Cost Cutting and Faculty Unhappiness

I know nothing about the situation with cost cutting and faculty unhappiness at Wells College that I didn't read in this article. It may be that this faculty is completely in the right and the president is completely in the wrong. But I doubt it. I've seen some situations that were outwardly similar. At such times the president and cabinet are in a difficult spot. They are sure a fully democratic, shared governance approach can be abused to impede any action at all, and may not yield the hard decisions that have to be made, shared or not.

Since the administration does not in reality conform to the worst faculty stereotypes, they've been over everything sweating blood trying to find the least humanly and institutionally damaging things to cut. They might be wrong, but they're pretty sure they've found the least awful solution. Many smart and honorable people have worked on it, and they're confident this is what needs to happen.

But suppose you have a meeting, or series of meetings, anyway. Experience suggests that when we seek faculty participation in such a conversation as this, the result is not always a proposal that will cut costs, but rather an argument that cost cutting is unnecessary, or other things would be better to cut, or the development office should just raise more money. And those arguments may be valid. If they are, those approaches need to be pursued. That's why we have shared governance. "All of us are smarter than any of us." I am for it.

It's possible, though, that after the meeting, the cuts will still have to be made. And now the faculty are even angrier, because they provided an actual (perhaps non-cost-saving or more damaging) solution that results in no faculty cuts, which the administration then ignored.

It is easy to imagine that the president makes a calculation: maybe it's best for relationships with the faculty to let them object that they weren't consulted than to give them cause to feel patronized and rejected. It's a least of the evils situation, not a sign the president is an ogre. In this situation, the leader is in reality doing the opposite of what she's accused of: she's trying to preserve the faculty's opportunities, not limit them. From the faculty's point of view, though, it's easy to understand that they don't see it that way. In the long run, seeking consensus first is best.

The worst case scenario is one I've mentioned earlier: Gaye Tuchman describes a situation at Wannabe U. There was a meeting in which faculty input was to be invited concerning a hard decision The meeting was ignored and boycotted. Then when the administration went forward anyway, faculty members said they weren't consulted. Again, I don't know that any such thing happened at Wells and don't want to cast aspersions on this particular faculty.  But it does happen, and it's not surprising that such things lead administrators to go on and do what needs to be done by their best lights.

It's one of my deepest wishes that this divide that increasingly characterizes relationships between faculty and administration could be overcome. Where is Solomon when you need him? We could at least start by recognizing that both the faculty and administrators are acting in ways that make sense to them at the time. Utter perversity is extremely rare. It's best to assume honorable motives on both sides.