THE ROLE AND CRITICISMS FACING THE FACULTY SENATE IN AMERICAN SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

The Senate is recognized by the American University system as an advisory and consultative body to the President on all matters that may affect the attainment of the University‟s educational objectives. The Senates play a vital role in formulating educational policies and the most important exercise of senate influence is in the area of academic policymaking. The paper showed that with the advent of faculty unionization, there are series of clashes between the Senates and Unions and the main issue tackled in this work is why the faculty senates that retain control over academic policy are generally viewed as weak, ineffective and have only a symbolic governance function. The methodology used on this work is survey method using case study and the sources of the work are based on the research works of Steven P. Young (2009), Emil Ricci (2001), and case study is on Penn State University Faculty Senate (2008).