Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any affiliated institutions unless explicitly stated.
Preface
Universities are a good thing. As institutions of research, they grow the sum of human knowledge, and as institutions of higher education, they share that knowledge and the skills required to use it. In doing so, universities generate economic value through innovation, incubating new technologies, and making people and the organisations who employ them smarter and more productive. More than simply creating wealth, they attract our best and brightest, freeing them to explore new ideas and knowledge frontiers, to challenge or sharpen old ideas, and to find novel solutions to every conceivable problem. And on top of all this, universities are expected to act as a ‘critic and conscience’1 of society, helping our democracy function and helping us to navigate the challenges of our time. In short, universities generate public goods that improve our lives. If you were going to design a society from scratch, you would make sure it had universities, and you would make sure that they were in good shape.
I’d like to think all this was obvious, but I feel the need to reiterate it because universities in New Zealand are in crisis. This is frequently presented as a financial crisis, and it’s true that more money is desperately needed. The entire sector is in financial strife2. In the last few years, we have seen redundancies across multiple universities, whole departments close, and rolling strikes as pay fails to keep up with the cost of living and unsustainable workloads are pushed onto remaining staff3. This isn’t just a speed bump caused by the drop in international enrolments during COVID-19, it’s a long-term trend. Funding per student has been dropping in real terms for decades. Our universities are poor and getting poorer and they need more funding to perform their core mission.
But in the following essay, I want to focus on another contributor to the current crisis that is no less important. There is increasing recognition that our universities aren’t just poor, they are ailing, afflicted by a suite of damaging management practices that undermine our primary mission, exacerbate the fallout from financial and other external shocks and threaten the wellbeing and livelihoods of the community of scholars and students that is the essence of a university.
My original motivation when writing this piece was to highlight some of the problems I saw with the way my university was run so that we could work to find solutions. In February 2020, I drafted what I intended to be an open letter of advice to the University of Auckland’s then newly arrived Vice-Chancellor. The pitch was along the lines of ‘Welcome aboard! Here are some management practices that I think are doing us harm. Maybe you could do things differently’. Unfortunately, that same month COVID-19 arrived, turning teaching and research upside down, disrupting our health and home lives, and forcing many of us into survival mode. As a result, I never finished my open letter, but held out hope that our new leadership might nevertheless steer us in a new direction.
To my growing dismay, over the last five years, our university’s management team has, in fact, doubled down on the very problematic practices I had hoped to highlight, increasing the harm to a whole new level. The result is that many of our internal systems have become almost comically dysfunctional, staff are feeling overworked, stressed and disempowered, and the quality of teaching and research we can deliver is suffering as a result. While we maintain the façade of a successful, functioning institution, generating increasingly slick internal communications and shamelessly self-promoting marketing, basic university operations are failing and the combination of human capital and intellectual freedom that makes us a university is being eroded.
All this makes what I write here personal. I want to defend what feels like an attack on my university, an attack that has significant consequences for the wellbeing and success of my friends and colleagues, the education of our students, and the ability of us all to fulfil the university’s mission and make a contribution to society. However, I’ve come to realise this isn’t just personal. It turns out we are not alone at the University of Auckland. Again and again, when I share concerns like this with colleagues at other institutions in New Zealand and abroad, I hear a similar refrain. The same problematic practices we encounter at the University of Auckland also beset universities elsewhere, and have done for some time. Indeed, whole books have been written, eloquently expressing a similar set of concerns (like Wackademia4 focussed on the Australian system or The Fall of the Faculty and Unmaking the Public University5 focussed on the United States, to name just a few). These books were published more than a decade ago, yet things aren’t improving. In fact, they seem to be getting worse. In response, a growing number of academics in New Zealand and around the world are expressing their discontent with the way universities are run, either in print6 or, sadly, by exiting the profession7. This is both reassuring and appalling. It’s reassuring to know that what’s going on at my university isn’t simply the manifestation of a senior management team that is uniquely misguided, incompetent, or out-of-touch. The appalling truth, however, is that this is an international phenomenon, manifest in a predictable set of harmful management practices that are undermining countless institutions of higher education around the world, and the situation is getting worse, not better.
This essay is my attempt to push back by calling out this misguided approach to management at one such university – mine – and identifying some steps we can take to fix it. I’d like to think that what I have to say here also resonates with those outside my university, but I have made no special effort to present evidence from other universities or to make the more general case. There are three reasons for this. The first is practical - I know my university best and have first-hand experience of the effects of management decisions in this context. Second, others have already made the general case better than I ever could. I am not an expert in university management outcomes around the globe. My academic expertise lies in how human psychology interacts with cultural norms and institutions to shape our beliefs and behaviour, and I apply that perspective throughout my analysis, but for an examination of evidence from across many universities, read those books I mentioned above. The third reason is more strategic. I think we need to get specific to effect change. One irony with a problem that is sector-wide is that it can become more difficult to call out. Statements about problems with universities in general leave open the question of whether they apply in any specific case. The problem may be occurring almost everywhere, but the parade carries on until we call it out somewhere. Hence, as well as identifying general problems with misguided management, we need to call out specific cases and say ‘Hey! What you’re doing right here, right now, is making things worse, not better - this is exactly how not to run a university!’.
Table of Contents
PART I - GETTING IT WRONG
1.3 THE CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME
1.4 CONDUCT TOKEN CONSULTATION BASED ON DUBIOUS EVIDENCE
1.6 BE IMPERVIOUS TO CRITICISM
PART II – HOW HAS THIS HAPPENED AND WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
2.2 THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL DECISION-MAKING
2.3 THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES AND THE IMPORTANCE OF CALLING BULLSHIT
2.4 INCENTIVES AND THE PRINCIPLE OF CUI BONO
2.5 GOVERNANCE UNCHECKED AND UNBALANCED
2.6 MONEY, MANAGEMENT AND THE FALSE PROMISE OF THE CORPORATE UNIVERSITY
2.7 CONCLUSION – TOWARDS A BETTER UNIVERSITY
The ‘critic and conscience’ role is enshrined in New Zealand law – this phrase was explicitly used in the Education Act 1989 (Section 162) and recently reaffirmed in the Education and Training Act 2020 (Section 268).
See, for example: - https://newsroom.co.nz/2023/07/12/the-crisis-in-tertiary-education-caused-by-inadequate-funding/; https://theconversation.com/starved-of-funds-and-vision-struggling-universities-put-nzs-entire-research-strategy-at-risk-207708; https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/508243/universities-say-they-need-more-funding-to-avoid-cuts
New Zealand Herald reporter, Jamie Morton, provides a clear-eyed summary of the current funding crisis and it’s broader implications here - https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-university-job-cuts-threaten-nzs-science-future-jamie-morton/BDEVXBHBKNHF3JAEFGBV4M2XSE/
Hil, R. (2012). Whackademia: An insider's account of the troubled university. NewSouth.
See, for example: - Ginsberg, B (2011). The Fall of the Faculty: The rise of the all-administrative university and why it matters. Oxford University Press.; Newfield, C. (2011). Unmaking the public university: The forty-year assault on the middle class. Harvard University Press.
See, for example: - Wright, S., & Shore, C. (Eds.). (2022). Death of the public university? Uncertain futures for higher education in the knowledge economy. Berghahn Books.; https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/are-financial-imperatives-overriding-factor-university; https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/nz-news/350097483/perils-our-universities-rise-managerialism; https://newsroom.co.nz/2023/11/08/university-underfunding-is-compounded-by-their-greater-corporatisation/; https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/academic-administrators-strangling-universities