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Organizational Governance and the Production of Academic Quality: Lessons from Two Top U.S. Research Universities

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Abstract

Does organizational governance contribute to academic quality? Two top research universities are observed in-depth: Berkeley and the MIT. Three key factors are listed that help generate consistent and lasting high performance. Priority is allocated to self-evaluation and to the development of talent. Values and norms such as community membership, commitment to the affectio societatis, mutual respect and trust strongly regulate the behaviors of the faculty. Complex inner organizational processes are at work making integration and differentiation compatible. Each of these factors contributes to produce top academic quality in a synergetic way.

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Notes

  1. The authors express their gratitude to the anonymous reviewer for his/her very professional suggestions and to Tim Chapman for his linguistic editing support.

  2. In 2003/4 108 institutions were classified in the upper category, 99 in the middle one, and 90 in the doctoral/research group.

  3. Among the top ten ranked universities, which are all research universities, eight are based in the USA: Harvard, MIT, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), UCB, Yale, Princeton and Columbia. Two are British: Oxford and Cambridge.

  4. They have been consistently ranked as the best in US national comparisons since they were made possible by the Hughes survey in 1925 (Hughes 1925; Graham and Diamond 1997). Johnson’s ACE report was based in 1969 on opinions of faculty members about graduate faculty quality, and the position is based on the number of departments ranked among the Top Ten in the US. The ARWU ranking is mainly based on research indicators. The Time Higher Education-QS ranking 2004 and Time Higher Education-Thomson Reuters (2010) combine indicators relative to teaching, research, composition of faculty and students, judgments by employers, part of them being based on objective measurements and part on peer review. From 2004 to 2010, the weight of peer review decreases from one half to 34.5%. The Leiden survey lists all publications of the top 100 European and top 50 non-European universities. For a detailed comparative methodological presentation, see Rauhvargers A. (2011).

  5. The University of California includes 10 public research universities, UCB being the highest ranked and most famous. California's system of higher education includes 24 State universities of California plus 109 California Community colleges. This hierarchical system was formalized in the 1960s with rules orienting students to one of its universities or colleges depending on their GPA and bridges enabling students to move from one level to the other. Alongside this system, California hosts many other private universities and colleges, the two most famous among them being Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology.

  6. This is, however, still three times smaller than its competitor in many fields, Harvard, the richest university in the world!

  7. The PrestEnce (2010-2013) project studied departments and professional schools in three disciplines - one in the humanities, one in management and one in the sciences of the matter – and six countries – France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the People's Republic of China, the United States of America. In each discipline and country, two departments (or schools) enjoying academic reputation and visibility at least inside their own country were selected (with the exception of China where only three business schools were studied). Two departments, one in the humanities and another in management could not be investigated. Altogether, 32 departments were analyzed in 22 different universities (or schools) through about 700 in-depth interviews. In a few cases, specific interviews were also added whenever possible to observe the governance of the whole research university. This was done in a few research institutions such as MIT and UCB. The project was funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR 2009 SSOC-011-01) and was coordinated by Catherine Paradeise and IFRIS (Institut Francilien Recherche Innovation Société at Université Paris Est Marne). A network composed of senior and junior researchers affiliated with research universities from 5 countries performed the fieldwork.

  8. A few professional schools evaluate academic quality with reference to quantitative and exogenous standards instead, and are disapproved of by the university community for doing so. We explored in detail one of them, in which evaluation is driven by exogenous criteria or standards. Its academic community considers that it is none of its business to question the relevance of quality criteria touted as standards of academic excellence in various fields by external agencies such as academic journals (Paradeise et al. 2014). Reading the texts of candidates for promotion and recruitment is less relevant for evaluators than checking whether the journals in which they are published are ranked among the top. Citation scores are even stapled here and there on the walls of the corridors inside the faculty building to show how productive a group is. Publishing at least two papers in A-ranked journals every year is a pre-requirement to tenure or to merit assessment. Books do not matter at all. Academic associations and invisible outside colleges (Crane 1972) provide references that command great consideration. Outside evaluation letters make the difference. Such a professional school develops a very low level of inside conversation. It also functions internally as a set of disciplinary silos.

  9. This is not true in a university such as Harvard, which until recently did not have a tenure procedure, so that it is exceptional to stay for a whole career starting from a junior position.

  10. For instance, to be accepted and periodically assessed as a “professor of the graduate school” at UCB.

  11. A group of around 10 graduate and postgraduate students requires, on top of the professor's salary and shared facilities, about US$1.5 million. The group having to be self-sufficient, it is a permanent burden for its head to ensure the necessary flow of cash to keep it functioning (including scholarships, salaries, products, equipment and facilities) and delivering good science.

  12. “Nature often tells you, you are going to go this way. So you may have a good plan and it rarely follows. If you follow exactly the plan, then it is not worth doing,” says one interviewee.

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Thoenig, JC., Paradeise, C. Organizational Governance and the Production of Academic Quality: Lessons from Two Top U.S. Research Universities. Minerva 52, 381–417 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-014-9261-2

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