Author Description

"The crisis of confidence in American higher education began long before the pandemic turned normal life on its head. The long-held assumption that a bachelor's degree is the ticket to the middle class is now widely questioned. Except for a handful of wealthy institutions insulated from the vagaries of financial markets, public largesse and demographic shifts, most colleges and universities are faced with uncertain futures. The thesis of Department management 2.0 is that a critical reason for the failure of American higher education to better serve the contemporary needs of students and society has been entirely ignored. Institutional missions in the twenty-first century can now change overnight with turmoil in financial markets, pandemic disease or technological disruptions such as artificial intelligence that writes, speaks and that mimics human creativity. Companies operating at the cutting edge of knowledge need to be able to respond to the challenge of rapid incessant change with their own speed, agility, and adaptability. [This book] takes an organizational systems approach to underscore the importance of academic departments as the foundational organizational structure in colleges, and the critical position of chairs as the gatekeepers to the talents of the faculty. While the call for dynamic presidential leadership is accepted as critical for the revitalization of American higher education, chairs and academic departments are virtually ignored in conversations about institutional transformation. While some schools may be fortunate enough to have star presidents and groundbreaking faculty, without professionalized chairs and a management system that engages the power of 'creators' in the professorate, institutional achievements will be limited by the century old management system designed for the horse and buggy era. In place of the restrictive bureaucratic 1.0 management system [this book] first makes the case that colleges need to identify and support the p