Page 306 - Crisis in Higher Education

276 • Crisis in Higher Education

increasing compensation, setting limits on class size, and improving
working conditions. Union contracts and the negotiation process can
impede efforts to launch innovative teaching techniques that improve
productivity because unions anticipate job losses and are unwilling to
take the risk that the new techniques will not be effective. These issues are
manageable.
Unionization of professional and tenured faculty presents a different and
more complex set of problems because they have a critical role in defin-
ing and executing the university’s missions. In a professional service orga-
nization, when fundamental differences exist among administrators and
subject matter experts, unions tend to crystalize differences and polar-
ize adversaries, so disputes are institutionalized. Faculty experts believe
strongly that their role is not only important but central to the mission and
success of the institution. They hold strong values and beliefs about their
role, and they react when their role is diminished. Relationships between
faculty and university leaders, especially universities with significant
graduate programs and strong research missions, are comparable to those
between doctors and hospitals, scientists and bio-tech firms, and engi-
neers and design companies. The key to addressing unions is not “union
busting”; rather, it is rebuilding close working relationships between ten-
ured and professional faculty and university leaders.

12.7 DRIVING FORCES FOR CHANGE

States should take the lead in establishing HECs to investigate the cost
and tuition charges for different levels of instruction. The HEC would
work with universities to determine if tuition should be different for
general education and interdisciplinary courses, undergraduate major
and minor courses, and graduate courses. Boards of trustees and senior
leaders must initiate the process to reconcile relationships between
them and tenured and professional faculty. This may require interven-
tion from federal, state, and local governments who provide funding.
Faculty must be willing to put aside long-held and negative beliefs about
the potential for simultaneously lowering costs and improving the qual-
ity of learning.