Tensions and Dilemmas We Often

Tensions and Dilemmas

We often speak of faculty loyalty to their discipline and to their "academic guild..."

Can faculty have loyalty to their "guild" as well as to their employing college or university or will there always be a fundamental tension?

It is easy to imagine a number of scenarios where there might be a fundamental tension between a faculty department and university's policy as a whole. Imagine that a college wishes to limit its liberal arts requirements and instead focus on more technical preparation for its students -- the humanities faculty will be unhappy. Imagine a college that tries to limit student freedom of speech on campus, which faculty in the English and History Departments largely oppose, given this will create a restrictive environment they feel may hamper their ability to teach effectively. Imagine conflicts of funding between the sciences and the humanities -- or professors that feel they are required to teach too many introductory undergraduate courses, rather than focus on their research activities.

Ideally, there would be no tensions of course -- but given the holistic, financial needs of an academic institution, and the more focused nature of individual departments, conflict seems inevitable. Also, universities often feel a need to market their schooling as a 'brand' to undergraduates, and wish to build on aspects of their more generalized academic education. Undergraduates are a school's core source of revenue, while departments may feel more strongly about the needs of their graduate students, given that they may have closer relationships with graduate students, and these students act as assistants in their courses.

Part 2: How does shared governance impact decision making at an institution of higher education? Discuss this within the context of what you know regarding governance, organized anarchy, bicameral institutions, and dualism of control.