[The Montana Professor 15.2, Spring 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Richard Walton
Philosophy
UM-Missoula
Past issues of The Montana Professor have included profiles of award winning teachers from MUS faculties. In the Fall 2003 issue we featured two Carnegie CASE winners from the UM-Missoula faculty, Esther England and Mehrdad Kia. The Spring 2004 issue included Marvin D.L. Lansverk's "An Apologie for Service Learning." Marvin had won the President's Award for Excellence in Service Learning at MSU-Bozeman that year. Henry Gonshak's "The Case of the Contented Prof: A Profile of Montana Tech's Doug Abbott" continues the series in this issue. We embark on a new course in our effort to bring the work of outstanding faculty members to system-wide notice with Gary Funk and Robert Hoyem's profile of John Lester. We hope that this will be the first of a series of articles describing great faculty members from the past at the various units of The Montana University System. We would like to be able to publish at least one such article each year. Count this as an explicit solicitation, then. If you are well-acquainted with the work of a revered faculty member of yesterday at your campus, whether you belong to the faculty now, the administration, or are simply a member of the public fortunate enough to have studied under such a teacher, contact the editor or a TMP Board member to discuss an article.
George Dennison offers a sophisticated discussion of a nest of problems that have been created, or brought to the surface, by the U.S. Government's tightened security measures in the wake of 9/11. Enrollments of foreign students in the MUS institutions had been increasing in recent years, a very welcome development. Government policies have made obtaining student visas more difficult, and thus jeopardize those enrollments. President Dennison was recently appointed to President Bush's National Security Education Board.
The last entry in our articles section is the concluding part of Larry Berger's account of his sailing adventures in retirement. We hope that you will enjoy it. Should any of you wish to follow in Larry and Suzann's wake, we expect that they would be glad to offer the benefit of their experience.
News of recent weeks has included several items deriving from controversies in the governance of The Montana University System. Former Governor Martz's student Regent appointee has been under attack since the beginning of the Spring Semester. Some members of the Senate have announced that they will resist confirming either of Martz's pending appointments, and in December the Legislative Audit Division released a report criticizing the System's credit transfer practices. Each of these controversies raises important issues meriting careful consideration. We will content ourselves with commenting on but two of them.
A few days before this journal went to press it was reported that the student Regent appointee had resigned her position in the face of criticism. That criticism centered on an alleged conflict of interest created by her also being a registered lobbyist, reportedly as an intern as part of her studies. Whether such a conflict would have existed, and what policies ought regulate such matters, we leave it for others to decide. The issue the affair raises for us is the make-up of the Board. The Board's composition is defined by Article III of its By-Laws:
The board consists of seven members appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. Not more than four may be from one congressional district and not more than four may be affiliated with the same political party. One of the members of the board shall be a student appointed by the governor who is registered full-time at a unit of higher education under jurisdiction of the board..../1/
What principle underlies these stipulations? Qualifications that one would reasonably expect to find there--like some direct acquaintance with higher education--are not mentioned. Instead it seems that, with one exception, broad representation of the public in geographical and political terms is the underlying concept. That one exception is the student position, established, apparently, as a representative of a group that is a party in interest in the Board's decisions./2/ But there are several other such parties. One that must fall near the top of any plausible list of groups is the System's faculty.
Unless congressional districts have some status in the law beyond that for which they are created, Article III requires revision: Montana entire is now one congressional district. We should like to recommend that while the Board is engaged in this housekeeping revision of the article's language they give thought to their criteria for membership. The public would be well served, we believe, by having persons within the Board of Regents who would know from first-hand acquaintance the ramifications, economic and educational, of Board policies and mandates.
The need for such expertise gains urgency from recent indications that the Board intends to continue the course of action whose first major step was the reorganization of the Montana University System in 1994. In the pages of this journal's preceding issue, Commissioner of Higher Education Sheila Stearns described the Board as "active," going on to say, "It is interested in--I would not say micromanaging--but there is definitely interest in changes and direction...."/3/ We would concur that the Board, like those of the past decade, is "active"; but we would not hesitate to apply the term "micromanagement" to some regential actions of this period. For example, the Board has set limits to the number of credits the unit faculties may require for graduation, dictated broad and restrictive policies regarding general education requirements, etc. In an interview published in the Spring 2004 issue of TMP, Board Chair John Mercer was asked whether such actions are appropriate for a lay board to take. His answer was unequivocal. "Should the Regents have the authority? Yes, I think they should have the ultimate authority over everything." He then went on to give as an example a student complaint about a grade of B being appealed to the Regents, asserting that they had the authority to award an A if they believed it warranted. His only concern about such actions appeared to be that they would consume too much of the Regents' time./4/ We must respectfully disagree.
