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Burgan, Mary. What Ever Happened to the Faculty? Drift and Decision in Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 264p. alk. paper, $38 (ISBN 0801884616). LC 2006-9630.
Over the course of her lengthy career in higher education, Mary Burgan served as General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors and as English professor, department chair, and associate dean at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her extensive academic and administrative background informs this insightful examination of the declining faculty influence in campus affairs and, more broadly, higher education. In each chapter Burgan attempts to summarize evenhandedly the trends that have led to the current situation, and then proposes steps that could lead to solutions. Rather than simply blame administrators, legislators, and public opinion for the faculty’s increasingly restricted role in academic governance, Burgan shows how the faculty have often contributed to their loss of influence in the act of responding to significant challenges.
Burgan begins her book with a celebration of the diversity and traditions of American higher education and concludes it with some case studies that exemplify how faculties have responded effectively to many of the problems dealt with in the previous chapters. In the intervening chapters, she discusses pedagogical and curricular debates, the challenges of intercollegiate athletics, the competition among higher education institutions for prestige and academic stars, online education, governance, tenure, and academic freedom. The overriding themes that recur in several chapters and are addressed again in the conclusion are:
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how competition for research dollars, star faculty, and successful athletic programs overwhelm institutional identities and thus reduce diversity among American colleges and universities;
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how the managerial culture that is replacing traditional shared governance models is relying on contingent labor (that is, part-time non–tenure-track faculty members) to address growing enrollments and increase institutional flexibility, at the expense of institutional continuity;
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how the academy is facing a relentless and concerted political effort to undermine traditional understandings of knowledge by elevating the status of theoretical challenges based on faith or dogma rather than scientific methods of inquiry;
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why faculty are more unwilling to participate in universitywide communal activities (such as graduation ceremonies), review and reform curriculum, and take the trouble to understand the changing needs of undergraduate students.
According to Burgan, among the biggest impediments to faculty members re-engaging in productive governance is their exasperation with institutional complexity and their fear of wasting valuable time either addressing insoluble problems or trying to work with administrations that are not committed to collaboration. While she sympathizes with these faculty fears and frustrations, and goes to great lengths to explain why such views are often justifiable, Burgan also argues persuasively that the long-term interests of any institution are best served when tenured faculty members assert their positions firmly and civilly and reach out to administrators as colleagues. Even when such initiatives do not find receptive audiences at first, faculty regain and retain the moral high ground that usually yields dividends as both internal and external stakeholders come to accept the legitimacy and genuineness of the faculty outreach. This should not be interpreted as saying Burgan naively believes major problems will simply melt away when faculty members assert themselves, but rather she cogently shows why students and the public interest are not well served when the faculty are not actively involved in governance.
Burgan is an effective advocate, an entertaining writer with a wry sense of humor, and an empathetic judge of the many players in today’s higher education controversies. Her perspectives, criticisms, and conclusions are based on well-documented research, years of experience, and logical arguments that challenge and instruct. After reading this book, I felt as though I had spent a few hours in front of the fireplace of a faculty club, ruminating over today’s academy with a valued colleague.—W. Bede Mitchell, Georgia Southern University.
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