Shared governance and the rankings
Nancy Rapoport | Friday, September 26, 2008 at 05:15AM Paul Caron's posting on the University of Michigan Law School's Wolverine Scholars program (see here) and Bill Henderson's follow-up (see here) demonstrate how the USNWR rankings are continuing to be the tail wagging the dog when it comes to a law school education.
Do I think that Michigan's outreach to this particular group of students is wrong-headed? Of course not (although Bill correctly points out that the rubric for finding the Wolverine Scholars is both over- and under-inclusive).
Do I hope that Michigan is trying to find a way to reduce the over-reliance on the LSAT as a way of indicating student quality? Sure, I do.
But this particular program has the same side-effect as does USNWR's proposed inclusion of the LSATs and UGPAs of part-time students (see here for Race to the Bottom's earlier post on USNWR's proposed change, and see here for my first take on the change). It cedes control of a law school's educational program to a magazine in an attempt to game the system.
Why do schools continue to play so hard to the rankings? In part, it's a shared governance problem. Deans and faculties are supposed to work together to develop their schools' policies. (See here for my first-cut view about shared governance.) Deans are pressured by every possible constituency--the university, the faculty, the students, the alumni, and the bar--to move their schools up the USNWR pecking order. Law faculties are supposed to take the laboring oar when it comes to such faculty-centered issues as faculty hiring, the curriculum, and admissions policy. Even though deans and faculties are supposed to take the long-term health of their schools into account when making or altering policies, there's a real short-term cost in not playing to the rankings. A drop in the rankings can cost a school its best applicants, its movable faculty members, and its donations. (Among other things.)
And with every type of governance issue, the short-term costs of taking the hit on "measurables" can eclipse an organization's long-term stewardship. Dropping in the rankings is akin to failing to meet quarterly earnings targets. 'Fessing up to the short-term hit for a good long-term reason is probably in an organization's best interest, but few organizations have the chutzpah to take the hit.
Shared governance makes the decision of whether to play to the rankings even more complicated. Who makes the call on adopting a new program or policy that will improve the school's USNWR position? The faculty is the body most likely to decide the broad picture in terms of admission, or to try to hire more USSC clerks to improve the reputation ranking, or to try the "move students to part-time" route. But it's the dean who's going to be saddled with the ramifications if the new policy or program goes awry. (Remember this article in the New York Times: The $8.78 Million Maneuver?)
It's a classic division of risk and responsibility. At least when corporations make bad policy, we try to find the people who were charged with making that policy decision and bring them to task. But in shared governance, deans make relatively few policy decisions on the "big three" of admissions, faculty appointments, and curriculum. When the policy decisions are good, bravo for the faculty, which made them. When they go bad, though, faculty heads don't roll.
When we sever responsibility from risk, we get Enron. We get subprimes rolled into securities that fail. We get the current financial crisis. And we get law school decisions made in the hope of getting a slight short-term gain that lasts only until other schools catch on and mimic the idea or until USNWR figures it out. That can't be good governance.
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