Institution's Role Discussion

What role does the institution have in creating an effective university?

A university is a complex bureaucracy and all administrators that enforce its protocols must wear many 'hats' and concern themselves with the needs of diverse interest groups. A university must have a coherent mission philosophy, yet allow academic departments, students, and other organizational role-players sufficient autonomy so they can exercise their various functions, including independent research and participating in extracurricular activities as well as the process of learning in the classroom. The university must remain financially solvent, but cannot put profit above all other aims -- even a for-profit institution must maintain its reputation for quality, or the degree will mean nothing.

While institutions must be lead with a coherent philosophy, conflicts at universities because of their complexity are rife. For example, Harvard university president Lawrence Summers was accused of playing favorites with certain subject areas and of imposing a unified control and philosophy across Harvard's traditionally diffuse infrastructure. One professor, who complained about a transfer of funds from his department to another department said: 'President Summers asked me, didn't I agree that, in general, economists are smarter than political scientists, and political scientists are smarter than sociologists" (Bombardieri 2006). An economics major, the president believed Harvard should emphasize economics more than traditional liberal arts subjects -- an idea with which many humanities faculty members disagreed. University presidents have tried to instate speech codes, to placate alumni or certain members of the student body -- only to enrage advocates of freedom of speech. Shifting emphasis to undergraduate teaching may make faculty members who are more interested in graduate students and their own research angry, as was the case at NYU several years ago. The complexities of university bureaucracies and actors, each of which has their own interests, make the university an institution that is inevitably a house -- or an institution -- divided against itself.

Works Cited

Bombardieri, Marcella. (2006, February 16) Summers should go, ex-Harvard dean says: Calls president less than truthful. The Boston Globe. Retrieved March 27, 2009 at http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/02/16/summers_should_go_ex_harvard_dean_says/