Practicing Mass Democracy at Penn State: The New Populist-Technocratic Model of University Governance, Socialization, Stakeholder Management and Benefits

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

Few people really like to think about the structural bones of governing an institution.  It is a lot like thinking about structural integrity--foundation, plumbing or wiring--when looking at houses.  Most people prefer to worry about lighting fixtures than the state of the electrical system that is necessary to run the lights. Likewise, most people find the issue of governance  either opaque, arcane or unnecessary for something "simple", like the way a university is managed (it used to be governed, but that is another story). 

One of the most interesting trends in recent years has been the way that university administrations have sought to weaken traditional structures of faculty representation by embracing a populist-technocratic model of governance.  

A good example of the way in which the new populist-technocratic model of university governance operates might be seen in recent efforts at Penn State relating to the long standing and contentious issue of benefits.  What follows is (1) a short description of the characteristics of the new mass democracy models that are generally emerging in university governance, and (2) an excellent example of the deployment of the techniques of the populist-technocratic model of governance in aid of the socialization of faculty directly respecting reforms of benefits at Penn State.  It is clear that as change comes to the university, university administrations in the United States will seek much less engagement and much more control.  Within this new construct there is very little room for an effective institutional organ of faculty representation.

The characteristics and objectives of this model are easy enough to understand: 

(1) Populist: administrators will seek to govern through direct engagement with the mass of the faculty and staff.  This is the application of sophisticated mass or populist governance models to the university context.  It has great value to the administration.  It eliminates or marginalizes the capacity for faculty and staff to develop institutional organizations that might effectively engage positively with administrative institutions.  Without these institutional stakeholders, administrators can deal with the "masses" of faculty and staff as passive objects, much more easily managed and (this is the popular term now among administrators of a certain sort) socialized to embrace administrative decision making without substantial effective engagement.  

(2) Technocratic: faculty are embedded within administrative institutional governance structures.  As faculty senate involvement decreases, universities have seen the rise of "join" faculty-administrative "task forces" and similar creatures, in which faculty are embedded in administrative decision making or consultative organs, and their role is reduced effectively to providing technical assistance (they are, to paraphrase the president of a large state assisted institution,  valued for their technical knowledge that can inform policy decisions by those capable of making them).

(3) Management not Governance: under this model, governance becomes the province of the administrative organs, who control policy (the political determinations of institutional behaviors and actions) and the relationship between the governance organs (administration) and the stakeholders (producers of value for the institution--faculty and staff) becomes one characterized solely by management, and specifically the techniques of managing university resources, including faculty and staff. Populist technocracy, then, views faculty and staff as both a source of data (requiring harvesting), and as a factor in the production of value that must be shaped to produce the greatest value at the least cost (to the institution). To that end, techniques like "town hall meetings" become a means of acquiring data and of controlling the discourse.  One is expected to disclose information (to be used to determine and manage policy produced elsewhere) and to listen and accept.  Disciplinary tools then become critical to the management of this data extraction-discourse control model--civility, for example, can be deployed to marginalize and discipline faculty or staff that seek to engage or interrogate administrative pronouncements.  Obliteration is another technique--where faculty or staff deemed difficult are excluded from information or data gathering flows.  They become outsiders and more vulnerable to the periodic review processes administered through middle level managers (deans and the like).    

(4) Faculty Governance Organs--Formal, Technical, Passive: if the key to the new populist-technocratic model of governance is techniques--management, data gathering, discourse control, and socialization--then the role of the traditional governance partners within the university must also change. To remain relevant, these institutional actors tend to be both elevated and marginalized.  They are elevated through a greater emphasis on their formal elements--the grand meeting attended by high administration officials is a staple at some state and state assisted universities.  It produces a necessary image of shared governance, without the bother of engagement in the hard work of formulating key policy. The faculty organization continues to function, but is more valued for its formal operation than for any substantive contribution it can make to policy.  And indeed, such institutions are increasingly countered when they actually seek to exercise a more functionally robust engagement.  In the usual case, such assertions of institutional power are diffused through the formation of "Joint" task forces  managed through senior administrators in which approved faculty are assigned a technical role, ad the faculty organization given a post hoc short period to comment.  Consultation, like other aspects of shared governance, become quite public, quite formal and quite focused on the optics of engagement without much substance. 

