Background
The results from rankings of universities are nowadays taken very seriously by politicians, the media and university leaders. Among things noted in these rankings is the dominance of US universities at the top. In the 2016 Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities, it was thus only the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford that were able to squeeze in among the US institutions in the top ten list. 1
The strength of the US institutions can be explained by many factors. However, in times when the governance of corporations and other institutions is attracting increasing attention,Reference Wright, Siegel, and Filatotchev 2 it is appropriate to take a closer look at the governance of top US academic institutions. One significant observation is that they seem to have taken the French political philosopher Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu seriously by applying the principle of the separation of powers, namely between the boards of trustees, presidents and academic senates.
Against the above backdrop, this paper, based on literature and on some 20 interviews in April 2014, will elaborate upon the ‘balanced’ governance of the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University, in the 2016 Shanghai ranking occupying the third and second places, respectively. 3
Boards
The boards of the two universities differ in three important respects. First, UC Berkeley has no board of its own. Like all the other campuses of the then ten-campus University of California system, it comes under the jurisdiction of a Board of Regents, which occupies an independent position within the State of California constitution. The Regents in fact are the ‘legal’ owners of the University of California. As a single campus, Stanford University has its own Board of Trustees. Second, amongst the University of California Regents are representatives from state government serving ex officio, and all members enjoy long tenures, as much as 12 years in the case of non-political members. The terms are staggered to ensure turnover. In contrast, the Trustees at Stanford University are non-political with limited tenures and, to a considerable extent, are renewed by the Board itself. Third, Stanford University has a stronger alumni representation than UCB but lacks representation from faculty and students (although, as mentioned below, no professors in the UC system actually sit as members of the Regents. There is however a student Regent).
UC Berkeley
Of the total 26 Regents, as many as 18 are appointed by the Californian governor, generally for 12-year terms with the possibility of extension. 4 Their appointment must be approved by the State of California Senate (the State has a bicameral legislature consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives), which was previously a formality. However, since the 1990s eight nominees have been rejected. 5
Of the remaining eight members, who serve ex officio, four are political office holders: the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Speaker of the California House of Representatives, and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. In addition, the President of the University of California, and the President and Vice President of the alumni organization are members. There is a student representative with a one-year term and voting rights, while the Chair and Vice Chair of the UC system’s Academic Senate participate in Regent meetings but without voting rights.
The 12-year appointments with the possibility of renewal has resulted in some members having very long tenures. The Board in 2014 thus included three individuals who, if they complete their terms, will have been Regents for more than 20 years. Most members were appointed by the sometime Republican Party governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, which can apparently lead to tension within the Board in that the current governor, Jerry Brown, and four of the other members serving ex officio, are politically members of the Democratic Party. Among other members, Schwarzenegger’s spirit lingers. These include Sherry R. Lansing (former actor and CEO of Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group), Bonnie Reiss (the Global Director of the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy at the University of Southern California, previously State Superintendent of Public Instruction under Schwarzenegger) and Charlene Zettel (Republican member of the California House of Representatives 1998–2002). So, obviously, there are political motives for appointments, something that was emphasized in my interviews with Judson King, a former Provost of Professional Schools at the Berkeley campus and also a Vice President at the system level, and the former Chancellor, Robert Birgeneau:
The Regents are political appointees, one in four may be a graduate of the university. They are there for whatever reason drove the governor to appoint them, which is often campaign contributions and a way of repaying. (Judson King)
Some are there because they are major donors to the governor’s campaign, some are there because the governor realized there has to be diverse bodies, so they represent African-American or Chicano communities for example. (Robert Birgeneau)
In recent years, as the system has vastly expanded and grown more diverse, each campus with its own constituencies, the inheritance of a single Board of Regents for the whole of the University of California has been questioned. It has been argued that the central administration is out-of-touch with individual campuses and unable to adequately respond to emerging budgetary or educational issues at campus levels. In 2012, a proposal was put forward by a group of leading individuals at UC Berkeley, headed by the above-mentioned Robert Birgeneau, to introduce separate or satellite boards for each of the ten universities with the Regents retaining overall authority.Reference Birgeneau, Breslauer, King, Wilton and Yeary 6 The background to this proposal was described by Birgeneau in the following way in our conversation:
Then there is the office of the president which is a very large bureaucracy, and which is expensive […]. That large bureaucracy may have been justified when the state represented fifty per cent of our budget, but it’s difficult to justify that level of the central bureaucracy when the state represents only ten per cent of the total budget.
