Shared governance, the concept of administration and faculty making policy and decisions together, has a long history at Berkeley. Our campus’s Academic Senate has more power than most such bodies across the country: the Budget Committee plays a central role in determining FTE, granting tenure and promotion, and other Senate committees control curriculum and set admissions policies. Moreover, there have been several times on this campus (most recently in 2017) when the Academic Senate came together in special session and forced major changes in university policies and leadership.
What is the state of shared governance on the Berkeley campus today? I see some rays of sunshine and some storm clouds on the horizon. The good news is that Chancellor Christ and her leadership are strongly committed to consultation and communication with the Academic Senate. They meet regularly with the Senate leadership and we have a chance to speak our minds and make our cases about the major issues on campus. It is said that that the Academic Senate can be as effective as we are persuasive, and we have seen this on several occasions, where CAPRA and DIVCO really did seem to influence important decisions (e.g., delaying Finance Reform, putting off the salary furlough, among others).
But “consultation” can also just mean faculty voices are heard but then completely ignored. This too we have seen over the years; we have also seen that ignoring faculty advice led to extremely unwise decisions, like the Memorial Stadium “renovation” and Campus Shared Services. Thankfully, most of these whoppers occurred before Chancellor Christ took over. But we should be mindful of the fact that, while this particular administration engages with faculty, listening and communicating well, the next Chancellor may not. What worries me is that the institutional structure by which the Academic Senate exercises shared governance—particularly in relation to financial resources–is very weak. All major resource allocation decisions are made by the Finance Committee, an extremely small committee without faculty representation, made up of the Chancellor, the EVCP, and the Vice Chancellor of Finance. What if a member of the Academic Senate (the Chair of the Committee on Academic Planning and Resource Allocation, CAPRA) were on that committee, and approval of decisions required consensus? That might be a way to guarantee serious consultation with the Academic Senate by future administrations, and our repeated requests to make the budget process more transparent might have more of an effect. This step would not be unprecedented – after all the Budget Committee has even more power than this over FTEs and promotions.
A second problem I see with the state of shared governance on the Berkeley campus is a perceived conflict of interests. Many of those that serve in the Academic Senate are motivated by a deep love for the campus – it is amazing how many of us who serve on committees were former Cal undergraduates (like me) and grad students. It’s also the case, though, that many long-serving members of the Academic Senate go on to become administrators. On the one hand, this is the best possible outcome – dedicated faculty members who care deeply about Berkeley and who know how the institution works and are trusted faculty colleagues become ideal administrators. But on the other hand, we should recognize that something is lost when this happens regularly—when Academic Senate service becomes a path to an administrative career. One important function of the Academic Senate is to allow faculty to protect the academic mission from administrative overreach. If Senate leaders are being considered for administrative positions while they are serving on Senate committees, faculty may wonder whether they will speak up at critical moments, losing confidence in the Senate as an independent body. This problem is compounded by the very low numbers of faculty that participate in Academic Senate committees A possible policy change could be that Academic Senate leaders should wait two years after completing their service before taking an administrative post.
The biggest challenge to shared governance, however, may be an ideological one. Increasingly, University leaders embrace a neoliberal doctrine that the free market and entrepreneurial spirit will solve all of the university’s financial problems. It is troubling to me that major projects and policy changes on the horizon (the Mills College expansion, the Moffett Field project, the proliferation of so-called self-supporting Masters programs, and the fundraising for 100 new faculty FTEs) seem unduly oriented toward revenue generation rather than guided by fulfilling our academic and public mission. Let’s remember that the University is not a business, and it shouldn’t be cost-neutral. It’s bad for education when both Faculty and administrators are figuring out how to generate revenue all the time. The university is a public investment, a mechanism for expanding the public good via research and education. Both the administration and the faculty must spend more time advocating for public support. I understand that there are tradeoffs to increased public investment – and the biggest one is more accountability to the public. With accountability comes increased transparency about how the university spends its money. The large salaries and start-up packages that we use to retain our star faculty would come under increased scrutiny, and if we lose them to other universities, our reputation might suffer, endangering our elite status as the top-rated public university. In my view, we must tackle this more directly. If having an elite University does serve the public good, then we should make the case to the public about why Berkeley merits the extra investment. These arguments must be made by our Chancellor and in conjunction with our Academic Senate leaders. Yet increasingly, we see a disconnect between faculty who want to promote the University’s public mission and an administration that pursues wealthy donors and corporate partners. The key to a stronger shared governance, then, may lie in developing a mutual agreement about advocacy for public support of our academic mission.
Paul Fine, Out-going Chair of CAPRA (Committee on Academic Planning and Resource Allocation) for the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association.