Faculty voices in distance education: Shared governance and the for-profit college.

摘要

For-profit institutions of higher education focus on providing new cutting-edge and economically efficient product lines to improve customer service and increase the market for their educational deliverables. The key element in shaping the direction of these educational businesses is the managerial approach to institutional governance. A recent initiative to incorporate distance education into the existing curricular offerings at one such institution in the context of shared governance is the focus of this exploratory stakeholder analysis. This study delves into the faculty psyche by exploring the faculty voice and perceptions of curriculum ownership with respect to distance education and faculty roles in academic planning. The information presented uncovers areas not yet explored in existing literature on the importance of faculty voice relative to distance education in the for-profit sector of higher education and indicates that the dichotomy between a corporate, managerial approach and a more traditional approach to collegial shared governance can indeed co-exist and complement each other by combining their relative strengths. This co-existence rests primarily in the willingness on the part of all stakeholders to compromise and adjust.