Fitting Form to Function: Reviewed by Paula M. Krebs1
From a critical examination of an important movement in
higher education, I turn to a critical examination of institutional structure
in higher education. And I ask myself, how have I worked in higher education so
long without having read Rudolph H. Weingartner’s Fitting Form to Function:
A Primer on the Organization of Academic Institutions before? This slim
paperback, originally published by the American Council on Education in 1996,
appeared in a second edition in 2011 with revisions that take account of the
increasing reliance on contingent faculty and the increasing role of the
university general counsel as well as new material on educational technology
and community colleges.
Weingartner, professor emeritus of philosophy at the
University of Pittsburgh, served as dean of arts and sciences at Northwestern
University and provost at Pitt, and his lively, insightful, and often funny
descriptions of the various aspects of college and university structure are
going to be something I return to again and again. The book’s title and a table
of contents that lists chapters on the office of the president, the central
administration and the faculty, the office of the dean, the office of the
provost, and other administrative offices might lead you to believe that the
volume is a summary of the activity that goes on in each section of the
campus—and that would be a valuable thing in and of itself. Each chapter does
describe the functions of the office it introduces, to be sure, but the value
of this volume is its careful, ethical work, in each chapter, on the core topic
of decision making. Weingartner is committed to helping his readers, from the
faculty and administrative ranks, understand the implications of various campus
structures for the decisions that are made on campus. His philosopher’s
approach means that he takes us very carefully through the ramifications of
reporting structures: if the athletic director reports to the dean of students,
that assumes (and ensures) one kind of role for athletics on a campus; if the
AD reports to the vice president for business and finance, a different kind of
accountability is in order; and still another set of assumptions about autonomy
and external relations operates if the AD reports directly to the president.
Weingartner’s twenty-seven guiding maxims run the gamut from
statements that seem obvious, although they may not always happen in practice
(Maxim 4: “Supervising is work, calling for the dedication of time, energy, and
know-how”), to ones that take a little more thought (Maxim 10: “The whole is
both greater and less than the sum of its parts: neither an institution’s
budget, plan, nor aspirations can be constructed out of those of its
constituent parts”). The maxims stand alone at the beginning of the volume, but
they’re also illustrated organically throughout the chapters of the book.
The book’s weakness is similar to the weakness of the other
volumes, though, in that it doesn’t consider faculty as an asset—or much at
all, actually. Nor does it give much attention to the differences between types
of higher education institutions. Decision-making structures are the key to
understanding how institutions function, to be sure, but community colleges,
research universities, and small religious colleges, for example, must start
from different assumptions.
This volume’s attention to decision-making structures
directs us to consider the implications for institutional governance of every
aspect of campus administration. Weingartner is ruthless on the topic of
meaningless consulting mechanisms and administrative micromanagement, and he is
equally hard on faculty senates that do not engage a wide spectrum of their
faculty but instead rely on career campus politicians. He gives thoughtful
consideration to the effect on campus governance of every aspect of campus
structure, focusing on what he defines as the three types of campus decisions:
the Consultative Decision, in which the faculty has the least power to
determine an outcome; the Codeterminative Decision, in which the faculty gives
both advice and consent; and the All-But- Determinative Decision, in which
faculty members make decisions that administrators may overrule only in extreme
cases and for explicitly stated strong reasons. Which structure is in use on
your campus for which issue?
Every faculty member who wants to understand how decisions
are made on campus should invest in this volume. I will be ordering copies for
my campus AAUP chapter as a parting gift from a past president. And I will be
keeping this one myself, to refer to often as I learn the structures of my own
new campus.
1Paula M. Krebs is a
professor of English at Wheaton College and a former faculty editor of Academe, and is now dean of humanities and social sciences
at Bridgewater State University. The Review
appeared in the Bulletin of the AAUP,
September-October, 2012
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