of professional practice, college and university
faculty model the role of "expert learners"—dedicated
to lifelong inquiry wherever truth leads—that is critical to the
vitality of a free and open society. As such, professors' quest
for fuller knowledge, new meanings, and improved practice is ongoing,
informed by a consciousness that their practice models epistemological
and ethical standards of learning and conduct for society as a whole.
Making these intellectual values and habits of mind accessible to
the larger population remains perhaps the faculty's central professional
challenge in revitalizing the professoriate's social compact in
a diverse, tumultuous, and fast-paced world.
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| Valparaiso
team members at the Summer Institute included (l to r) Renu
Juneja, David Scupham, and Mary Christ. |
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