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Structure and Governance in American Higher Education: Historical and Comparative Analysis in State Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Hugh Davis Graham
Hugh Davis Graham
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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Extract

Historians of public policy, who typically share a conviction that historical analysis can clarify the options available to policymakers, have witnessed this decade's quickening debate over the role and control of American higher education with, in one of Yogi Berra's immortal phrases, a sense of “déjà vu all over again.” Political leaders have continued, in a near vacuum of historical knowledge, to manipulate present variables and project them into the future with little awareness, beyond current political memory, of their past consequences, or of a legacy of political and cultural tradition that would constrain their manipulation. At the national level of debate, which is not where educational policy in the United States historically has been made, the level of historical awareness generally has been greater than at the state level. In the flurry of national commissions and foundation reports that probed the deficiencies of American higher education in 1984–85, the historical evolution of the college curriculum was addressed in reasonably informed historical terms.1 Even though the urgency of debate in the 1980s was fueled by the common pain of recession and post-baby-boom retrenchment, and also by fears of increasing vulnerability to oil boycotts and Japanese economic competition, the national elites who wrote the reports were mindful of the roots of Big Science in the Manhattan Project. Their ties to the academic establishment were intimate, and their historical memories embraced the wisdom of the liberal arts as well as the efficacy of land-grant agriculture and Silicon Valley.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 80 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1989

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References

Notes

1. In the higher-education debate, Bennett, William J., then director of the National Endowment for the Humanities, led off in October 1984 with To Reclaim A Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education (Washington, 1984)Google Scholar. This was followed in November by a report from the National Institute of Education, Involvement in Learning: Realising the Potential of American Higher Education (Washington, 1984).Google Scholar Then early in 1985 came the Association of American Colleges’ report, Integrity in the College Curriculum: A Report to the Academic Community (Washington, 1985).Google Scholar

2. In Maryland, for example, the Governor's Commission on Excellence in Higher Education, chaired by businessman Alan P. Hoblitzell during 1985–86, criticized the performance of the state's tripartite system, which was loosely coordinated by a regulatory board. The report charged that institutional missions were not sufficiently distinctive to ensure efficiency, and that the state's planning was not strategic—i.e., institutional goals were not clearly defined or tied to specific state objectives, and mechanisms for evaluating and enforcing compliance were lacking. Higher Education: An Investment in Excellence (Annapolis, December 1986)Google Scholar, commonly referred to as the Hoblitzell Report.

3. In the Maryland example, the Hoblitzell Report recommended a consolidated governing board empowered to transfer, modify, or abolish existing academic programs at all public institutions; to receive and distribute lump-sum budgets to the campuses; and to “assume governing authorities for an institution which fails to meets its mission.” Hoblitzell Report, v, 48–53.

4. In 1986 Aims C. McGuinness, Jr.,-reported for the Education Commission of the States that during 1985 approximately ten states considered structural reorganizations for coordination and governance of higher education. Substantial changes were enacted in Colorado and Washington, and special studies were under way in California, Maine, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Texas. McGuinness, Aims C., Jr., “Status of State Coordination and Governance of Higher Education: 1985,” State Postsecondary Education Structures HANDBOOK: 1986 (Denver, 1986), 1–7.Google Scholar

5. Moos, Malcolm Charles and Rourke, Francis E., Jr., The Campus and the State (Baltimore, 1959).Google Scholar Rourke has remained professor of political science at Johns Hopkins. The late Malcolm Moos directed the Carnegie-funded self-study for the University of Maryland, The Post Land Grant University (Adelphi, Md., 1981).

6. Glenny, Lyman A., Autonomy of Public Colleges: The Challenge of Coordination (New York, 1959).Google Scholar Glenny was a political scientist at Sacramento State College; he subsequently became executive director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and later a professor of higher education at Berkeley.

7. Berdahl, Robert O., Statewide Coordination of Higher Education (Washington, 1971).Google Scholar A political scientist like Moos, Rourke, and Glenny, Berdahl moved from San Francisco State College to SUNY Buffalo, and subsequently to the University of Maryland, College Park, where he currently is project director of the National Center for Postsecondary Governance and Finance.

8. Berdahl enumerated under institutional autonomy such functions as selecting and promoting faculty and administrative staff, selecting students, establishing degree requirements and curriculum content, and allocating funds among programs. Academic freedom protected faculty expression of the full range of intellectual inquiry, Berdahl maintained, but did not realistically extend to full self-government of state-funded institutions.

