(01-26-2018 04:09 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Bish,

HR is pliant almost everywhere. Name a company where HR had real power? HR people are a dime a dozen, the first ones laid off when times get hard. Many companies almost completely outsource HR (common in Silicon Valley for companies under 200 employees). They are in a position of being forced to suck up to upper management more than anyone, because they produce nothing for the bottom line. (Yet they are necessary.) I don't have a remedy, just an observation.

As for your question of shareholders, that would be State tax payers at public schools, and their reps would be the trustees/regents -- these have their own issues.

The State has a power shareholders don't: they can appoint an independent ombudsman office for Universities and take the disciplinary department out from under the President and place it under a different government office, such as the Governors, or a better a special task force of legislature (like the ethics committee) and Governor.

Private schools are all different, and I wont even speculate on how to deal with them, as I am not a believer in one size fits all policies.

In higher education, HR is often situated organizationally under or alongside general counsel, if not independent and/or headed by someone holding a JD (at least it's trending that way). Don't disagree they are a flimsy defense in either sphere, but, it comes with the territory. It's more on the institution how it addresses challenges typically handled by labor/employee relations; the #metoo movement is one that is going to force institutions to reconsider the "divided house" construct of Academic Affairs and HR "sharing" those functions (imo, at least, and, again, where you're seeing lawyers starting to run HR offices in schools, as well as reconciling AA's "practices" in employee relations and performance management that is historically and traditionally unique, yet antiquated, from other organizational structures).

The tl;dr version: the tasks and functions of any of these three units: HR, OGC, and AA are in desperate need of restructure and repair, as well as definition. You have role ambiguity at the top, role overload operationally.

As for the taxpayer/shareholder comparison, I'm not sure I agree, though I wish my voice as a taxpayer was factored more prevalently with state or local legislators who can influence these institutions as one could by simply owning property within a school district. A board is supposed to be the intermediary between organization and stakeholder, but the added governance layer of state legislation distances a taxpayer from a college/university governance board. Where I and my neighbors have a direct link to primary and secondary school governance, much like I may as a shareholder, I don't with a state university, who takes its orders from elected officials, not every resident.

The tl;dr there: corporate's more like the local school district than public higher ed, with a fractured connection between taxpayer and institution oversight. I can only hope my views will be factored by my local lawmaker. I can go pound sand otherwise.