By creating subordinate boards with representation from the UC Board of Regents, proponents saw an advantage for such a system in that overarching control could be retained at the same time as decisions could be better informed. For the individual universities, they highlighted the possibility of focusing on the 90% of income that does not come from the state, and strengthening local decision-making. The proposal, which referred to the existence of subordinate boards in a number of other state university systems, can clearly be read as a contribution to the debate regarding the autonomy of universities. It was prompted by recent negative developments regarding the UC system in recent years. In the words of the former Chair of Stanford University’s Board of Trustees, Burton J. McMurtry:
I am so unhappy about the way the state university system in California has evolved. In that it has been a fantastic system, a real jewel in the crown, but in the last four years the state funding has gone [down] but the state regulation and control has gone [up].
Stanford University
Typical of American university governing boards, the Board of Trustees at Stanford University makes decisions about wealth management, budget, and policy issues, and above all it appoints the President. Its function is thus described in the following way by the former Chair of the Board, Burton J. McMurtry, in an interview:
The trustees literally are the owners of the institution. And they certainly cannot act unilaterally because they require first of all extremely strong faculty, and strong administration as well. So […] the board could never run the university. And should not try. But it can have a very important role in selecting the leadership of the university and having an influence on the priorities and resource allocation within the university.
The Board of Trustees at Stanford University can comprise a maximum of 38 members, and in early 2015 it consisted of 36 individuals, including the President, who serves ex officio. In contrast to UC Berkeley, the majority of Trustees are appointed by the Board itself. Trustees are selected for a term of five years and can then be re-elected for one more term. However, a Trustee can return after one year away from the Board, which has also happened in many cases. A special category of Trustees consists of eight members nominated by the alumni association. They are elected by the Board for five years with no possibility of re-election, although some of them return as regular Trustees after a period of time away. The Chair of the Board of Trustees is elected within the Board and collaborates closely with the President, especially when it comes to the agenda for the Board’s five annual meetings in February, April, June, October and December. Important tasks for the Board are to monitor the work of the President (at Stanford University in the form of regular evaluations), to set priorities within the University, to raise funds, and to perform risk analyses. 7
Among members in early 2015, 22 or 61% were from California itself, nine from the east coast of the US, another three from other US states, and two from abroad. 8 The majority, 64%, were men, and the business component, especially from new companies, was considerable. Thus, most Trustees had titles such as Chairman, President, Founder, and Partner. There were no active politicians on the Board. It should be mentioned, however, that one of the members, Susan R. McCaw, was an active fundraiser for George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns and that she was named US ambassador to Austria following his re-election.
Presidents
For their presidents, the two universities have similar recruitment processes. Both institutions make use of relatively extensive recruitment committees, with representation from their boards, faculty and other groups. The proceedings are highly confidential. At the same time, they differ in two important respects. First, changes in leadership have been more frequent at UC Berkeley than at Stanford University. Second, Stanford University has a higher proportion of campus leaders that have been recruited from medicine, natural science, and technology, possibly because of Stanford’s role in the creation of the high-tech industry known globally as ‘Silicon Valley’.
UC Berkeley
While the ten campuses of the University of California are headed by a President, each campus has a Chancellor. 9 As of September 2013, Janet Napolitano is the President of the University of California. She had been Governor of Arizona (2003–2009) and later became Secretary of Homeland Security in President Obama’s Cabinet (2009–2013). 10 Her appointment, which represents a departure from the principle that the President of the UC system should have an academic background, means that the political representation on the Board of Regents has become even stronger (cf. above). However, Judson King, stated in our interview that her appointment could be beneficial in terms of academic influence: 11
Whereas I think President Napolitano is likely to leave the academic side alone, I think that probably will give more influence to what we call the Academic Council, which is the system-wide version of the Academic Senate.
