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Big Man on Campus: A University President Speaks Out on Higher Education

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What do Cal Ripken, Houdini, Edison, J. Pierpont Morgan, Churchill, Bismarck and Job have in common? Their qualities, combined, are what Steve Trachtenberg tells us are essential equipment for a university president. He shows why this is so in a book filled with wisdom, humor and numerous ideas about what university education means, needs, and gives back to students, their parents, and society. It's a graceful and fascinating work about one of our greatest American institutions.

Particularly enjoyable are the autobiographical elements of Trachtenberg's upbringing and experiences, which are skillfully interwoven with his discussion of the figures and problems, joys and perplexities of university life and governance. His candor about himself, and his insights into the basic issues faced by universities, give this book an authenticity and reach that will make reading it a valuable and memorable experience.

For parents who want to know for what they're paying a university, for students who want to know why they should spend important years of their lives there, and for everyone who wants an authentic view of what a university is like from the inside, and also to learn from and be amused by encounters of an interesting person with the world, this is a splendid book.

Katharyn and Stanley Reiser

This is one of the most outstanding volumes on higher education I have read in quite some time. Dr. Trachtenberg's perspectives from his years in the business are quite enlightening. I highly recommend this highly readable and entertaining book.

Dr. Trachtenberg is a very active but post-presidential presence at George Washington University and in global educational circles. I first read Reflections on Higher Education. Completely different from that first book, which was a well-edited compilation of non-replicative speeches and articles, this book follows his departure from the long-held position as President of George Washington University, and provides seventeen chapters. Use "Inside the Book" feature to see those in detail.

Along with these two books I recommend at a minimum three others I have also reviewed:

The Uses of the University: Fifth Edition (Godkin Lectures on the Essentials of Free Government and the)
Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education
The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education (Wiley Desktop Editions)

and also a number of books that have the common theme of reinventing education, such as

21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn (Leading Edge)
Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America (Technology, Education--Connections (Tec)) (Technology, Education-Connections, the Tec Series)
Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning
The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out (Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series)

It is in this magnificent context that I absorb this book, still relevant, especially to those who would strive to create a Smart Nation (see my book by that title) and a "national" university that can bootstrap us back into global to local relevance.

Here are my summary notes:

+ Largest payroll in Washington, D.C. after federal and local governments.

+ The author is devoted to the role of the university as a means of creating educated informed citizens, and in 2008, was already concerned over the financial ruin likely to befall the country as a result of the elective wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.


+ $30,000 a year per student seems expensive but it costs money to maintain a complex institution that teaches, heals, and does research [this book was written before the explosion in free online learning and

+ Average tenure of a university professor at the time was eight years, getting shorter with more mis-steps, scrutiny, and resignations (in both sense of the word--resigning from the job and resigning in the face of challenges too great for any one man to bear)

+ Fund-raising and money issues consume presidents but should not be allowed to do so--both need to be the responsibility of all stakeholders in common

+ The "standard" of what constitutes a liberal education has been shredded beyond recognition--students are arriving ignorant from high school and despite the best efforts, often leaving college ignorant still

+ Spent eleven years as President of the University of Hartford, started as President of George Washington University at the age of 50

+ The knives thrown in the president's direction are many, and one cannot rely on normal checks and balances to prevail--from protesting students to scandals on campus to faculty rebellion toward any change...

+ A persistent recurring theme is both the complexity of the balancing acts that must be undertaken by the president, and the nearly incomprehensible universe of "stakeholders" (including many who appoint themselves without necessarily having equity).

+ Litigation is a sword over every president's head, not necessarily because the university merits being sued, but because a class of lawyers and plaintiffs exist that see every mis-step as an opportunity to seek financial gain

+ Eight tenets for survival and success--I cringe as I realize how often I break some of them

...01 You shouldn't make everybody mad at you at the same time
...02 Your message should be uplisting rather than blatantly critical
...03 You should avoid introducing more than one idea at a time
...04 Try to build a community constituency
...05 Improving the overall image of a place is important
...06 Maintaining perspective can be difficult
...07 Every faculty needs a few crackpots
...08 Computers can perpetuate myths and complicate communication

+ A university presidency is a holistic calling in every possible sense of the word--a multidimensional multidomain challenge unlike any other [to which I would add, more so than the Presidency of the United States because that position has been captured by special interests and undermined by a vast bureaucracy that has lost its intelligence and integrity--a university president has the luxury of being focused on stewardship [less the commercialization that Derek Bok has written about]

+ There is a tangible, plapable, continuous magic about encountering graduates of the university *everywhere*

+ He dispels myths about GWU (buy the book)

+ History matters. History really matters. The evidence that our young are not learning history is most distressing. I am in huge agreement with this point, and recommend the books below in support of this vital observation by the author.

