Amherst College, where I teach, recently changed its senior executive designation from “chief” (as in, chief financial officer) to “vice president.” We have 10 now, and 15 others with titles like senior vice president, vice president or assistant vice president.
Not so long ago, before they became CEOs, our vice presidents would be called deans, directors, or in the case of our CFO, treasurers. (In fact, some retain the title of dean in addition to their title of vice president—vice president for student affairs and dean of students, or vice president and director of admissions and financial aid.) I respect and value the work they do, regardless of their title. I know them and their dedication to the college and the well-being of its students, faculty and staff.
But for a small liberal arts college that has long gone its own way on many things, including its unique administrative titles, there are a lot of vice presidents, vice presidents, and assistant vice presidents.
Today, many colleges and universities across the United States are grappling with the issue of grade inflation. They are coming to terms with the fact that if everyone got A’s, as Christopher Schorr said, “grading would become a farce.” Along with the inflated grades, another kind of inflation is also affecting our campuses.
I call it the “vice-presidentialization” of higher education.
This trend marks a shift in power from faculty to administrators, who are focused on protecting and managing the university’s brand. This is another sign of the continued evolution of American college and university administration.
Titles are important.
For example, the title “Dean of Students” implies a student-facing job, working closely with students to maximize their educational experience. The title “vice chancellor for student affairs” suggests something different, a more institution-oriented role that deals with policy rather than people.
Higher education commentator Mark J. Drozdowski put it this way more than a decade ago: “Higher education is, as the casual observer might imagine, awash in titles.” For faculty, he observed, “the longer the faculty title, the more influence it conveys… But among administrators, the opposite is true: The president beats the vice president, who beats the assistant vice president, who beats the assistant vice chancellor outright.”
“We have qualified for our title,” Drozdowski continued. They “add luster to our resumes and fill us with a sense of pride and purpose…Titles confer value, or perhaps validate value. They have become a form of currency. They define our existence.”
What was true when Drozdovsky was writing is even more true today. Administrative titles may “confer value to the individuals who hold them,” but higher education will not thrive if administrative titles define their value.
The increase in the number of vice presidents and the inflation of their titles signaled the emergence of hierarchy on campus. They can also mean and drive divisions between those who see themselves as responsible for the fate of an institution and those who do the day-to-day job of teaching.
The “two cultures” issue once designated as explaining the divide between humanists and scientists can now be used to describe the divide between the vice presidential cadre and faculty and students on college campuses.
Although there has been growth in the number of vice presidents at individual colleges and universities, serving as a vice president at a college or university is nothing new. In fact, the role dates back to the late 18th century, when Princeton’s Samuel Stanhope Smith (son-in-law of the university president) became what historian Alexander Leitch calls “first vice president in the usual sense.” His primary responsibility is to step in when the president is away. However, as Jana Nidiffer and Timothy Reese Cain note in their study of the early vice presidency, the position at Princeton was not “constantly filled” thereafter: after 1854, they write, “the position remained unfilled for nearly thirty years, and the title disappeared for more than half a century.”
Today, in higher education, having just one vice-chancellor—or no vice-chancellor at all—seems almost unthinkable. For example, Harvard University currently has 14 vice presidents in addition to 15 deans of colleges and institutes. There are 13 vice presidents on USC’s senior leadership team. Both Yale University and Ohio State University have nine vice presidents. Emory University ranked eighth and Rutgers University ranked seventh.
There is also considerable variation in the number of associate deans in liberal arts colleges. Middlebury College has eleven. Dickinson College has nine, Kenyon College has seven, Whitman College has six, Goucher College has six and Williams College has three.
Don’t forget Amherst’s 10 vice presidents.
These numbers show that the number of vice presidents a place has is not just a function of its size or complexity. Part of the reason for the surge in vice presidents is that colleges and universities want to make their governance structures clear to the outside world, especially the business world, where having multiple vice presidents on the organizational chart is standard operating procedure.
Once one higher education institution adopts the title of vice chancellor for its administrative officers, other higher education institutions follow suit, hoping to ensure mutual clarity in their leadership structures. The addition of the vice presidential position may also help drive career mobility. How can a mere dean compete with the vice president for the position of university president?
More than a century ago, the eminent economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen warned that “the standards of organization, control and achievement, taken for granted as customary matters in business conduct, will, through the force of habit, reassert themselves to a great extent as indispensable and decisive in matters of learning.” His response was, “From the point of view of higher education, the academic director and all his works are an abomination and should be stopped by the simple expedient of striking him off the list.”
This is not my point of view. However, we have much to learn from Veblen.
For faculty and others accustomed to the banking or other corporate ways of doing things, it would be a mistake to ignore the impact of the proliferation of academic executives on campus culture. Ensuring that the vice-chancellor cadre on campus governs with humility and that vice-chancellors do not become local hegemons requires effort and vigilance.
To achieve this goal, universities must insist that vice-chancellors pay close attention to the academic mission of their workplace. This requires that we do not allow our vice presidents to gain privileges that are foreign to those they lead, and that we do not escape the frustrations faculty and staff experience every day in places where emails go unanswered and no work can be done without filling out a Google form.
It might help if our vice chancellors were out of the office and interacting with teachers and students on a regular basis. They should audit classes, visit labs and studios, and occasionally answer their own phone calls.
Ultimately, even a place like Amherst might be able to live with our own vice-presidential title—as long as those who hold it don’t take it too seriously and never forget that the business of education is not a business.
