By John A. Douglass
Editor's Note: A debate on the meaning of shared governance at the University of California was kindled in July with the UC Regents' vote on affirmative action. What follows is a brief history of shared governance at UC, written by John A. Douglass, a historian and executive director of the Academic Senate at UC, Santa Barbara. The article is adapted from a longer analysis he prepared.
Two major features in the historical development of the University of California distinguish it from other major public research universities. The first is the university's unusual status as a constitutionally designated public trust -- a designation, shared by only five other major public universities, that has removed UC to a considerable degree from political influence. The second is the University of California's tradition of sharedgovernance: the concept that faculty and administration should share in the responsibility of guiding the operation of the university, while the right of final say on policy is reserved to the university's governing board, the Board of Regents. These organizational features combined over time with a massive investment by taxpayers to produce a university of international distinction.
The concept of shared governance evolved over time at UC; internal and external conflicts often were part of this evolution, as was the development of the Academic Senate. Shared governance emerged in its contemporary form not only from the formal delegation of authority to the Senate, but from informal processes that brought faculty into university management. This transformation took place over four periods in the university's history.
I: The Establishment of a State University
The 1868 charter that established the university was like those of all American universities and colleges in that it provided for a lay governing board that would have authority over the activities of faculty and students. Based on the organization of several relatively new state universities, including Michigan and Iowa, UC's charter also called for the establishment of an Academic Senate, consisting of all faculty and deans and presided over by the president. The Senate, the 1868 Organic Act stated, was "created for the purpose of conducting the general administration of the University." However, the organization of the Senate and its relationship to the university's president and governing board were the prerogatives of the Regents.
In the 19th century, an era that pre-dated the rise of the administrative class now crucial to the university, faculty served as both teachers and administrators. Yet their authority was extremely limited. The Regents, not the faculty, played a decisive role in setting educational policy in areas such as admissions and curriculum.
Throughout the early years of the University, the Regents micro-managed the university, and gave little direct power to UC's president. Persistent funding problems and political battles between the Regents and lawmakers in Sacramento resulted in a rapid succession of presidents and slowed the development of academic programs. By the 1890s, the Berkeley campus was, as one Eastern paper derisively stated, "a weak institution with plenty of land, a college of brokendown buildings, [and] beggarly endowments."
California's public university had, however, gained a new status that would eventually provide for tremendous flexibility in its internal management. In 1879, key Regents served as delegates to California's second constitutional convention; there they helped draft an amendment that designated the university as a public trust. University supporters at the convention insisted that what this status would provide -- autonomy from the political process -- would save the University of California from partisan politics and the corruption that was rampant in the California of the 1870s.
"The university," stated the new constitution, "shall be entirely independent of all political or sectarian influence and keep free therefrom in the appointment of its regents and in the administration of its affairs." Many of the convention's delegates were harsh critics of the university, but they voted for the amendment because they distrusted the legislature more than they distrusted the Regents.
II: President Wheeler and the "Berkeley Revolution"
The 1899 appointment of Benjamin Ide Wheeler as UC's president marked a new era for the university. Wheeler agreed to come to Berkeley only if the Regents provided him with direct powers to manage its affairs. The Regents agreed, and in so doing, set into motion the transformation of the University of California into one of the premier universities in the nation.
Wheeler faced dire financial problems upon his arrival: Growing enrollment demand among a quickly expanding California population, the decline of federal landgrant income, and meager state appropriations brought about the first real consideration of establishing tuition. Wheeler proceeded to gain the financial support of much of San Francisco's wealthy elite. Perhaps more importantly, he succeeded in convincing lawmakers to provide the first major infusion of state funding for the university. This public investment allowed for a dramatic expansion of enrollment, and the hiring of new and talented faculty from across the nation. It also set the stage for major organizational changes.
Consistent with his training in the German university system, Wheeler elevated the role of research in the hiring, promotion and dismissal of faculty. He also began to bring faculty into the management of university affairs. Previously, the authority of the Academic Senate and the faculty extended primarily to such routine matters as recommending degrees and acting on student discipline cases. More important issues were left to the Regents; in 1881, for example, a committee of the Regents drastically reorganized the curriculum of the university, and declared several professorships vacant.
