From 1972 to 1994, the academic administrative structure of the Berkeley campus of the University of California was unusual, in that it involved two Provosts, one who was also Dean of the College of Letters and Science, and another who was responsible for the remainder of the academic units, which were for the most part professional schools and…

Most public universities in the United States are formed into systems, containing more than one university or campus. There are clear rationales for these systems, including overall planning and coordination, budgeting efficiency, and effectiveness of dealings with the state government. The distribution of internal governance functions between the…

Shared governance between the administration and faculty has been traditional for most public universities, but varies considerably in its nature and effectiveness. In the United States it probably takes its most structured form at the University of California. There are good reasons for having shared governance, and yet it tends to be poorly…

There is strong interest in broadening engineering education, bringing in more liberal arts content as well as additional subjects such as economics, business and law, with which engineers now have to be familiar. There are also cogent arguments for balancing against what is now the almost exclusively quantitative nature of the curriculum, adding…

Disciplines codify related knowledge and have developed powerful approaches that enable both solutions to a wide variety of problems and efficient further extension of knowledge. Individual disciplines have translated into individual departments within universities. Academic departments tend to turn inward, deepening the knowledge within the…

Since 2005, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has been conducting research to understand the needs and practices of faculty for in-progress scholarly communication (i.e., forms of communication employed as research is being executed) as well as archival publication. This…

Issues of ethics and leadership are important, growing and intense in universities. Five examples are discussed, drawn from the personal experience of the author. These involve the selection of research, the collection and use of ethically sensitive materials, major relationships with industry and donors, access and admissions, and the content of…

California has achieved considerable economic success through technological innovation and the formation of businesses based upon those technologies. This paper addresses some of the roles of universities in that success story. It starts with some measures of the contributions of innovation and a robust university structure to the California…

This study reports on five disciplinary case studies that explore academic value systems as they influence publishing behavior and attitudes of University of California, Berkeley faculty. The case studies are based on direct interviews with relevant stakeholders--faculty, advancement reviewers, librarians, and editors--in five fields: chemical…

Many societal trends and needs call for engineers to broaden their outlooks, have more flexible career options, and work closely and effectively with persons of quite different backgrounds. Yet the education and general orientation of engineers have been directed inward toward the profession, rather than outward toward the rest of society and the…

This paper analyzes the need for providing additional undergraduate enrollment capacity at the University of California (UC) and of alternatives for gaining such capacity at UC and, by extension, other public research universities. In addition to the creation of new campuses, other approaches are capable of giving significant additional capacity…