(5)  Fractured Employee engagement:  because the nature of university mass democracy requires a direct connection between staff and faculty, as individuals, and because it also requires the preservation of the forms of traditional engagement through institutional representatives of faculty and staff, it might become useful to apply the techniques of management not merely to the introduction of policy, but also to the management of these institutional employee representative organs.  To that end, good management would encourage incoherence and not coordination among faculty and staff representative organizations.   In extreme cases, one might be tempted to play one off against the other, or to use one to further policy applicable to both without engaging all organizations simultaneously. The object, form a management perspective, might be to consolidate legitimacy in the administrative organs and to begin to socialize faculty and staff with the idea that their representative organs are ineffective and perhaps more ceremonial than functional.

One of the most effective forms of the new governance might be understood as the "town hall meeting".  The widely circulated notice of a benefits related town hall meeting at Penn State that touches on benefits provides an excellent application of the insights of the character of the populist-technocratic governance model described above.  

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Town Hall for faculty, staff to open dialogue with leadership, discuss direction
May 26, 2015

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – A University Town Hall Meeting to discuss necessary strategic and operational changes at Penn State is planned for 3:30 to 5 p.m. on June 2 in the Boardroom of the Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus with Provost Nick Jones and Senior Vice President David Gray. The meeting is an opportunity for faculty and staff to talk about the direction of the University, and to discuss its strengths, challenges and future opportunities. The meeting is being sponsored by Penn State Today and the University Staff Advisory Council (USAC) as an avenue for the internal community to keep informed about pending changes and to ask questions or share concerns and ideas.

Topics like healthcare, the ever-changing landscape of information technology, new human resources policies and the transformation of that area will be covered. Also to be discussed will be recent rankings by third-party evaluators such as Moody's and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education — reports that look favorably on the University's forward path, but make recommendations for improvement.

Jones and Gray plan to provide an overview of some anticipated changes and then open the discussion to questions from attendees and viewers. The session will be streamed live online for Commonwealth Campuses to participate at http://wpsu.org/live. Commonwealth Campuses also will be able to submit questions via email and Twitter for immediate response by Jones and Gray.

“There is a vast amount of change either underway or expected to begin at Penn State — major changes in our many enterprise systems, changes to the way we define inclusion, changes to our approach to cyber security and changes in compliance requirements, to name just a few, “ said Jones. "We hope these town hall meetings will give faculty and staff an opportunity to talk about these issues, provide valuable input and understand how we are approaching them.”

“We see this as an ongoing conversation with our employees,” Gray added. "We are a great university, but we must respond in an always-evolving environment, and to distinguish ourselves as leaders. It’s important for us to engage in ongoing dialogue as we move forward together.”

The June 2 Town Hall Meeting is the first meeting of its type planned for the coming year. The next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 22 in Robb Hall of the Hintz Alumni Center on the University Park campus. That meeting also will be live streamed online for participation from the Commonwealth Campuses.

Jones and Gray encourage participants or viewers to submit questions or discussion points in advance via email at the following address questions@psu.edu. During the meeting, participants can submit questions via the above email address or through Twitter with the hashtag #PSUstrong. The questions will be read during the question-and-answer period, keeping anonymous the name of anyone submitting questions, but indicating the Penn State location from where the question originated. Future meetings, messages and events will be announced throughout the year.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS NOW: Submit questions ahead of and during the town hall meeting by sending them to questions@psu.edu.

“USAC is proud to co-sponsor this event with Penn State Today. Being informed about change and the rationale behind the change, as well as how any change may impact our daily work routine, is critical to the continued success of Penn State, as well as to maintaining trust and dedication of our internal community,” said Jeremy Werner, chair of USAC. “We hope that faculty and staff will take advantage of this opportunity for frank conversation with senior leadership.”

USAC, the University Staff Advisory Council, was formed in January 1995, when the associate vice president for Human Resources appointed the body (formerly known as the Staff Advisory Committee) to act in an advisory capacity to senior administration through the vice president for Human Resources. USAC is composed of 30 members from across the campuses, colleges and units, including liaisons representing the president’s equity commissions.