When a chancellor is to be elected at Berkeley, the President of the University of California appoints a nominating committee comprising 14 individuals. Normally half of them are UC system Regents, and the other half represents not only management, faculty, alumni, and students but also other campuses in the UC family of institutions. The group can start with up to 200 candidates, who are gradually winnowed down to 20 with the help of head-hunters and other knowledgeable sources, and then to five, who are interviewed in depth. The final decision is made by the UC President, who submits the proposal to the Board of Regents. It is a closed process, meaning that the names of the candidates are not made public. Corresponding selection processes are also used for vice chancellors and deans, according to Robert Birgeneau:
I appointed a lot of people to vice chancellor level and dean level, and we were quite successful in maintaining anonymity. There were almost no leaks ever, and if there was a leak and we kind of identified the person, then the person was kicked off the committee.
The history of selecting campus heads at Berkeley can be divided into two time periods. The first comprises the period from 1870 to 1952, and the second thereafter. In the first period, the University of California was not yet a ‘statewide system’. The mother campus, Berkeley, possessed a ‘president’ who administered both the campus and a collection of satellite colleges, research units, agricultural stations, and various other educational components throughout the state. Population pressures and the state’s enormous economic expansion after the Second World War led to the development of a multi-campus system, to an extent that eventually subordinate campuses were elevated to university status and each given a ‘chancellor’. 12 Over these two periods, the number of Berkeley presidents, and afterwards chancellors, totals 22, with an average period of service of seven years. They have all been men, on average just over 50 years of age when appointed and close to 60 when retiring. The proportion with backgrounds in medicine, natural science, and technology (MNT) has been about one third, and nearly half were recruited externally. Comparing the 11 campus heads up to 1952 and the 11 since 1952, we find that (1) the average term of service has grown shorter, (2) the proportion of MNT chancellors has increased, and (3) the proportion of external recruits has risen. These are developments that have also been observed elsewhere.Reference Engwall 13
A chancellor heads a comprehensive organization. The closest associate is an ‘executive vice chancellor and provost’, recruited from the campus professoriate and responsible for academic operations. This officer’s duties are described by Judson King in the following way:
The provost is the chief academic officer; one way or another all deans will report to the provost, and the provost is the principal point of contact at the academic senate, and is charged with getting it all to work, and move the university in the right direction.
The same interviewee emphasized how a chancellor’s time is devoted more and more to finding donors:
[Private fundraising] is now enormous, it accounts for probably half of the chancellor’s time, going out there and raising money, from people or foundations or corporations. This is one reason the provost positions are so necessary now when the chancellors are almost totally externally oriented.
In other words, chancellors are more and more involved in acquiring resources, while academic operations are led by the provost, a division of labour that the Provost at the University of Washington, Ana Mari Cauce, summarized in the following way in an interview: 14
My President says that his task is to raise the money, and mine to spend it.
However, as pointed out by Gerhard Casper, Stanford’s ninth President (1992–2000) and before that Dean of the Law School (1979–1987) and Provost of the University of Chicago (1989–1992):
Nothing of importance [was] happening in the academic area that was not first cleared with the president who often gave overall academic directions.
Stanford University
According to the former Chair of the Board of Trustees, Burton J. McMurtry, the search group tasked with finding a new president at Stanford University normally consists of 17 individuals: six or seven Trustees, six faculty representatives, one administrator, one alumnus, one undergraduate student and one graduate student. In the recruitment of the last President, John Hennessy, a long list of potential candidates was created following a few initial meetings, and this list was gradually shortened. In this process, McMurtry was particularly impressed with the academicians’ ability to find information about the candidates:
People could call their friends in Academia, their peers in Academia and get phenomenal, very constructive information about potential candidates. I love the fact that we were much better informed about our candidates than we typically are if we are looking at industrial people.
The process also included using head-hunters, although with limited expectations regarding their contribution:
I’m a fan of using search consultants and not expecting much of them […] other than some organizational skills and scheduling.
Gradually a small group was selected to interview various candidates to find out who they thought would be a suitable person to lead Stanford University. In this way, they whittled down a short list of candidates. A major problem, however, was the fact that the individuals they wanted most were not available:
Almost by definition the people you want to consider are so committed and effective doing what they are doing, that they haven’t even thought about what they might do if they were doing something different. But that’s a pretty consistent pattern.
