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Leadership
and Management
A leader within the educational context is described
as one who induces others to follow by example and trust.
A leader has demonstrated ability to overview and project
development of a program. Leaders are goal-oriented, and achieving
their objectives often involves change. A manager is defined
as one who supervises and maintains within defined limits
of responsibility through a prescribed system of policies
and procedures.
It
can be said that leaders require managerial skills and managers
need leadership qualities. However, it is necessary to identify
whether positions are essentially managerial or leadership
within the institution in order to establish accountability.
Leadership positions are accountable to those they lead as
well as to those above; managerial positions are responsible
only to those above. The first is professional and the second
is an employee status. Leadership in state universities is
presumed where it does not always exist, and it is more often
determined by appointment than by ability.
The
leadership positions which affect quality of education and
faculty well-being are President, Provost, Dean, Department
Head, and in state universities, Chair or Program Head.
The
roles of President and Provost are broad; those of the Dean
and Department Head are immediate to faculty. In recent years,
Deans have moved away from a traditional leadership position
and assumed a managerial one. The Department Head always has
been controversial, as to whether it is the first line of
advocacy for faculty and programs or the last outpost of administrative
management. The Department Head should be chief advocate of
faculty and programs within the department and provide effective
leadership. Administration should respect this definition
and not use the Department Head as an administrative pawn.
Under
present conditions, administrators lead rather than serve
educational interests, and they believe that educational policies
rightfully are within their domain. Yet, the Provost, Deans
and sometimes even Department Heads, often fail to make distinctions
between effective and ineffective educational programs. They
are satisfied that it is sufficient to have teachers, classrooms
and courses for subjects listed in the catalog. This indifference
toward educational quality is difficult to accept. It might
be explained by the observation that leadership has become
more preoccupied with management problems than educational
integrity. Education and management objectives should be prioritized
and responsibilities redefined. Educational effectiveness
of programs and the handling of faculty as it pertains to
educational integrity require greater importance in the evaluation
of Deans and Department Heads.
A
major problem today regarding educational leadership is the
failure of administration to adhere to it's own review policies.
As a result of established evaluation procedures, if a Dean
or Department Head is judged to be ineffective, they should
promptly be replaced. The operational relationship between
administrators and Deans or Department Heads too often influences
the administrative evaluation, and takes precedence over the
recommendation of faculty. The history of leadership review
in universities shows that upper administration is reluctant
to act on a negative review of a fellow administrator. It
is not unusual for upper administration to declare the faculty
evaluation process "flawed", write new criteria,
and postpone the next review for a year or two. It usually
takes faculty four to five years or more to remove an individual
who is not performing well. The review system is meaningless
to Deans and Department Heads unless they understand that
upper administration will quickly act on faculty recommendations.
For the system to work the way it was intended, leadership
must be responsive to the majority of faculty in that unit.
Since
the early 1970s, administrators, trustees or regents have
put more emphasis on management than on leadership in education.
In part, this could be a reaction to the student movement
during the late 1960s, when institutional disruption and destruction
of property was uncontrolled. Legislators and regents lost
faith in academic personnel to control students and faculty
or protect university property, and the size and composition
of administration drastically changed. It was in the period
following student activism that separation between education
and operation became
increasingly apparent. As the number of vice-presidents and
other administrative offices increased, the President more
often relied on fellow administrators for counsel than on
representatives from the education sector. It also might be
due to general economic conditions resulting in declining
funds for higher education.
As
administration grows and dominates educational matters, there
is an increase in arbitrary decision-making that is harmful
to faculty and educational values. Many decisions based on
short-term gains are pragmatic, but often lead to serious
consequences later. This includes, for example, down-grading
fundamental research in favor of applied research, funding
on the basis of FTE, converting humanities courses to improve
eligibility for grants, funding for departments or colleges
that can generate grant income at the expense of other programs,
making teaching less important than obtaining income from
grants, being more concerned with image than instruction in
the arts, subjecting educational programs to cost/benefit
analysis, and even further centralizing academic matters,
services and facilities. Likewise there has been a corresponding
increase in abuse of office by administrators with management
ethics sharply declining as administrators grow stronger and
become less accountable.
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