Should Top Scholars Be Lead Administrators?

|Peter Boettke|

Nicolai Foss addresses this question and points to some of the literature on the topic.

What has been your experience in your center, department, college, or university?

Comments

[Steve Horwitz]

As I've argued before, one of the advantages of having top scholars as administrators is that they generally don't give a damn what the people they 'administer' think about them. And that's good. Too many administrators are too concerned about currying favor or climbing the admin ladder than doing the job right.

If you have a strong scholarly reputation, you are likely to care more about that than what your institutional colleagues think about you as an administrator. Plus if you decide you don't like admin or that they don't like you doing admin, you have your scholarship to return to.

The worst administrators are those who have nothing else to rest their laurels on and who want to make a career out of administration.

[Roger Koppl]

I have heard that a fine school in upstate NY has had good luck with scholarly administrators, but at this point it's just a rumor. :-)

I confess to being surprised by the results Nicolai summarizes, but I should not have been. The university *is* the faculty and better scholars are generally better able to understand what tends to get you good faculty. Plus what Steve said.

[Barkley Rosser]

In the past in the US top universities were generally led by top scholars who remained in office for many years. Now we have people who are in for short periods of time who are mostly good at fundraising. Personally, I would not mind seeing a return to the past, although the US universities and colleges are the world's highest rated, so that may just be my personal prejudice against mindless, money-grubbing administrators.

[Mario Rizzo]

Let's backup. Why would a top scholar want to be an administrator? Top scholars at big schools can make good money these days. Do they need to work with those faculty who seem to specialize in being on committees, launching protests, etc.?
Larry Summers was president of Harvard. What thanks did he get? (I guess Summers is more properly an ex-top scholar.)

[Richard Ebeling]

I find that those faculty members who are most interested in administrative affairs and positions are the most vocal busy-buddies.

They live to bitch and complain, and want to "run" things because everything seems wrong and misallocated from their faculty perspective.

If and when they do gain an administrative position they often (not always) end up being manipulative power lusters who now like centrally planning things.

So the only faculty concerns are those they personally consider important. They forget about the faculty "sensitivity" concerns that they originally said were not being paid attention to.

They often are the people who don't seem to do much research and writing. In other words, the ones with lots of time on their hands.

Richard Ebeling

[Barkley Rosser]

Mario,

Presidents still make more than all but the very highest paid of professors (see med schools). the people who make more than uni prezzes tend to be football coaches.

[Steve Horwitz]

When I read comments about administrators like the one Richard wrote, I'm amazed that my friends in the economics profession can stand to be in the same room with me. Apparently I'm a manipulative power luster etc.. ;)

More seriously, it does bother me when people write things like that. I spent six years as an administrator and got to know other admins both here and at schools around the country. There are those who fit Richard's stereotype of course, but there are many others who don't. And even good people get caught up in bad systems.

It's funny how we seem to forget all of our analyses of bureaucracies and structures when it comes to higher ed administrators and suddenly it's all about power lust and other characteristics of the actor.