9. In 1971 Berdahl joined Glenny to produce what became known as “The Cookbook” on statewide coordination in higher education. It provided a straighforward, readable description and how-to guide that was widely accepted as the “party line” by its advocates. See Glenny, Lyman A. and Berdahl, Robert O., together with Ernest B. Palola and James G. Paltridge, Coordinating Higher Education for the 1970s: Muiticampus and Statewide Guidelines for Practice (Berkeley, 1971).Google Scholar

10. Gladieux, Lawrence E. and Wolanin, Thomas R., Congress and the Colleges (Lexington, Mass., 1976), 221–64;Google ScholarFinn, Chester E., Jr., Education and the Presidency (Lexington, Mass., 1977), 45–102.Google Scholar

11. McGuinness, Aims C., Jr., The Changing Map of Postsecondary Education: State Postsecondary Commissions (1202), their Origins, Implementation, and Current Status (Denver, 1975).Google Scholar

12. The cornucopia of Carnegie-funded reports remains confusing. In 1969 the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (administered by the parent corporation) established the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. Chaired by Clark Kerr, the commission in the six years of its existence sponsored eighty-three research studies, and additionally published twenty-two reports containing its own policy recommendations. In 1974 the Commission was replaced by the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education, also chaired by Kerr, and the Council sponsored thirty-eight research studies and issued fifteen policy reports before it expired in 1980. Among the most important of the commission's studies, from the viewpoint of structure and governance, is Lee, Eugene C. and Bowen, Frank M., The Multicampus University: A Study in Academic Governance (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, updated in Managing Multicampus Systems (San Francisco, 1975).Google Scholar Two of the most important Council reports are The States and Higher Education: A Proud Past and a Vital Future (San Francisco, 1976)Google Scholar and Three Thousand Futures: The Next Twenty Years for Higher Education (San Francisco, 1980).Google Scholar

13. The colloquial term “superboard” is used here in its popular meaning as a centralized state governing board with full authority over reporting public institutions, rather than in its more technical meaning as a superordinate board to whom subordinate boards report in specified areas of responsibility. The latter meaning could theoretically include statewide coordinating boards of limited authority, but in common coinage the term superboard refers to a highly centralized governing body with authority over budgets, programs, and personnel.

14. By the 1980s the federal government's planning initiative in the 1202 commissions had faded, and the federal government phased out the commissions’ modest planning budgets. Thirty-six states had simply designated existing agencies as their 1202 commissions, and only twelve states had created new ones.

15. Millett, John D., Conflict in Higher Education: State Government Coordination Versus Institutional Independence (San Francisco, 1984), 103–4.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., Table 5, 24.

17. McGuinness, Handbook, 1986, Table 1, 4.

18. Mautz, Robert B., The Power Game: Governance of Higher Education in Florida (Tallahassee, 1982).Google Scholar The governance debate became so highly politicized in Florida that legislative disagreement and compromise left the state with the components of all three basic models. This left Florida with a State Board of Education (chaired by the governor), a new planning commission, the old and weakened statewide Board of Regents, and with sufficient power now returned to the individual institutions that they could do their own planning with little reference to the Regents or the planning commission. Mautz, who is a former chancellor of the downgraded Florida Board of Regents, called the resulting structure “difficult to explain or even comprehend on a theoretical basis.”

19. McGuinness, Handbook, 1986, 5.

20. Millett, Conflict, 19. North Carolina's appropriation per student in 1982–83 was $4,321, compared with a national average of $3,655.

21. The original consolidation of 1931 combined Chapel Hill, North Carolina College of Agriculture and Engineering at Raleigh, and the Women's College at Greensboro, and the new system prospered under the strong leadership of President Frank Porter Graham (1930–49). Friday became president in 1956. The University added a fourth campus in Charlotte in 1965 and a fifth (Asheville-Biltmore) and sixth (Wilmington) in 1969, all three of them lacking doctoral programs. By 1970 there were additionally nine regional four-year campuses, then enrolling 35,000 students to the state university's 45,000 (18,000 at Chapel Hill, 13,000 at Raleigh). Lefler, Hugh T. and Newsome, Albert Ray, North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1973), 656–59.Google Scholar

22. Author interview with William Friday, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 15 May 1981; “North Carolina,” State Profiles (Atlanta, 1985), 47–53.Google Scholar

23. North Carolina's Consolidation Act of 1971 created a three-part budget: normal operating expenditures, earmarked by institution; salary increases, customarily distributed by the Board of Governors proportionally to the campuses; and a lump-sum fund for discretionary board use “without reference to constituent institutions.” The system was consolidated in 1972 in compliance with this enabling legislation.

24. Chronicle of Higher Education, 26 February 1986.

25. Under the leadership of President Leonard Jenkins, East Carolina had spearheaded the successful drive of the regional campuses to achieve university status in the late 1960s, thereby providing added incentive for the University System to seek a preemptive consolidation that it could dominate.