Wheeler convinced the Regents that faculty were not simply employees of the state, but members of an academic community engaged in a freemarket of teaching and research. Recalling the role of faculty at the University of Heidelberg, he argued that UC faculty should have primary responsibility for setting educational policy. He called on the faculty, now growing in numbers, to make major changes in the administrative structure of the university. Working with faculty and with the general approval of the Regents, Wheeler created some 20 new departments, revised the university's curriculum and adopted a system of peer review for hiring and promotion of faculty. He also created a faculty committee for the allocation of research funds, and a faculty editorial board to oversee the university press to elevate the quality and quantity of its publications.
The faculty's expanding role in university management was not, however, codified in university policy; it was conferred by Wheeler and it hinged, in turn, on his relationship with the Regents. The most important change in the nature of shared governance was still to come. It occurred under difficult circumstances at the end of Wheeler's tenure, and resulted in a historic statement regarding the organization and authority of Academic Senate.
Several factors led to what is known by historians of American higher education as the "Berkeley Revolution." Wheeler had possessed a commanding presence during the first 15 years in office, but this now began to fade, owing to a combination of his declining health and the public regret he had expressed at America's entrance into World War I. In this context, ambitious faculty, many of whom had engaged in the founding of the American Association of University Professors in 1915, sought an even greater role in university affairs.
Reacting to Wheeler's decline and to a formal proposal offered by the leadership of the Academic Senate, the Regents then took an unusual path: during Wheeler's last year in office (191819) they placed the actual power of the Presidency in the hands of an "Administrative Board," consisting of three faculty members who were all elevated to the title of dean.
The Administrative Board proved to be a disaster. Disarray among the board members combined with a postwar recession and surge in enrollment to bring about confusion regarding the future of the university. In reaction, the Academic Senate convened a special meeting, and by a vote of 132 to 13 passed a memorial for submission to the Regents. It asked that the faculty be given direct authority to organize the Senate and choose its leaders; that the Senate then be given more formal powers regarding educational policy; and that the Senate be consulted in the selection of a university president.
James K. Moffitt, a lawyer, Berkeley graduate, and major university benefactor, chaired a Regent's subcommittee that negotiated an agreement that was endorsed by the board as a whole and placed in the Standing Orders of the Regents in June 1920. This historic agreement formalized the role of the president and his relationship with the Regents and the faculty. It also provided both direct and indirect powers of shared governance to the Academic Senate. Subject to the approval of the Regents, the Senate was to determine the conditions for admissions, certificates, and degrees -- the same aspects of power held de facto by the faculty under Wheeler.
But there were also new responsibilities that today are key to shared governance. The Senate was to advise the president on all "appointments, promotions, demotions, and dismissals" of professors; advise the president regarding "changes in the educational policy of the university"; and advise the President regarding budget issues. Most importantly, perhaps, the Senate was to choose its own committees and organization "in such a manner as it may determine."
The agreement was a watershed in the general development of American higher education, as it created an organizational structure that would serve as a model for other major public and private institutions. Though this structure had antecedents in British universities, California was the first to formalize it in the United States and took it to its greatest point of development.
III: An Evolving Relationship
From the base of authority granted in 1920, the Regents and the president increasingly came to rely on the Academic Senate to build the university. The Senate proved to be critical in maintaining the quality of academic programs as university enrollments grew and the number of campuses increased. In times of crisis, the Senate also became an important vehicle for reform.
In the midst of the Great Depression, Robert Gordon Sproul, UC's president from 1930 to 1958, sought Senate advice on dealing with a 26-percent decrease in state funding. A budget committee and assorted other committees had been established shortly after 1920; Sproul called for a new Committee on Educational Policy to help establish methods to cut costs, raise revenues (primarily through increases in student fees), and assist in the efforts he and the Regents were making to contain the regional college movement.
Reflecting the decentralized nature of decisionmaking within the growing, multicampus university, the creation of an independent and selfgoverning Senate also led to significant conflicts between it, university presidents and the Board of Regents, as well as to disagreements within the ranks of the faculty themselves. One of these conflicts was to reach crisis proportions when in 1949 the Regents decided to impose a loyalty oath as a condition of university employment.