Penn State Today is the University’s official news source, providing timely news for faculty, staff and students at all campus locations. A primary goal of Penn State Today is to help employees and students understand Penn State strategies, accomplishments, values, culture and goals by delivering clear messages, and building a sense of community and shared experience among the people who learn and work at Penn State every day.

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This announcement applies many of the techniques of the new governance model.

1. The event is sponsored by University Staff Advisory Council and the media apparatus of Penn State.  Though it is targeted to faculty and staff, the University Faculty Senate is noticeable for its absence (See e.g.,  # 5 above).

2. The objectives are carefully stage managed and clearly indicate not a willingness to engage, but the opening of a dialogue in which decisions already taken, and policies already approved, will be rolled out (e.g., "to discuss necessary strategic and operational changes at Penn State").  The object of the session, then, is to socialize faculty and staff into the realities of decisions already taken, and to ease their path toward conformity. (See e.g.,  # 1 above).

3. Though the meeting is described as "an opportunity for faculty and staff to talk about the direction of the University, and to discuss its strengths, challenges and future opportunities", it is in reality, and quite clearly, "an avenue for the internal community to keep informed about pending changes and to ask questions or share concerns and ideas." Putting these two expressions together reveals that the purpose of the town hall meeting is to inform (a form of passive transparency by announcement) and to provide a basis for managing reaction )a technique of socialization that requires no engagement in the actual contents of the decisions taken and to be discussed). (See, e.g., #3).

4. There is an odd juxtaposition of topics, but one with quite manipulative effect. On the one hand, it is announced that "[t]opics like healthcare, the ever-changing landscape of information technology, new human resources policies and the transformation of that area will be covered."  But at the same time, also discussed will be "recent rankings by third-party evaluators such as Moody's and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education."  With respect to the latter also conveyed is the university's relation to these third parties, the "reports that look favorably on the University's forward path, but make recommendations for improvement."  The connection that will be made is interesting.  First, the object will be to focus on the cost generating obligations of benefits and technology, and the likely reform of these through changes in university legislation.  But those are tied not to the objects of these regulations, but to those who really matter--the third party rating agencies whose power is made manifest.  There is an odd paralell here between the way this is offered to faculty and staff, and the way that developing states--Somalia for example--might offer the austerity programs necessary to obtain loans from the International Monetary Fund.  But Penn State is not a developing state, and the rating agencies are not International Financial Institutions.  Still what is clear is that universities, like developing states, are increasingly taking the position that they have limited control over their internal governance because that control is now exercised through negotiation with the large rating and accreditation agencies. (See e.g., # 2).

5. The control of both the conversation, and participation, is to be exercised by the senior administrators attending. But every effort is made to ensure a large attendance of the masses of faculty and staff so that as many as possible might be reached for instruction in the matters described above, and for the effort to harvest "concerns" so that they might be met and overcome. (See, e.g., # 1).

6.  But ultimately, the real objective of these meetings is instruction.

“There is a vast amount of change either underway or expected to begin at Penn State — major changes in our many enterprise systems, changes to the way we define inclusion, changes to our approach to cyber security and changes in compliance requirements, to name just a few, “ said Jones. "We hope these town hall meetings will give faculty and staff an opportunity to talk about these issues, provide valuable input and understand how we are approaching them.”

“We see this as an ongoing conversation with our employees,” Gray added. "We are a great university, but we must respond in an always-evolving environment, and to distinguish ourselves as leaders. It’s important for us to engage in ongoing dialogue as we move forward together.”

And not just instruction, but also the appropriate attitudes that must be embraced in order to conform to the realities now made available for consumption by those who now assert a closed-loop monopoly of discussion about matters of importance to all university stakeholders. This is not just instruction--it it the delivery of facts, reality, interpretation that will tolerate no questioning, much less opposition--certainly there will be little room for either by the University Faculty Senate.

7.  Faculty are nowhere to be seen in these developments other than as receptacles. Their participation is important to the extent it provides administration with the opportunity to "test the waters" and "gauge response", which permits further management of faculty and staff responses and perhaps a tweaking of what is offered (or more likely the way it is presented).  The new model of mass democracy preserves the appearance of transparency and communication, but delivers precious little by way of engagement. This is governance vertically arranged in which the old forms may no longer function. (See, e.g., # 1, 4).