(Sept. 16, 2020) – The President of the UNC System should be able to recommend candidates for chancellor at the System’s 17 institutions. But the President should not be able to dictate finalists in those searches.
Currently, campus boards of trustees name search committees to interview candidates for chancellor. The campus board then recommends at least two finalists to the System President, who then nominates one candidate for a final vote by the System’s Board of Governors.
It is a screening process shared by the entire university community, top to bottom.
The Board of Governors will consider a policy change Thursday that directs the System President to develop a pool of potential chancellor candidates from across the UNC System. That much is good – it’s healthy to identify emerging talent within an organization.
Under the proposed policy, the System President could recommend as many as two candidates to the Board of Trustees conducting a search.
The President’s nominees would have to apply and go through the same interview process as other candidates. But under the proposed policy, the President’s candidates would have to be included among the finalists the trustees recommend to the President.1
That feature goes too far. Certainly the President should be able to recommend candidates, and internal candidates should be considered – two recent examples are Chancellors Kevin Guskiewicz at UNC-Chapel Hill and Brian Cole at the UNC School of the Arts.
But the proposed policy practically decides so much of the outcome at the outset of a search that it threatens future searches and erodes the essential element of shared governance between the institutions and the System Office.
The proposed policy change could make it difficult to recruit individuals willing to serve on search committees when they realize the System President can short-circuit the search. And especially in a national search, will the most highly qualified candidates apply if they suspect the outcome is pre-ordained?
Trustees across the UNC System are wary of the proposed change.2
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter at East Carolina University, which is currently searching for a chancellor, adopted a resolution opposing the change, calling it a “radical and dangerous” expansion of the powers of the President.
Choosing a chancellor without faculty and local buy-in will appear politically motivated, the professors said.
The proposal “would eradicate institutional sovereignty and shared governance in the process where it is most critical; that is, in choosing an executive leader who has the trust and support of the University community.”3
This week the Faculty Senate and the AAUP Chapter at UNC Greensboro also opposed the proposal.
“First, the changes will discourage high quality candidates of national and international standing from entering a search when the results can be easily overridden,” the organizations said in a joint statement. “Second, citizens of integrity will not serve the many hours required by these important searches if their efforts can be ignored.”4
The Board of Higher Ed Works voted unanimously Tuesday, with one abstention, to oppose the requirement that the President’s candidates must be among a search’s finalists.
Higher Ed Works is optimistic about new System President Peter Hans, who assumed his position last month. But this proposed policy runs counter to Hans’ interest as he tries to build confidence with 17 institutions.
Further, the proposed policy appears to be part of a broader trend toward centralizing decisions at the System Office, rather than recognizing the 17 campuses of the UNC System as the unique institutions that they are.
1 https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=64730&code=bog, pp. 7-11.
2 http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2020/07/22/change-to-unc-system-chancellor-search-process-would-allow-president-to-bypass-trustees-insert-finalists/.
3 http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2020/09/03/east-carolina-university-faculty-oppose-potential-changes-to-chancellor-search-process/.
4 http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2020/09/15/uncg-faculty-oppose-potential-changes-to-chancellor-search-process/.
Edward L. Kick, Professor says
I oppose the short-circuiting of these searches, and I believe virtually all the faculty at NC State would too. This proposal invests way too much power in a single person. Further, it increases the probability that selections in administrative appointments will come only from our state. Right now, I understand from our Dean, that perhaps as much as fifty % of our faculty at NC State “come from” our own school! In the last five years or so, NC State has hired more administrators than faculty. These administrators will hire local residents as their personnel. Approximately 82% (as mandated by the UNC Board of Governors) of our students are from North Carolina. NC State is a monoculture. This parochial approach to the system substantially reduces the intellectual diversity of the campus. I believe it to be the single most important cause of NC State’s relatively poor ranking among universities in the US and the world. I believe it is possible that “the certainty of having the right solution,” is partly the product of groupthink and the surrounding monoculture, and this can lead to disasters in governance decisions. My advice for the current period is to reach out and request democratic and diverse opinions, particularly from those who have expertise from excellent universities outside our state. As an aside, I wonder how things would have worked out if students and faculty were consulted about student habits during the beginning of Fall semester, instead of asking them to endure endless rounds of information items and surveys essentially telling the faculty how to teach. Thank you for your time.