Who Needs a Faculty Senate?

Faculty participation in campus governance is declining nationwide. As higher education shifts toward market models of organization, boards and administrators increasingly apply bureaucratic modes of decision making to areas that used to be the domain of faculty members. All too often, administrators seem to sidestep faculty senates in favor of "more efficient" and "accountable" decision making that does not reflect faculty opinion or expertise. To explore this issue at the local level, a faculty committee at Boston College commissioned the School of Education to conduct a survey of shared governance. The authors participated in the survey and report its results in this article.