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
The Lessons of History

+ The entire section on faculty is priceless--buy the book--and I observe that the author makes it clear that while tenure has its downside, every faculty needs--and can count on having--a few crackpots [to which I would add, and the same for the Administration]

+ Tenure, combined with an end to mandatory retirement, has created deep challenges for university presidents who wish to breathe life into old programs gone stale

+ Lectures are an out-moded and ineffective means of instructing larger groups. I regret I am so limited by Amazon (ten links), there is an entire literature now on flipping the learning tortilla so the notes are online and the face time is interactive.

+ My over-all take-away is that the two major challenges for the future for any university president lie in the education of their own faculty on new sources and methods; and the creation of completely new ways of reducing costs and increasing learning while achieving a balanced budget.

+ The greatest failures of university presidents may well be when they fail to see an opportunity or see an opportunity and fail to exploit it. This is particularly important with respect to real estate and "grand strategy" moves that may not be appreciated by others for a decade or more.

+ Athletics is a constituency, a media magnet, and a disaster waiting to happen (on and off the field)

The book concludes with a number of insightful combinations of actual letters dealt with by the president along with contextual comments, and a reflective conclusion whose most important line is that universities are partners in the future of a nation.

"BMOC" offers several helpful suggestions for university leaders (also hospital administrators): 1)You shouldn't make everyone mad at you at the same time. 2)Your message should be uplifting rather than blatantly critical. 3)Avoid introducing more than one idea at a time. 4)Try to build a community constituency. 5)Improving the overall image of a place is important. 6)Maintaining perspective can be important.

He also openly admits to some frustrating weaknesses in university administration - eg. faculty ability to premptorily veto change (eg. schedules allowing faster graduation, hiring competent, but contrary scholars) - especially those in the arts and humanities; tenure; lack of an enforceable retirement age.

Trachtenberg, however, fails to face the biggest problem in America's colleges and universities - rapidly rising costs. He's aware of the opportunity to save money through increased class size, but weakly supports it. Research offers important contributions to both students and the world. However, Trachtenberg fails to mention that most is worthless - eg. how useful is the nth analysis of a literary work, hair-splitting analysis of factors affecting business success that pale in comparison to successful strategy, continual reinventing the wheel in public education while promising improvements that never materialize, etc.? Then there's increases in administration, decreases in teaching hours, shortening the school year, high dropout rates, and the approximately 50% of graduates unable to find jobs that require a college education.

Finally, there's the problem of erroneous content. Part of the problem involves the previously referenced worthless research. Similarly, higher educators promulgate an infinity of unfounded personal biases - eg. an Ivy-League professor telling new congressmen and senators on TV that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs signifanctly worsened the Great Depression. (Look at the data!)

This book is chalk full of one man's narcissistic narrative of his accomplishments, privilege and connections. Due to the incessant bragging and self-satisfied demeanour it was difficult to finish. I do not recommend this book to others.

University presidents are notoriously egotistical. Trachtenberg is no exception. Granted, he is likable in a grandfatherly kind of way and he seems more grounded in everyday realities and common concerns and a folksy kind of wisdom than most university presidents and so he has the ability to articulate the challenges facing higher education to a general public better than most. But like most university presidents he is assigned the unenviable task of having to defend an institution that is becoming more and more difficult to defend.

If there was such a thing as disinterested knowledge then the university would not have to defend itself but knowledge is political and so the university's mission is a politicized one. The traditional university was a place where students were versed in a tradition-bound curriculum; the clearly defined mission of the university was to create an educated class to assume leadership for a clearly defined society with clearly defined values and objectives. But as the world becomes more democratized/liberalized/globalized it also becomes less unified, and common values and objectives can no longer be assumed.

