How Universities Work by John V. Lombardi (review)

For higher education scholars of a certain age, it’s hard not to look at John Lombardi’s book, How Universities Work, and not have Robert Birnbaum’s (1988), How Colleges Work: The Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership, come to mind. Birnbaum’s book presented four models of organization describing different types of college administrative cultures. It was and continues to be an influential book for higher education scholars, students, and practitioners wanting to learn more about the organization of higher education. Now, more than two decades later, in authoring How Universities Work, Lombardi provides his expert, honest, and, at times, cynical, treatise on the complexities of university management, largely with a focus on research universities in the United States. Given the parallel titles, it is hard not to look at the books in tandem, but the similarities in the two books essentially end with the titles. Birnbaum’s work was empirically based and Lombardi’s on personal experience.

In How Universities Work, Lombardi shares his insights from years as a senior level administrator in large and complex public higher education settings in Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Florida. Lombardi shares lessons learned about the increasingly complex higher education realm and makes clear that as an industry, colleges and universities are unique and function like no other. There are many people involved in roles such as faculty, administrative staff, alumni volunteers, and governing board members. By virtue of experience, like Lombardi, many people believe themselves knowledgeable about higher education based on familiarity as a student of post-secondary education and/or having worked in higher education settings.

The book is organized around the different functional areas within colleges and universities. Each chapter serves as a thought-provoking essay into issues such as teaching, research, financing and budgeting, measuring quality and success, managing human resources (including the complex system of tenure processes), and managing change processes (many often micromanaged by outside regulation and governance). The book’s chapters cover the gamut in terms of topics facing research universities.

Lombardi sees the university as a quality engine, rather than a ‘widget-producer’ and shows how such a way of organizing mystifies the public at large and fuels the contentious debate that universities should be producing graduates prepared for particular jobs upon graduation, rather than having facilitated the growth, development, and learning for said graduates. The book does provide an overview of the different concepts used throughout, but not much in terms of critical analysis.

Higher education professionals of all types are likely to find books on similar topics dry and lacking application, but Lombardi employs a different approach. The witty yet succinct treatment he uses to convey his message makes the book a quick read. The book includes an overview of the different aspects of higher education that readers who have an interest in higher education, but are not familiar with the nuances of organization and function, may find helpful. In How Universities Work, Lombardi insightfully describes the role of people in the administrative shell and academic core of the “quality engine” (p. 2). The quality engine Lombardi refers to is the machine that acquires and produces quality through teaching, research, and even administration. Lombardi explains the characteristics of research universities as well as the structure, operational modes, political nature, and complex models of funding higher education in private and public institutions.

Lombardi describes how the academic core of the university, comprised of faculty guilds, is “the most important part of the university because they define and create the university’s academic substance” (p. 2). Further, these guilds “enable the university’s many other functions related to teaching and research” (p. 2). Each guild sets standards of rigor for the up and coming graduate students, junior and tenure-track faculty, and ultimately validates the work of members of their guild through peer-reviewed processes that provide the basis of membership or advancement in their field. The aggregate result of...