While many of our colleagues are eager to embrace collective bargaining, a number hold back. They ask, "We, bargain with the University? Preposterous! We are the University!"
Behind the idea that we are the center of the University is the claim that we are professionals. We know our specialties better than any outsiders. No one else can judge the qualifications of the people we hire and retain as well as we can. Consequently, our basic unit is the department, the members of which share a common discipline.
As professionals, we believe that we should be self-governing. At least we should share the responsibilities of governance with administrators. We assume that we and they are men and women of goodwill and reason. Our community of interest is sufficient that decisions are determined more by reason than by the exercise of authority. Our ideal is that decisions emerge from a consensus.
Our concept of the University does not minimize the role of the administrator. Instead, we conceive of him as a leader and not a manager. He provides stimulation, wise counsel, and resources. Knowing his people intimately, he seeks to learn of their hopes and ambitions. When he uncovers sources of initiative which can lead to better programs, he answers, "Why not?" He sifts through the various opportunities in order to nurture the development of his organization. How he allocates the resources at his disposal determines its direction of growth and its success. Even if he can give little but his personal encouragement, he stimulates those who take initiative.
His most important task is in aiding his colleagues in the recruitment of new faculty with the highest possible qualifications. Any institution with a high concentration of highly competent people will be a strong one. It will fulfill its mission with distinction and provide excellent opportunities for its faculties to advance professionally. Under such conditions, leadership becomes a channeling of initiatives, rather than the creation of programs by administrators.
While this ideal is seldom reached, the pursuit of it has led some of America's colleges and universities to provide a higher educational system admired the world over. Many of the best minds in the world have flocked to our shores to join our institutions both as students and scholars. In the process, we have created the greatest concentration of quality scholars and scientists in the world. We have also trained vast numbers of people who sustain our leadership in technological developments.
At least by some standards, American colleges and universities have been highly successful. We think our decentralized professional organizational structure has been partly responsible. Yet that structure makes no sense to outsiders. When they cannot fit our structure onto a tidy line and staff organizational chart, they cannot see how anything but chaos can result. During the student uprising of a few years ago, the public demanded to know, "Who is in charge?" And no recitation of committees, councils, and senates could satisfy them.
When state after state faced financial difficulties, political leaders demanded to know exactly what was the public getting for its money. They hurled the term "accountability" at educators as a challenge. All of the successes of higher education could be written off as accidents unless educators could explain, evaluate, and measure what they were doing. In other words, administrators should use management tools to govern their faculties. Students also demanded accountability from faculty members. They insisted upon rating teachers and upon having a voice in the retention and promotion of professors. Within a short time, student rating of teachers became another management tool.
When legislatures failed to produce the resources, administrators could no longer operate in the old style. Instead of encouraging initiative by providing resources, administrators began taking resources away. They were forced to act as though professors were employees to be discarded when no longer needed.
So far, the tenure system has survived the attacks on it. It is obvious to us that students, the general public, and even some administrators are not happy with it. They see it as a barrier to the efficient management of employees. The Board members insist that a significant number of us are lazy, incompetent, or even senile. They think that once we have tenure, we no longer have sufficient incentives to do our jobs. Obviously, they view us as employees stuck in dull jobs instead of professionals with rewarding careers.
Fortunately, the Board members know that if they lead the nation in striking down our tenure, they may endanger all of our Oregon universities and colleges. Consequently, they have developed a new set of policies to fulfill their objectives. Promotions and tenure under them will be more difficult to achieve. We will be subjected to numerous written evaluations. These will be useful when the important decisions are made by stranger administrators, instead of by peer group colleagues. They can also be used to build cases to support discharges. On peril of losing our jobs and being forced to change careers, we will have the incentives required to force us to do our jobs. If we fail to measure up, the administration is to humanely but firmly terminate us.
We are to have a career development program for all of us, whether in our early years, mid-years, or late years. It may be that the program will provide opportunities or it may be another attack on academic freedom. Traditionally, as professionals, we have followed our own intellectual interests consistent with our abilities. In maximizing our own professional careers, we have believed that we were making our departments and universities stronger. Now in the age of grants and accountability, we may be required to subordinate our interests in order to maximize the interests of an administrator, a department, or a university.
While many of us fight the idea of collective bargaining, we find the legislature included us in a collective bargaining law. When we complain about their treatment of us, legislators tell us we should use their law. They see us as employees. In fact, everyone does, except us.
If our universities were among those who compete for the best minds at considerable expense, we would have the dignity and respect we crave. But the fact is, those who are over us cannot understand our concept of a university. It is time we stop living in a dream world of first-class universities. We must salvage what we can by collective bargaining. At least some of our collegial system may yet be saved.
Lafe Harter Department of Economics November, 1973