Higher Education Strategy Associates does a lot of town-hall meetings at universities and colleges across the country. Part of the service. And there are a few things that we hear everywhere, no matter what. The first is that there are never enough resources (which, y’know…whatever…I’ve been to hundreds of universities in dozens of countries and I’ve never come across one which described itself as “overfunded”). And the second is that people are deeply frustrated at the speed at which universities take decisions.
I know that ”slow universities” —in the sense of institutions that have slow decision-making, not the weird “slow professor” notion that professors should be asked to do less so as to be able to think more—are sometimes seen as an inevitable outcome of shared governance and therefore to be “blamed on professors.” I know, for example, that some of you got the impression this is what Brian Rosenberg was saying on the podcast with respect to the challenges of shared governance—that professors liked having slow institutions (I don’t think he was saying that at all: rather, I think he was saying that, structurally speaking, collective governance made it easy for small numbers of professors to exercise a veto, which is a very different thing). But in my experience, professors on the whole are as frustrated as anybody else about this. Nobody likes working in a place that feels dysfunctional.
What’s intriguing to me, about this, though, is how universal this problem is. That is to say, I don’t get the impression that there are any universities who have the problem of slug-like processes licked; I can think of some that are better/worse than others, but none that have substantially eliminated the problem. Meanwhile, there are a whole bunch of universities out there which are spending millions of dollars on trying to streamline staffing, but I don’t get the sense that these efforts are being matched with attempts to streamline processes (which is kind of putting the cart before the horse, if you ask me.)
Some of the key places where I think time gets wasted:
- The process of starting new programs. This is partly a problem with Senates, but it’s also a problem that institutions for the most part assume that departments or individual faculty have actual expertise in curriculum design that they don’t actually have. Why not design a process where everything can get done in less than a year? If that means hiring a couple of curriculum experts centrally who can make sure all the I’s get dotted and the T’s crossed, that’s probably well worth the funds.
- Academic Hiring. I’ve written before about how Canadian universities spend way too much time on this. In addition, too many hiring committees—particularly for Chair positions, but sometimes others—require unanimity in order to make a decision. This is a recipe for failed searches. Get rid of veto points!
- Non-academic hiring. One of the obvious choke-points here is in developing job-descriptions. At most universities, having a limited number of job description templates with a restricted number of areas for customization would make jobs easier to post and faster to fill.
- Space allocation decisions. Guys, just let Facilities Management do its thing. New rule: you’re not allowed to complain about universities spending money on capital if you’re simultaneously being obstructive on changes in space allocation.
That’s just a few that I can think of off the top of my head. I am sure there are more. If you can think of your own examples of institutional lethargy, send ‘em in to me! Would love to hear about them (you can reach me at President at Higheredstrategy dot com).
Now here’s the thing. It’s possible to imagine an exercise in which each institution brings together a group of process nerds to reviews each of its processes and works out how to make them more efficient, more respectful of people’s time and reduces points of veto. But one of the reasons no one does that is because holey moley there are a lot of processes at each institution. That would take for freaking ever!
So—hear me out here—what if we started a system wherein universities collaborated to improve processes? That is, some decided to improve their program approval systems, others worked on academic hiring, or non-academic-hiring or whatever. And then they shared their results? That way, no institution would be required to do a full review of all processes, but all institutions could benefit from learning about what might or might work in many different kinds of processes, in many different contexts.
As my friend Bridget Burns, head of the University Innovation Alliance in United States said awhile back: no single institution got us into the current situation, and no single institution is going to get us out of it, either. So, Provosts and Presidents: let your process nerds loose to find ways to make your organizations faster and nimbler. Let them share that knowledge with others. Everyone will benefit, at a time when universities are facing so many challenges in decision-making.
And if any of y’all need help coordinating the sharing of findings, you know where to find me.
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Perhaps the overarching theme of the moment (we’re all about to go over a funding cliff) will allow for more collaboration, but my n=1 experience trying to corral both faculties/departments and administrative units to focus on process improvement and goal-achievement at a major research university a decade ago sunk like a lead balloon. If the desire to optimize (hell, just to *incrementally improve*) processes, prioritize activities, and connect unit-level objectives with the university’s academic/administrative priorities doesn’t emerge organically from the department but is instead perceived as being forced by senior admin, the likelihood of success is already quite low. Add on the lack of local process improvement expertise + the preference for ‘consensus’ (i.e., any old bully gets a veto) and, well, the outlook is pretty grim.
While I agree that the frustration at the inefficiency and slow pace of decision-making is pretty widespread (the blame for that: less so), the lack of trust and good faith between units not he one hand and central admin on the other tends to short-circuit progress. My hunch is that the best examples of meaningful operational improvement are probably the result of a collaborative effort rooted in an intentional desire to overcome institutional lethargy. Absent that, it’s a tall order – one governments have realized can be achieved much more quickly you start with significant revenue cuts.
On starting and ending programs, institutions are not always masters of their ship. We have external application and approval processes (in Alberta this is two-tiered – the provincial ministry, then the Campus Alberta Quality Council). Those two add at least 18 months after we have submitted the proposal, and the proposal preparation process adds significant time after internal approval. I am not saying that external review/approval is bad, but it creates a speed limit on the process.
Your general point about expecting curricular expertise from faculty is, accurate. We hire faculty to teach our existing curriculum, not some imagined future curriculum. If they happen to have expertise in an area in which we later want to create a program, that is a happy accident.
The shape of a curriculum is supposed to proceed from the intellectual integrity of a discipline. If nobody has expertise in what you want to offer, it’s possible that you’re proposing a pseudo-science.
My experience as dean (8 years) and provost (9 years) is that many people hired as leaders and/or managers (both in admin and academic positions) are afraid to make decisions. Not every decision requires a consultation process, in spite of what the faculty union likes to say. The reason we give people jobs with titles such as “provost”, “dean”, “department chair” or “manager” is to signal that these people have both the responsibility and the right to make decisions based on their experience and expertise. I think a better way to improve the time to decisions would be to train and empower people who are expected to make those decisions.
Yeah, yeah. It’s not like deans and provosts never make bad decisions, or that concentrating power in a few hands never leads to disaster. Look at Laurentian, destroyed by an uppity overhead expense giddy with the possibilities of “change.”
And no, we don’t give people titles in order to empower unilateralism. We give them responsibilities in order to free the rest of us of the burden of paperwork, and to serve as our champions to even higher-ups.
I recommend anyone interested in doing this work join the Lean Higher Education (LeanHE) community, as we are regularly sharing with each other and learning from each other to improve our institutions processes. For Canadian institutions, I recommend joining both the Americas Network and the Canada Network.