Category: Education

Penn’s board has 48 voting participants, and a further 36 longstanding emeritus members who have reached the retirement age of 70 but are still allowed to attend and speak at meetings.  MIT has 74 board members, Cornell 64.  Harvard has a “corporation” of 12, and then 32 overseers.  Of course that is done in part to keep donors involved and perhaps also reward them.  It does not lead to good governance or a strong ability to make substantive decisions.

I very much enjoyed this FT article on these themes.  Faculty members are upset that their governing boards want to govern.

I almost split my gut over this part: “…said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities and former head of Mount Holyoke College. “Often people from the corporate world don’t understand the culture of collegiality, transparency and shared governance.”

It is amazing how the faculty are trying to portray themselves as the defenders of academic freedom against their boards, when over the last few decades they have been the primary enemies of academic freedom (along with staff, and sometimes students).

I do not see university faculty or administrators as being in a position to turn around the PR on this issue in their favor anytime soon.

This is all for Finland:

We evaluate equity-efficiency trade-offs from admissions quotas by examining effects on output once beneficiaries start producing in the relevant industry. In particular, we document the impact of abolishing a 40% quota for male primary school teachers on their pupils’ long-run outcomes. The quota had advantaged academically lower-scoring male university applicants, and its removal cut the share of men among new teachers by half. We combine this reform with the timing of union-mandated teacher retirements to isolate quasi-random variation in the local share of male quota teachers. Using comprehensive register data, we find that pupils exposed to a higher share of male quota teachers during primary school transition more smoothly to post-compulsory education and have higher educational attainment and labor force attachment at age 25. Pupils of both genders benefit similarly from exposure to male quota teachers. Evidence suggests that the quota improved the allocation of talent by mending imperfections in the unconstrained selection process.

That is from a recent paper by Ursina Schaede and Ville Mankki, via Thomas B.

Put aside the more virtuous public universities, where such matters are governed by law.  What policies should private universities have toward freedom of speech for university staff?  This is not such a simple question, even if you are in non-legal realms a big believer in de facto freedom of speech practices.

Just look at companies or for that matter (non-university) non-profits.  How many of them allow staff to say whatever they want, without fear of firing?  What if a middle manager at General Foods went around making offensive (or perceived to be offensive) remarks about other staff members?  Repeatedly, and after having been told to stop.  There is a good chance that person will end up fired, even if senior management is not seeking to restrict speech or opinion per se.  Other people on the staff will object, and of course some of the offensive remarks might be about them.  The speech offender just won’t be able to work with a lot of the company any more.  Maybe that person won’t end up fired, but would any companies restrict their policies, ex ante, to promise that person won’t be fired?  Or in any way penalized, set aside, restricted from working with others or from receiving supervisory promotions, and so on?

You already know the answers to those questions.

Freedom of speech for university staff is a harder question than for students or faculty.  Students will move on, and a lot of faculty hate each other anyway, and don’t have to work together very much.  Plus the protection of tenure was (supposedly?) designed to support freedom of speech and opinion, even “perceived to be offensive” opinions.  As for students, we want them to be experimenting with different opinions in their youth, even if some of those opinions are bad or stupid.  Staff in these regards are different.

Staff are growing in numbers and import at universities.  They often are the leaders of Woke movements.  Counselors, Director of Student Affairs, associate Deans, and much more.  Then there are the events teams and the athletic departments, and more yet.  Perhaps some schools spend more on staff than on faculty?

While it is hard to give staff absolute free speech rights, it is also hard to give them differential free speech rights.  A cultural tone is set within the organization.  If everyone else has free speech rights, how exactly do you enforce restrictions on staff?  Should a university set up a “thought police” but for staff only?  Can you really circumscribe the powers of such a thought police over time?  Besides, what if a staff member signs up for a single night course?  Do they all of a sudden have the free speech rights of students?  How might you know when they are “speaking as a student” or “speaking as a staff member”?  Or what if staff are overseeing the free speech rights of faculty and students, as is pretty much always the case?  The enforcers of student free speech rights don’t have those same free speech rights themselves?  What kind of culture are they then being led to respect and maintain?  And what if staff are merely expressing their opinions off-campus, say on their Facebook pages?  Does all that get monitored?  Or do you simply encourage one set of people to selectively complain about another set, as a kind of weaponization of some views but not others?

You might have your own theoretical answers to these conundrums, but the cultural norms of large institutions usually aren’t finely grained enough to support them all.

If you think that free speech rights for university staff are an easy question, I submit you haven’t thought about this one long and hard enough.

Here is three and a half minutes of their testimony before Congress.  Worth a watch, if you haven’t already.  I have viewed some other segments as well, none of them impressive.  I can’t bring myself to sit through the whole thing.

I don’t doubt that I would find their actual views on world affairs highly objectionable, but that is not why I am here today.  Here are a few other points:

1. Their entire testimony is ruled by their lawyers, by their fear that their universities might be sued, and their need to placate internal interest groups.  That is a major problem, in addition to their unwillingness to condemn various forms of rhetoric for violating their codes of conduct.  As Katherine Boyle stated: “This is Rule by HR Department and it gets dark very fast.”

How do you think that affects the quality of their other decisions?  The perceptions and incentives of their subordinates?

2. They are all in a defensive crouch.  None of them are good on TV.  None of them are good in front of Congress.  They have ended up disgracing their universities, in front of massive audiences (the largest they ever will have?), simply for the end goal of maintaining a kind of (illusory?) maximum defensibility for their positions within their universities.  At that they are too skilled.

How do you think that affects the quality of their other decisions?  The perceptions and incentives of their subordinates?

What do you think about the mechanisms that led these particular individuals to be selected for top leadership positions?

3. Not one came close to admitting how hypocritical private university policies are on free speech.  You can call for Intifada but cannot express say various opinions about trans individuals.  Not de facto.  Whether you think they should or not, none of these universities comes close to enforcing “First Amendment standards” for speech, even off-campus speech for their faculty, students, and affiliates.

What do you think that says about the quality and forthrightness of their other decisions?  Of the subsequent perceptions and incentives of their subordinates?

What do you think about the mechanisms that led this particular equilibrium to evolve?

Overall this was a dark day for American higher education.  I want you to keep in mind that the incentives you saw on display rule so many other parts of the system, albeit usually invisibly.  Don’t forget that.  These university presidents have solved for what they think is the equilibrium, and it ain’t pretty.