In terms of the law, of course, Chair Mercer speaks accurately. Montana's Constitution gives the Regents "full power, responsibility, and authority to supervise, coordinate, manage and control the Montana university system...."/5/ Indeed, the Regents have the power to dictate curricula, establish graduation requirements, and even award individual grades in courses. In one sense of "authority"--that in which the word denotes power as the right to command and punish disobedience--they may be said to have the authority, as well. But there is another sense of "authority" equally important in this connection. In that sense an authority is one who is authoritative, i.e., who has authority as knowledge, expertise or skill relevant to the issue at hand. Expert witnesses at trial have authority in this sense, and many of the citations of scholars and scientists in their professional writing are likewise invocations of authority. Were the world ideally constructed power and this kind of authority would be coterminous: in reality, of course, they often diverge. How ought power be exercised in that event?
We believe that question may well soon become a crucial one again for the Regents and those with a deep interest in the welfare of the Montana University System. Rather than simply thanking the Legislative Audit Division for its efforts in surveying the System's credit transfer practices and politely calling its attention to Article X, Section 9 of the Montana Constitution, the Regents embraced all of the audit report's recommendations. Thus, the Board has pledged itself, for example, to "clarify and enforce the MUS general education core policy" so that "campuses throughout the Montana University System may have to revise some parts of their general education programs, based on the Regents' review."/6/ The Board, in short, will reach further into areas of curricula and standards, areas that by long-standing tradition in American higher education have been left in the hands of faculties. This is being done in the name of efficiency and accessibility, two of the Board's fundamental criteria for the University System. Both these criteria are pregnant with danger in the field of education, however, for they are, unless carefully understood, at odds with other criteria to which the Regents have declared themselves equally committed. Chief among these is academic quality./7/ The degree of transferability of credits (and grades!) within the System that the Legislative Audit Division and the Regents would like to see would require considerable homogenization of the curricula of the System's units. That could be done while maintaining academic quality only through much more curricular duplication than now exists, and intrusive (and expensive) enforcement of common academic standards. The more likely alternative, then, is that the transferability sought will be achieved by means of a reduction in academic quality. Surely the Regents' minimalist approach to general education requirements already represents a long step in that direction. We think, therefore, that it is time for the Regents to give serious thought to the distinction between power and authority. In doing that they have a venerable model to which to look for guidance.
Early in the Revolutionary War it became clear to George Washington that an army organized in close accord with democratic ideas, an army of short-term, amateur volunteers, was no match for British regulars. Thus, he successfully urged upon the Continental Congress the need for a Continental Army with a professional officer corps. Over the course of the war Washington and the Congress worked out a relationship whose essence has been maintained ever since, and which has been extrapolated to many other areas of American life. Congress retained ultimate power over the Continental Army, but did not extend its reach into matters calling for military expertise. Thus arose this country's much admired and emulated civilian control of the military. The application of its general principles to the field of higher education is set out in the American Association of University Professors' 1966 Statement on Governance of Colleges and Universities, which divides responsibilities and powers among governing boards, administrations, and faculties on the basis of a sound understanding of higher education's purposes, means, and traditions./8/ We heartily commend this document to the Board of Regents' attention, and anxiously await the day when it shall have earned the respect now reserved for reports from agencies speaking in behalf of those who command the power of the purse.
Notes
Montana Board of Regents of Higher Education Policy and Procedures Manual, Policy 201.7, "By-Laws of the Montana Board of Regents of Higher Education," <http://www.montana.edu/wochelp/borpol/bor200/2017.htm>.[Back]
"Code of Expectations for the Montana Board of Regents of Higher Education" (No. 8), <http://www.montana.edu/wwwbor/borcode.html>.[Back]
The Montana Professor 15.1 (Fall 2004): 3.[Back]
The Montana Professor 14.2 (Spring 2004): 6.[Back]
The Constitution of the State of Montana (1972), Article X, Section 9.[Back]
Letter from CHE Sheila Stearns to Scott A. Seacat, Legislative Auditor, 8 December 2004; "Montana Board of Regents of Higher Education, Montana University System, Response to Transfer of Credit Performance Audit Report," 8 December 2004, <http://leg.state.mt.us/content/audit/download/04p-06.pdf>. On the issue of credit transfer and governance of MUS generally, the Mingle report is also very informative: James R. Mingle, "An Evaluation of the Montana University System's Progress in Implementation of Restructuring Goals," 10 November 2000, <http://www.montana.edu/wwwbor/RestructuringFinalReport2000.htm>.[Back]
"Strategic Plan: Mission, Vision, Goals and Objectives of the Montana University System" <http://www.montana.edu/wwwbor/OCHEGoalObjectives4OBPP.htm>.[Back]
[The Montana Professor 15.2, Spring 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]