Even if a search is targeting external individuals, the interviews can also produce suitable internal candidates. Thus, in the recruitment of the last president, one interviewee was surprised that a comprehensive search process was going on when Stanford University already had John Hennessy as its provost:
Why are you all running around the country talking to people like me, when you already have John Hennessy on the campus?
He was given this response:
We are very pleased that we have John Hennessy on campus. He is indeed a candidate, but John Hennessy would not want to be selected unless the Trustees believed he was the very best candidate that they could find.
In conversation, Hennessy’s predecessor, Gerhard Casper, confirmed that the search process when he himself was recruited had similar characteristics. People contacted him for advice regarding who would be most suitable as President of Stanford University, then showed great interest in him, and finally struck a deal with him at a secret meeting in Los Angeles. The confidentiality of the process was underscored by the fact that not even the families of the search committee members had been told where the committee was going to interview candidates; they had to make do with a sealed envelope to be opened in case of an emergency.
Burton McMurtry stressed that it is extremely important to consider the faculty’s confidence in a president when selecting among candidates. He claims it is the professors who govern the president rather than vice versa:
Universities are essentially inverted pyramids in that the president of the university is at the bottom of the pyramid, not the top. Because the faculty form the bulk of the pyramid and the president is basically there to do what the faculty directs or expects the president to do. And it’s […] a difficult system to manage because the president had better not act as if he is some authority figure who could tell the faculty what to do.
Gerhard Casper has expressed similar notions in a book of his collected speeches given when he was Stanford President:Reference Casper 15
University governance, to a large extent, is self-governance by faculties as constituted in departments, schools, and institutes.
It should be noted in this context, however, that once he was appointed as campus head, Casper was able to select his own provost. He went against the proposal put forward by the faculty and chose, instead, one of the members of the search committee, Condoleezza Rice. She turned out to be a good choice for him, who in this way received help in turning around the deficit he faced as incoming president. Her leadership style seems to have differed from that expressed by McMurtry and Casper, however. In her own words: ‘I run no committees!’ She also claimed in our conversation that her work as provost had prepared her well for the post as US Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009 in the George W. Bush Administration.
In the more than 100 years that have gone by since it was founded, Stanford University, as of August 2016, has had ten presidents. 16 They have served an average of 12 years. All ten were just under the age of 50 when they started, and more than three-quarters of them were from the fields of medicine, natural science, and technology. Just under half were externally recruited. Two of the presidents served for more than 20 years.
Academic Senates
A comparison between the academic senates at the two universities points to three differences. First, the one at UC Berkeley has a considerably longer history, nearly 100 years, while the Stanford Senate was created some 50 years later. Second, the faculty body at Berkeley consists of all 1400 professors. It is formally known as the ‘Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate’ since the Senate belongs to the system as a whole (all campuses have a ‘division’). The Stanford Faculty Senate does not include all professorial appointees but consists of 55 elected members and 15 members ex officio. Third, as a result of their composition, activities are run differently. At Berkeley, the Division convenes only twice a year and has 40 committees, whereas the Stanford Senate meets 12 times per year, with only 11 committees. However, at both universities, but particularly at Berkeley, faculty senates play a significant role in campus governance.
UC Berkeley
The senate structure at Berkeley (before the creation of divisions) dates back to about 1920. 17 It consists of all of the members of the campus who hold professorial appointments, including untenured assistant professors. 18 Since the Division membership is too large for everyday academic business, and the Division meets in full only a few times each year, senatorial work is really the responsibility of some 40 Division committees consisting of about 400 members of the faculty. The work of these committees is coordinated by a Divisional Council, which consists of the Division’s chair and the chairs of the major committees, whose members are the only committee members elected by members of the Division, all other committee members being appointed. The Committee on Committees appoints the Division Chair and Vice Chair. The Chair is in office for one year, after having served for a year as Vice Chair. Together, the Chair and Vice Chair meet the Chancellor and staff once a month to discuss important decisions. They are also called upon to deal with acute problems at departmental levels. 19
Among committees, the Committee on Budget and Interdepartmental Relations also has a key role, possibly the most important role in all Division activity. The ‘Budget Committee’ as it is commonly called consists of nine members who represent the major disciplines of the campus and whose terms are staggered to guarantee that no single person or persons dominate deliberations. Although the Committee’s name suggests something different, its task is to evaluate proposals from departments regarding recruitments and promotions. Other major committees deal with research, teaching, library, awards, and scholarships. Altogether, committee work and other administrative duties mean that, on average, academic teachers devote roughly one third of their time to administration (including the administration of research units and laboratories), research, and teaching, respectively.
