When Administrators Write Curricular Checks They're Unauthorized to Cash

My relationship with “curriculum” began in the 1990s. It was at the end of my licensure coursework in educational administration that I was required to complete before I could begin my doctoral studies in leadership. I’d put off the curriculum course until the end because I had visions of elaborate themed units of instruction about flowers or dinosaurs and flannel boards for books like Make Way for Ducklings. After all, this had been my experience as an early childhood major in my undergraduate and graduate degrees. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was incredibly fortunate to encounter Dr. George W. Stansbury for my curriculum leadership course. He introduced me to Herb Kliebard (both through his book, Forging the American Curriculum and then literally at conferences). Those encounters – with George Stansbury and Herb Kliebard – changed both my ideological and my professional trajectories.

Based on this experience, I began to see curriculum as the heart and soul of all educational endeavors – the operationalization of a society’s hopes, dreams (and, at times, fears). Curriculum is not merely a two-dimensional list of content organized by subject and complexity. It is not something simply to be documented, organized, and assessed. Curriculum is lived. Curriculum is the sum total of our shared, lived experiences. As such, it's dynamic. Dewey notes that it is never fixed and final. He further contends that curriculum and life are “two limits that define a single process.” (MW 2:278). Because life (individually and collectively) is always changing, curriculum work must always be a “continual process of reconstructing experience” (Dewey, LW 13: 60-61).

Change must be guided by principles (aims), and professors are responsible for discerning and maintaining the right aims. Therefore, guided by democratic principles, it is the professors who have a moral obligation to do curriculum work in such a way as to ensure social progress. Dewey argued that it is the role of educators to make lives of others better worth living, and the vehicle through which this is accomplished is the curriculum. Those principles include a generous faith in human nature (LW 14:226; LW 11:219) whereby members of society work together for the common good, where “every person shall be occupied in something which makes the lives of others better worth living” (MW 9:326).

So, what is the role of administrators in all of this? Educational leaders need to ensure the right conditions through which the professors can be ever mindful of the larger principles and aims as they create and implement curriculum. Administrators, as academic heads of units, should keep faculty focused on what matters most. They should work to prevent distractions from leading faculty astray when it comes to their curriculum. Particularly in professional fields where accreditation becomes a controlling factor in the work of a college, administrators need to ensure that expectations of outside agencies enhance or support the vital curriculum work. If this is not possible, then the administrators need to work to ensure that the requirements from accreditors do not compromise the curriculum.

Yet, administrators often become an obstacle to this work. Particularly as universities face additional financial challenges, administrators step in and try to bring about programmatic change in order to be responsive to a changing market. They push for new programming and/or they force faculty to offer programs in ways that require changes within the curriculum (e.g. shorter terms). This is happening more and more because of declining enrollments and increased competition. Goldie Blumenstyk (2015, American Higher Education in Crisis) paints a bleak picture of institutions in terms of financial challenges. She notes that the number of graduating high school students is declining. She also points out how competition – particularly among nonprofits and other institutions not hindered by faculty governance – is growing. This is particularly threatening to institutions relying on tuition for their primary (if not exclusive) revenue stream. As Blumenstyk notes, this includes public institutions that are receiving less support from states. If a university’s survival is based upon maintaining enrollment, then universities must compete by providing what the market seeks. This means change, and it often means changes that faculty do not want (or, at least, at a rate that is faster than they are prepared to support).

So, to return to Dewey references, institutions are experiencing critical shared needs (enrollment). However, because the conditions in most institutions still maintain a significant division between faculty and administration, the need is primarily felt by the administration. It becomes the beginning point of market strategy vs. the beginning point for shared inquiry. If the shared needs – changes in serving students by virtue of changes in society – were acknowledged and addressed as a university community, then institutions could move forward with curriculum work in generative and productive ways. This would require an infrastructure of communication that is not present in most universities. Dewey contends that the very foundation of a democratic community is communication. Because most universities do not have this, they create situations where those in power then exert their power to bring out changes, and they feel justified in doing so because of potentially catastrophic financial implications of failing to change. Given these conditions, universities are moving closer to some form of Gilead where faculty are forced to serve as handmaidens to administrators desperately trying to grow enrollment.

The threat is real. I believe we will begin to see more and more universities forced to shut down because they cannot maintain their operations with declining enrollment. As more universities shift to business models void of faculty governance, those working to maintain a more traditional model of higher education will feel increased pressure to change. While some have maintained a balance by adding entrepreneurial arms to their traditional units, many lack the infrastructure to manage the entrepreneurial units outside of the traditional units. As a result, the institution cannot simply engage parallel play between the programming formed through market-driven administrative directives supporting the entrepreneurial initiatives and the traditional programming that is maintained through faculty governance. This means faculty must be involved in the entrepreneurial efforts of the institution.

Further, as pressures increase, administrators often lose sight of the larger aims of their institutions and begin chasing quick revenue streams to address immediate financial needs. When this happens, they lose the moral authority to press for change in their institutions, and they begin to rely on power (or, more to the point, abuse of power) in order to bring about change. Because faculty recognize the abuse of power and because they do not share in the full sense of market or financial need (see lack of communication above), then faculty will be far more likely to sabotage the efforts of administrators. Instead of working with administration to build new markets and revenue streams, they will exert the only power they have – the power of passive aggressive resistance. This may result in administrators’ initiatives failing to achieve anticipated (and much needed) revenue which then forces them to grasp at more programmatic straws. These new efforts require them to force their will in even more ways. Thus a vicious cycle begins that creates even greater mistrust and even more obstacles to achieve a sense of community within the institution.

So, what do we do? I think we need to return to the work of Dewey. In Educational and Social Change (LW 11:46), he notes the following:

(T)he problem of education in its relation to the direction of social change is all one with the problem of finding out what democracy means in its total range of concrete applications: economic, domestic, international, religious, cultural, and political. . . . The trouble. . . is that we have taken democracy for granted; we have thought and acted as if our forefathers have founded it once and for all. We have forgotten that is has been enacted anew in every generation, in every year and day, in the living relations of person to person, in all social forms and institutions. Forgetting this. . . . we have been negligent in creating a school that should be the constant nurse of democracy.

We cannot be the nurse of democracy in society if we cannot uphold democratic principles within our institutions. Said differently, we cannot have the impact on society that we should have if we cannot live by democratic principles within and among ourselves. We cannot take democracy for granted - in society or within our institutions. It must be achieved continually through a strong commitment of the institution’s leaders. It demands democratic spaces where communication among all stakeholders – internal and external – becomes the foundation of curriculum work.