26. Scott Jaschik, “North Carolina's Highly Regarded University System Struggles to Adapt to Life After Bill Friday,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 September 1987. For the extensive faculty debate at Chapel Hill over statewide governance, see Summary of Proceedings, Meeting of the General Faculty and the Faculty Council, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 10 April 1987. A special report by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in 1987 criticized North Carolina's consolidated system for failing to represent the interests of the independent and community colleges, and for overmanagement through centralized control of a line-item budget and tight administrative procedures. The report acknowledged, however, that the consolidated system had controlled the proliferation of academic programs more effectively than the private sector, and had effectively delegated most personnel decisions to campus administrations. See James A. Norton, Linda C. Winner, and Dennis M. Bartels, Continuing the Conversation: Observations and Conclusions About Postsecondary Education in North Carolina (1987).

27. Rosenbaum, Allan, “The Politics of Higher Education: Wisconsin,” AAUP Bulletin (Autumn 1973), 298–310.Google Scholar

28. The University of Wisconsin system consisted of doctoral-granting campuses at Madison (1849) and Milwaukee (1956), plus four-year institutions at Green Bay and Parkside. The Wisconsin State University system had evolved from normal-school beginnings (1866), first into state teachers colleges (1927), then into four-year liberal arts colleges (1951), and they were designated regional universities in 1964- The rapid growth of the WSU system in the 1960s prompted the UW system to create branch campuses in Green Bay and Parkside, the state's fastest-growing urban areas outside Milwaukee and Madison, lest the aggressive WSU add them to its growing political base.

29. Chronicle of Higher Education, 30, 29 May 1985.

30. Ibid., 25.

31. Ibid., 26.

32. Chronicle of Higher Education, 33, 11 March 1987, 24.

33. Ibid., 32, 21 January 1987, 18, 19, 24.

34. In West Virginia in 1979 a major study by the Academy for Educational Development recommended that the central governing board be abolished and replaced with campus governing boards and a statewide coordinating board. The legislature, however, did not follow the recommendation.

35. A political scientist like Moos, Rourke, Glenny, and Berdahl, Millett was president of Miami University from 1953 to 1964, then served as chancellor of the Ohio Regents for Higher Education through 1972. His associates in producing Conflict in Higher Education were Fred F. Harcleroad, Robert B. Mautz, T. Harry McKinney, Robert C. Wood, and Marcy Muringhan.

36. John D. Millett, The Politics of Higher Education (University, Ala., 1975).

37. Millett, Conflict, 235–65.

38. Burnes, Donald W. et al., State Governance of Education: 1983 (Denver, 1983), 27.Google Scholar

39. Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education, The States and Higher Education- A Proud Past and a Vital Future (San Francisco, 1976).Google Scholar

40. Berdahl, Statewide Coordination, 241.

41. The master plan permitted the University of California to offer selected doctoral programs jointly with the state college and university system. But only six such programs were tried, and in 1972 the state legislative analyst recommended phasing them out because they were costly and produced few graduates. Between 1965 and 1980 the six joint programs had produced only sixty-six Ph.D.s, and in 1980 the California Postsecondary Education Commission's Report on Joint Doctoral Degree Programs also recommended their termination.

42. Tensions between the strength of the decentralizing tradition and postwar federalaid reforms are explored in Graham, Hugh Davis, The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy in the Kenned and Johnson Years (Chapel Hill, 1984).Google Scholar

43. Millett, Conflict, 108–12.

44. The classic indictment is Bernstein, Marver H., Regulating Business by Independent Commission (Princeton, 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which derived its historical model primarily from the experience of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Political scientist James Q. Wilson provides a thoughtful recent exploration of the “capture” literature and its political implications in his conclusion to The Politics of Regulation, ed. Wilson, James Q. (New York, 1980), 357–94.Google Scholar

45. But see Georgia Postsecondary Education: Where We Are and Where We Need To Be— or “Studying A Porcupine” (Atlanta, 1981), which complains of inadequate coordination by Georgia's governing board.

46. Chronicle of Higher Education, 33, 11 March 1987, 24.

47. Naisbitt, John, Megatrends: Ten Directions Transforming Our Lives (New York, 1982), 97.Google Scholar

48. Peters, Thomas J. and Waterman, Robert H., In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best Run Companies (New York, 1982), 44.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., 31.

50. Gilley, J. Wade, Fulmer, Kenneth A., and Reithlingshoefer, Sally J., Searching for Academic Excellence: Twenfy Colleges and Universities on the Move and Their Leaders (New York, 1986), 11, 87.Google Scholar

51. Henry Rosovsky, “Our Universities Are the World's Best,” The New Republic, 13 and 20 July 1987, 13.

52. Ibid., 14.

53. Unlike Massachusetts, North Carolina's consolidated governing board has excluded the two-year colleges and retained boards of trustees with limited delegated authority for each four-year campus. But both states centralize in their statewide governing boards the crucial authority over budgets, programs, and personnel.

54. Millett, Conflict, 248–52.

55. Chronicle of Higher Education, 29 July 1987; Jobs, Growth, and Competitiveness (Washington, D.C.: National Governor's Association, 1987).Google Scholar

56. Chairman Allen Schwait of the University of Maryland Board of Regents, quoted in the Baltimore Sun, 12 April 1987.