There is no doubt that the Berkeley Division of the UC Academic Senate has considerable campus governance authority. Its 2013–2014 Chair, Elizabeth Deakin, maintained that Berkeley has the most powerful academic senate in the US. When new UC presidents are recruited, it therefore takes some time for them to understand the system. For example, when Janet Napolitano took over as President of the UC system she made certain demands on the Division, which, according to Elizabeth Deakin, responded that the faculty would not be running errands for her:
And then she said at one point, I would like you to do this by such and such a date, and we had to sit her down and say, we don’t work for you. […] You are allowed to come to our Senate but we don’t work for you, so that’s the kind of the relationship.
The strong position of the Senate Division was also stressed by Robert Birgeneau, and Judson King:
They have a very strong influence here. (Birgeneau)
They are as a matter of fact consulted on just about any major matter, educational or not. (King)
Stanford University
The Faculty Senate at Stanford University was established in 1968 in connection with student unrest and because the faculty had grown too large to allow joint decision-making for the entire faculty by the Academic Council. 20 The Faculty Senate currently consists of 55 voting members chosen for two years with overlapping terms and the possibility of being elected for one further term. This is done in elections in which the various units of the University are represented in proportion to their size. Roughly one third of eligible voters actually take part in elections.
Next to the elected members, the Senate includes 15 individuals from University Management − the President, the Provost, three Vice Provosts, seven Deans, the Directors of the Stanford National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), the Hoover Institution, as well as the University’s Academic Secretary − ex officio without voting rights, while student representatives and certain administrators have the right to attend. Each year a Chair, Vice Chair, and members of the Steering Committee are elected among members with voting rights. Those eligible to be elected to the Steering Committee are a group of Senators who have been nominated by the Committee on Committees. Once the Steering Committee has been chosen, one of its first duties is to appoint members of the Committee on Committees, a system that, once again, emphasizes the philosophy of a separation of powers. Besides the two committees already mentioned there are a further nine standing committees as well as various ad hoc committees. An expression of the wish to maintain continuity is the Planning and Policy Board, which consists of the Chair of the Senate and her/his three predecessors.
The work of the Faculty Senate mainly involves the academic content of operations, as is made clear in the following description of the Senate’s principal duties: 21
The Faculty Senate is the legislative body of the Academic Council and has responsibility for academic and research policy as well as the authority to grant degrees.
This means that any changes in education must be approved by the Faculty Senate. It has plenary meetings every other week during the three trimesters, which makes a total of 12 times a year. 22 Between Senate meetings, the leadership group gets together with the Provost to prepare Senate meetings. The agenda has a number of standing items, such as the budget and reports from various committees. Among important issues from the last few years, mention can be made of accreditation, cross-faculty degrees, and IT security. 23
The 2013–2014 Chair of the Faculty Senate, David Palumbo-Liu, maintains that the Faculty Senate plays an important role at Stanford University and that it has a stronger position than at many other universities:
I think it’s been a very vibrant, vigorous organ of the University. People feel very much like they have a say in what happens here and, they do, frankly.
We are much more involved in the day-to-day running of the University than any other body, comparable body. Harvard doesn’t have one at this point. I talked to a friend at NYU and she said, basically, the only time they meet is to do a vote of no confidence.
Concluding Discussion
It is obvious that the two universities being considered in this article are not representative of the entire system of higher education and research in the US.Reference Cole 24 They are two of the most prominent institutions in international rankings. They have resources that far exceed most other HEIs in the US and in other countries, although this is truer of the leading private universities in America than of the ones that are public. 25 Even though most universities in the world can hardly aspire to the same level of resources, within their own frameworks they should be able to benefit from the above analysis of these universities’ governing systems.
