The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance: Professionalization and the Modern American University by Larry G. Gerber (review)

In The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance: Professionalization and the Modern American University, author Larry G. Gerber (2014) provides a baseline for understanding the complex and tumultuous history of shared governance in the United States. Gerber, who served as a chair in the history department and university senate at Auburn University and chair and national vice president for the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), writes from what is clearly a faculty-dominated perspective.

Gerber’s chief approach in his book links the general history of the United States to that of faculty professionalization and shared governance. This relationship is represented as one of direct correlation: when America grew, higher education expanded, and when American was prosperous, shared governance flourished—and vice-versa. This connection is the first step in establishing a causal relationship between American higher education and economic prosperity. What Gerber believes the next step should be—beyond simply preserving shared governance for the sake of fulltime faculty—is less clear. In the acknowledgements, Gerber thanks his sister for encouraging him to be “less equivocal” (p. x), and while it takes him a considerable amount of time to get there, he does indeed end the book with a rather polarizing opinion of today’s world of higher education.

Before Gerber moves into the more controversial sections, he begins with an even-handed introduction to the history of shared governance in the U.S. The introduction provides a broad overview of the topic and suggests that shared governance did not truly emerge until the post-Civil War era, when faculty took on more decision-making roles. According to Gerber, this move was a “crucial element” (p. 1) for the development of American higher education, which was built on the “twin pillars” (p. 2) of academic freedom and shared governance. An overview of the current debate is also provided, focusing on how shared governance has been overruled by those who value a more businesslike operation. This section provides the first glimpse into Gerber’s aversion to business practices in higher education and those who call for “the institution of a more corporate, rather than collegial, approach to governance” (p. 2). While Gerber introduces both sides of the debate, to some extent, and notes that shared governance has also been challenged from within the faculty ranks, the book is in favor of faculty-based governance systems overall. His assertion that “challenges to the professional status of faculty members are thus closely linked to the effort to restructure the system of academic governance” (p. 8) is a thread that runs through each subsequent chapter.

Starting with the inception of higher education in the Unites States, Chapter 1 provides a general overview of the early days of institutional governance from the mid-1600s to the 1870s. It focuses on the history of “often intrusive” (p. 9) governing boards and presidents and argues that faculty were “greatly limited by their lack of professional status” (p. 9) and the small size of colleges during this time. Gerber traces the dawn of American higher education to the founding of Harvard in 1636 and explains how the U.S. system diverted from British and European models with their use of external governing boards. Even in the country’s first two colleges, Harvard and William and Mary, there was one governing authority: a non-resident board. Faculty governance was not yet established, and the role of faculty had not yet been professionalized in the colonies.

In the period following the Revolutionary War, however, a rapid increase in higher education led to changes in the faculty role. Gerber sources such changes to Jeremiah Day, who fought for faculty authority in the selection of new faculty, and Jasper Adams, who in 1837 declared that a board of trustees was not qualified to advise faculty or speak on academic matters. Gerber argues that these changes foreshadowed the future...