Trachtenberg thinks of himself as a social and political liberal, but he, like many university presidents, is a cultural conservative. He defends the tradition-bound idea of the university. What he doesn't see is that in defending its traditions, he is also defending a certain set of practices that have traditionally served a certain social class: his social class. His anecdotes are amusing but also telling. He received his values from an upper middle-class father and his educational life was not an interruption so much as an extension of that upbringing. Situated as he is in a position to benefit from these practices, he sees no reason to alter them or adjust them to new social and political realities. Trachtenberg is very fond of the fact that the university has a 700 year old history and that it remains one of the few constants in a changing world. But to remain relevant the university has to be responsive to social and political change and any institutional history will show that the university is not only a place that registers and critiques social and political change but a place that periodically undergoes changes of its own. The biggest change in the university in the last one hundred years is that scholars no longer conceive of knowledges as fixed things, rather scholars conceive of knowledges as flexible and evolving entities in rapidly evolving times.

Cultural conservatives, like Trachtenberg, want to slow that evolution and preserve tradition as long as they can. To the Trachtenbergian cultural conservative, multiculturalism and pluralism are only viable once one has mastered ones own culture; but to the progressive "mastery" is more of an ideal than a reality, and a suspicious one at that.

In may seem to a cultural conservative that the wisdom of the ages never goes out of style; but to the progressive one man's wisdom is another man's hokum.

Another significant change that has occurred is that the university is no longer seen to be the sanctuary that it once was (Robert Frost once said of college that it was a refuge from hasty judgement). Nowadays, the university is seen to be a socially enmeshed institution and one just as susceptible to error and misjudgement as any other social institution. This demystification of the university is a healthy thing. For too long the university has flattered itself with utopian fantasies of its own exceptionalism, but it seems that now more and more students see university professors/researchers/scholars not as magnanimous beings hovering over the rest of us but as socially enmeshed players with biases who defend their positions and status with rhetoric, much like lawyers and politicians.

Ideally, the university should be a place that fosters the highest level of social, political, and cultural debate. And universities do, on occasion, host evenhanded debates on lively issues (what counts as knowledge?, who has the right to create knowledge? who has the right to create and distribute information?, does globalization mean westernization?, is it tenable or morally right to divide the world up into western/nonwestern or first world/third world?), but in this democratic age its getting harder and harder for a university to institutionally accredit, legitimize, and defend some positions and not others.

Trachtenberg may think that it is possible to be fair about these things and reasonable, but Trachtenberg speaks with a confidence befitting a man who has always been an insider. Institutional privilege certainly looks different to the outsider, to those excluded from the game. There are new thinkers in the game who do not conceive of the university as a haven of good sense, but as a place that arbitrarly confers status and privilege upon those who can successfully negotiate the codes of this (until recently) closed and secretive community.

And, of course, if one is born male, white, and to the upper middle-class one has much more access to these codes than those not born male, white, and upper middle-class. Not surprisingly, The Big Man on Campus is almost always (there are a few exceptions) a Trachtenberg.

University presidents are certainly not the intellectual luminaries that they once were. Today the university president talks and acts like a CEO concerned more with the bottom line than with the higher aims of the university. As university presidents re-structure their institutions to reduce cost and maximize profits the first thing to go is job security. Trachtenberg has come down on both sides of the tenure issue: on the one hand he is for job security and safety nets, and on the other he thinks that some academics are overpaid and that others should not have received their tenured positions. Throughout the book Trachtenberg does not attempt to hide his disdain for faculty and faculty organizations.

Conclusion: He's a company man.

At 72, Trachtenberg remains enthusiastic, even if he doesn't ultimately offer anything particularly vital or groundbreaking to the discussion of the future of the institutional humanities. Like many senior professors he seems to be sustained by ego alone (Trachtenberg offered his speechwriting services to Colin Powell a few years back, and his next book, which is a continuation of these meditations on educational matters, is addressed to the president of the USA). He's a talker alright, but like many elder academic statesmen faced with an uncertain future he has little more to offer than the usual conservative prescription: retrenchment.

The world may become more diversified everyday but, if Trachtenberg has his way, the university will stay just the way it is for another 700 years.

Thus book was hard to put down. I think he's at the point to not care what others think. I enjoyed the frank discussion of his thoughts. It was like reading what he had to contain for years because of his position and, now that is is no longer president, he can speak freely.
One of his points that really connected with me was his support for community colleges. Whereas many in the academic community look down their noses at community colleges, he writes how they can be a blessing for many.
He has many great ideas. Most of them would be difficult to implement, but I'm glad he started the discussion.

I can't wait to read this book. With the imprimatur of Doris Kearns Goodwin and Alan Dershowitz, it's a can't-miss!