Boards
In terms of the Board, Stanford University is characterized by relatively great freedom when it comes to choosing Trustees and also by substantial influence from alumni. However, it should be noted that the freedom to choose members belongs to the Board itself. The latter requires, of course, that there be a separation of powers between campus leadership and the Board itself. In this context it is also very important to observe that both of the universities under study have collegial influence through their academic senates, especially at UC Berkeley. This can be exercised, on the one hand, through increased faculty representation on governing boards and, on the other hand, through the medium of senates with considerable prerogatives. In both cases broad involvement within the HEI is vital.
Presidents
At both UC Berkeley and Stanford University the recruitment of campus heads is a relatively closed process. Both universities appoint rather large recruitment committees with considerable representation from faculty. Recruitment is in principle delegated to these committees, whose members are expected to remain silent about their deliberations. This means that the candidates are not made public. This, in turn, entails that the recruitment process involves interesting candidates who do not wish to advertise that they are willing to change employers. And those who are not selected do not have to bear the stigma of having lost.
It can of course be argued that closed recruitment processes diminish the faculty influence. In such cases it is therefore particularly important to have strong representation of faculty members in the recruitment committees. Actually this could even strengthen the collegial influence in the recruitment of top university leaders. This in turn could be expected to increase the academic qualification of those selected, which, according to Amanda Goodall’s research, would be desirable. Her results that prominent universities have leading scholars at the helm speak in favour of this.Reference Goodall 26
It should also be noted that the two universities under study, like many other American universities, have a division of labour between a president or chancellor, who devotes a major share of his or her time to external commitments, especially fundraising, and an academic leader, a provost, who is responsible for academic operations. This seems to be an adaptation to a world in which external relations take up more and more of the top leaders’ time.Reference Tengblad 27 The position of provost is also a sign that academic leadership is being taken very seriously. It is also in line with the meticulous procedures that the universities under study evince when it comes to vetting candidates for new recruitments and promotions. Both assign very strong influence to the tenured professors at departments and thereafter follow a scrupulous process of review when a matter makes its way up through the hierarchy. It appears that these conscientious selection processes are an important explanation for the success of the two universities.
Academic Senates
Both of the universities studied have senates of professors, albeit with different structures. While all academic professional appointments are ipso facto members of the Division at UC Berkeley, Stanford University has an elected faculty assembly. As a consequence of this difference, the former convenes more seldom and works with a large number of committees, while the latter meets more often, with fewer committees. Judging from my interviews, the Berkeley Division of the Senate is very strong and influential. It seems to take part in every major decision, which is not the case at Stanford University. But there too the Faculty Senate plays an important role in the interplay between the board and the president. In this way, major decisions are rooted at the operational level.
Finally
A notion that has informed this paper is the need for a balance of power within academic institutions. Letting the profession itself decide everything may be an enticing idea, but it is not fully feasible in a society where a considerable part of the funding comes from public means. Today, even a private university such as Stanford University receives a substantial share of its financing from government sources. It is also clear that a state university such as UC Berkeley gets the bulk of its funding from sources other than the state. This mixed-economy situation means that all universities, regardless of their principles, need to handle various parts of their environment. They need to be able to deal not only with politicians who legislate and contribute economically to operations but also with markets in order to attract students, teaching researchers, and economic resources. In today’s society, they also have to be able to manage relations of various kinds with scrutinizers, such as the media, evaluators, non-profit organizations, etc.Reference Engwall 28 In the interplay with this surrounding world it stands out as especially important for universities to exploit their comparative advantages as intellectual centres by developing strong internal organizations where the academic profession is accorded considerable influence over operations.
Acknowledgements
Support from the Swedish Research Council and the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Uppsala for the research reported here is acknowledged with gratitude.
Lars Engwall is Professor Emeritus of Management at Uppsala University, Sweden, and a member of the Academia Europaea HERCulES group. His research has been directed towards the production and diffusion of management ideas, particularly in media companies, banks and academic institutions.