During the postWorld War II Red Scare, the Regents, on the advice of President Sproul, attempted to include an oath in anticipation of a similar requirement for all state employees. Most faculty had few qualms over signing an oath. But many objected vehemently to being singled out for such an oath before it was made a requirement of state employees: it would, stated a special Academic Senate committee, reinforce the stereotype of the university as a haven for subversives. For other faculty, the requirement appeared to be an opening assault on academic freedom and the hard-won institution of tenure.
The Regents ignored the advice of the Senate, however, and invoked the oath. Some faculty charged that the concept of shared governance had disappeared under the weight of political expediency. In 1950, 32 faculty were fired for refusing to sign the oath, and a large number of faculty resigned. There was antagonism not only between faculty and the Regents, but among faculty leaders and their non-signing colleagues, recalled David Gardner in his study of controversy.
"The whole sorry story of the oath is one of confusion and repudiations, acerbity and bitterness," asserted Russell H. Fitzgibbon in his brief history of the Academic Senate, with "more concern at times with procedural than substantive aspects . . . . The scar tissue was hard and durable." Faculty participation in the Senate declined significantly as faculty for a time came to believe that their role in university affairs had been diminished.
IV: Shared Governance in the Modern Era
The history of the University of California has included many other serious internal debates over the operation, role and future of the institution. The election of Governor Ronald Reagan was based, in part, on a campaign promise to "cleanup Berkeley." In his first months as governor, he and other Regents agreed that president Clark Kerr should have taken stronger action against student protesters throughout the UC system. Reagan also proposed a 10-percent cut in university funding and the imposition of tuition, while Kerr opposed both ideas. At his first Regent's meeting as Governor, Reagan and the other Regents voted 14 to 8 to dismiss Kerr.
Faculty stood strongly behind Kerr who had negotiated the 1960 Master Plan, garnered huge increases in state funding, and helped to reorganize and decentralize the Office of the President, giving greater management authority to chancellors and the campus divisions of the Academic Senate. The circumstance of Kerr's ouster, and the tumultuous politics of the 1960s, did not directly threaten the concept of shared governance. Most faculty clearly understood the constitutional authority of the Regents to hire and fire the university president. But the Regents action did add to a general and strong sentiment of disunity within the university community.
By the early 1970s, a legislative review of the California Master Plan resulted in the recommendation that faculty and student representation be added to the Board of Regents to give the board "greater credibility with its constituency." A constitutional amendment in 1974 provided the Regents with the ability to appoint student and faculty representatives -- the first change in regental membership since the addition of an alumni representative in 1918.
The tradition of shared governance has endured at the University of California not because it has insured consensus, but because it has been fundamental to the university's management of its affairs. Faculty are at the heart of the academic enterprise of teaching, research and public service. They are critical not only in maintaining the quality of the university's academic programs, but also in advising the president and the chancellors. In 1920, the Regents recognized the importance of understanding the position of the faculty (through the Senate) on important issues. But shared governance has had its greatest meaning not in the relationship of the faculty to the Regents, but in the relationship of the faculty to the university's administration.
Despite his domineering management style, President Robert Gordon Sproul understood that shared governance was crucial in creating effective university leadership. "No function of the university president [or chancellor] is more important than maintaining close relations with the faculty," he wrote in 1953.
The Senate, he remarked, became more important as the university grew and came to take on a more complex role in society. Without strong faculty input, he said, "the titular head of the organization often suffers from something like oxygen starvation, with such characteristic symptoms as failing vision, and gait slowed down to a shamble, and weaving from side to side with little forward motion." Apart from such direct effects, shared governance can also provide an additional benefit: the maintenance of a high level of morale within the academic community.
Over time, the effects of shared governance have been diverse: it has been a catalyst for reform and has provided a framework within which the university's future could be charted; conversely, it has been a focal point of disagreement within the university in connection with key issues in given eras. The recent controversial decision by the Regents to eliminate gender, race and ethnicity criteria in admissions and faculty hiring is a case in point.
Certainly, shared governance has added to the complexity of decisionmaking at the university. Foremost, however, it has proven itself to be an important and malleable tool for management of the University of California -- a tool that works best in an atmosphere of respect and understanding of the differing roles of faculty, students, administrators and the Regents.