On the Art of University Pruning
A. Etzioni
1971
Science
The present financial drouLght and the resulting need to cut back the activities of many universities coltld serve to saw off deadwood and to enhance the vitality, indeed quality, of the main plant in preparation, one would hope, for a new period of growth. As fond as one may be of rapid branching out and abundant blossoming, one must admit that the spring of the 1950's and 1960's fostered some rather wild, often unplanned offshoots, occasionally of poor quality. A pause in growth, if it does
more »
... t last too long and does not CuLt too deep, could provide the ne2ded time and incentive for review, for selective cutbacks, for consolidation, and for planning of future growth. Unfortunately, most universities show little evidence of having mastered the difficult art of selective university pruning. Across-the-board cutbacks (for instance, budgets lower by 5 percent for all departments and schools), or a university-wide "freeze" on hiring or on raises, are the common pattern. Typically, a recent intrauniversity memo reads: "There has been considerable variability among the several schools of the Uni-versYty in increases in faculty salaries in relatively recent years. Obviously equity requires that those schools in which recent salary increases have been small be offered a larger option of increasing salaries than schools with the reverse history." Equity among divisions whose relevance to the university's main missions varies, a great deal is the opposite of selective pruLning. Here and there half-hearted attempts at selective pruning are made; the budget of some divisions is not reduced, whi e everybody else is forced to give up 5 percent. However, only a few universities choose to close some divisions, which are not essential to their enterprise, and to increase the budget of others-or to rank their departments, promoting the fields in which the university may make a ma;or contribution and achieve distinction, and neglecting the departments that seem unpromising or "hopeless." Since pruning requires so much more leadership from university presidents, and an ability to mobilize consensus from the university conmmunity than across-the-board cuts, one oLIght not to be surprised that pruning is rarely practiced, but that it is practiced at all. Many universities now hit financially are just outgrowing a d fferent sort of crisis, that of radical conf'rontations. The last crisis left in its wake a strong preference for "political" university presidents, who can deel with radical students, liberal faculties, and conservative trustees, with one goal in mind-to keep the university open withouLt turning it into a garrison state. The president's highly "political" style seems to be particularly ill-suited tor the strong leadership that prLin:ng requires. In many universities, therefore, it is the faculties and the trustees who must find it in their hearts to demand that the pruning knife be wielded not with an eye to keeping everyone equally happy (or. more precisely, equally Lunhappy) but with an eye to the shaping of a greater university. -AMITAi ETZION1, Clhairman(ili,
doi:10.1126/science.172.3982.429
pmid:17758077
fatcat:3x4wen6ocjezrccaiotth2fbem