ABSTRACT
In the broadest sense, the diversity of organizational types in America is a byproduct of the lack of centralized authority over higher education. Diversity and specialization gave rise to sharper boundaries within the faculty, the first step toward multi-school universities, as well as new layers of middle managers such as deans and vice presidents. The older liberal arts colleges scarcely needed much internal organization since all of the faculty were jointly involved in a common and non-technical curriculum—often under the tight control of a dominant president and local board of trustees. As one historian of Columbia University observed, during the late nineteenth century, faculty rose to a position of “effective parity” with the Board of Trustees, whose role in governance had been absolute in earlier generations. Chicago’s William Rainey Harper was perhaps the most consumed by this among the generation of founding presidents, and he entertained a number of potential solutions.
