Rookery Blues¹ Too?

Our Board of Regents has precipitated one of the greatest crises ever to face higher education in Minnesota. The issue has been characterized by the media as "tenure revision at the U," but this is simply a manifestation of a vastly more fundamental problem, the progressive mismanagement of a once-great institution. Ironically, our faculty and administration bear the burden of blame for this situation. Through arrogance and apathy, few faculty have supported our internal governance system to ensure that the faculty voice is not only heard by the administration, but also taken seriously into account. Our administration has consistently fumbled the ball in belatedly addressing a series of embarrassments ranging from fraudulent to felonius. One seasoned legislator and ardent supporter of the University has said that she can no longer trust the administration to be truthful. A retired federal judge has proclaimed that the ordinary course of business at the U is to "lie, cheat, and steal." Media accounts of the ALG debacle, gender inequities, academic fraud, and overt theft of research money testify to human frailties among our faculty. They also reinforce the suspicions of the larger society that arrogant academics regularly overstep normal bounds of law, good taste and reason, and should therefore not enjoy the privilege of tenure. The Board of Regents has reacted invidiously, apparently not fully appreciating the extent to which their ill-conceived actions have already seriously damaged the university.

Our involvement in this disaster is both a curse and a blessing. A curse because these truths have pierced the heart of this bastion of intellection, proving once again that in any contest between hormones and reason, it is unwise to bet on reason. Neither sincere apologies nor engorgement with humble pie can erase from the public mind the outrageous behavior of our colleagues. And, with candor uncharacteristic of our administration, we must admit to having extended tenure to some who were not worthy of it. Trust, once broken, may never be fully restored, but we must try. "Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents."²

The blessing in these revelations is that our academy is peopled by skilled and talented analysts who can put their minds collectively to the task of restoring the university's reputation for productivity and honor within the larger community. These faculty must ply their tools of organizational management, communications and public affairs to persuade the public, the legislature, and the Regents that the foundations of a free society rest in a formal guarantee of freedom of inquiry. All citizens should know that the Regents have threatened their rights , not just those of a few inhabitants of the academy. The public perceives that a "lifetime job guarantee" is the issue, when in fact, this is merely a corollary that follows from the theorem that free inquiry must be protected in our society. The university is the only institution in our society that can secure it.

We must persuade our own administration, the Regents and the legislature that the corporate model of management cannot further the goals of a complex university. Corporate management looks to maximize a single goal, the infamous "bottom line," whereas we must optimize a tripartite mission of research, teaching and outreach. We need to focus the cooperative, collaborative skills of a multidisciplinary array of specialists to identify and address those problems at the frontiers of knowledge that may be amenable to solution. We must dispense with the transient alphabet soup of management fads such as MBO, MBR, and TQM, which assume that unknown problems can be defined, isolated and solved by fiat. The most recent of these, RCM, will divide our faculty, set one discipline against another, destroy interdisciplinary research and extinguish the fragile spark of scholarly creativity that leads in an unknown way to fundamental discoveries. Again, Ray Bradbury: "The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."³

Now what of governance? John Adams spoke clearly,⁴"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." Our trust in the university's governance has been betrayed. In a Faustian bargain to secure legislative guarantees for additional bricks and mortar in the health sciences complex, senior administrators agreed to review the university's tenure code. A charitable interpretation would have invoked the euphemism that the money came with "strings attached."

Our faculty governance representatives were told that tenure review was necessary to improve management flexibility in planning for the next century. But recent analysis has shown that, under existing conditions of employment, nearly a quarter of the faculty are planning to vacate their positions over the next decade anyway. The analyst could only ask, "how much flexibility is necessary?" The faculty responded by calling for an election on collective bargaining.

When the state Bureau of Mediation Services issued a cease and desist order to temporarily halt further action on the Regents' proposal, one observer noted that the guillotine is "stuck halfway down." Now, before the Governor can reach it with his grease gun, the faculty must provide alternative leadership that will result in protection of academic freedom while making the university more responsive to the legislature's concerns.

One solution is to recognize university management as a "wicked problem," that is, one which has no single formulation and no single solution.⁵ Institutions beset with these problems have, 1) difficulty reconciling multiple objectives (tripartite mission), 2) inadequate coordination over multiple jurisdictions (campuses, colleges), 3) inability to predict the impacts of specific actions (selling a teaching hospital, modifying tenure code), 4) difficulty in planning for a long time horizon (next quarter century), and, 5) difficulty in communicating across cultural or disciplinary traditions. Who can deny that this describes the University of Minnesota?

Command and control bureaucracies such as our current structure with the Regents and central administration are inept in dealing with "wicked problems." Such institutions are inflexible rather than innovative (corporate model, destroying tenure); they do not learn quickly from experience (General College, Supercomputer Institute); they are intricately compartmentalized (bloated administrative hierarchy); they have difficulty coordinating with other organizations (legislature), and there is little motivation to admit past mistakes and learn from them (Rajender case, ALG).

Real solutions already exist for confronting "wicked problems." There is a developing literature⁶ in sustainable agriculture and sustainable resource management⁷ which details how a collaborative or cooperative partnership can effectively address the needs of complex institutions. Ironically, our institution includes academicians who are at the very forefront of this management technology. Let us begin the dialogue between the university and the legislature, employing all of the considerable talent that exist within our halls. Let us reassure Kirby and Tanya Puckett that their faith in us is well-deserved. Let us celebrate Woebegone University rather than threatening that "We'llbegone."

Date created: October 9, 1996
Last modified: October 22, 1997
Copyright © 1996, George R. Spangler
Maintained by: G. Spangler
GRS@fw.umn.edu