Unconstitutionalized Incentives

It is appropriate, indeed imperative, to reaffirm constantly the obligations assumed by university faculty, obligations that I summarize by reference to academic constitutional morality, the crux of which is devotion to the academic constitution. As Parsons and Platt remark, "The tenured member is expected to fulfill high standards of fiduciary responsibility and is trusted to do so."^[23] But danger of corruption on the part of both faculty and administration is ever present. Departments and whole universities do deteriorate. The academic profession itself may fall into the grip of nepotistic preferentialism. Evidently devotion and trust are not enough; they cannot stand against unconstitutionalized incentives. Here, economic analysis helps to explain the dynamics of academic decline.

Economists regard human action as governed by individual incentives. Some incentives depend importantly on their institutional context. In

[22] This paragraph and the preceding one draw upon my "Tenure in the American University."

[23] Parsons and Platt, American University , p. 131. Note also their point that "Tenure-collegiality is essential to the fiduciary character of the academic role. Tenure is a symbol of membership in the type of collegial collectivity organized about the implementation of fiduciary responsibilities" (p. 367).

certain situations, a classic example of which is the medieval commons, action on individual incentives produces externalities that are to the detriment of all. In the case of the commons these incentives lead to overworking and overgrazing the land, the tragedy of the commons. For the economist, the solution to the problem of harmful externalities is to internalize them, that is, bring home to individuals the costs of their activity. Internalization is the point of private property; it forces people to conserve and to husband, rather than competitively to squander, their resources.

Now apply this type of analysis to the situation of the American academic profession. In particular, consider the incentives that operate in an unconstitutionalized system of higher education. And remember that for imperfectly rational creatures a constitution is essentially a method of binding oneself against behavior that one will later regret. No rhetoric of constitutional morality can prevent these incentives from generating immensely harmful externalities in the form of damage to the university as an intellectual community, to its students, and to society. Unless they can be induced to internalize these externalities, faculty will abandon academic freedom and so release one another from exposure to the criterion of competitive appointment. And they will grant themselves jobs for life at the expense of the coming generation of scholars and scientists. This is the tragedy of the academic commons. For if each member feels that even if he remains faithful to the constitutional ethos, others will not, and therefore he best act to his own advantage, in effect all agree to dilute academic standards and the appointive process, whatever the external costs. Unconstrained by constitutional structure and undeterred by constitutional morality, incentives that work to destroy professional integrity and discipline take hold of people.

The dynamics of academic decline produce a kind of collusion that need not necessarily be open, as in the organized drive to unionize a university. Rather destructive agreement, arising from the incentives at work in an unconstitutionalized university, may well take the form of an implicit mutual understanding to live and let live, to exploit the university by turning it into a kind of club, permanent membership in which is assured to those on the waiting list—the "tenure track," as it is known in the United States—so long as they meet the local standards of appointment. In consequence, the resources of the academic system, namely, tenured posts, are gobbled up without stint.

Of course, to speak of a tenure track is to display a thoroughly illegitimate attitude toward the appointive process as prescribed by the academic constitution. But this attitude prevails, as a mere glance at American university advertisements illustrates. Indeed the concept of a tenure track institutionalizes the unconstitutional policy of nepotistic preferentialism.

In my observation, the American bureaucratic policy of affirmative action has been applied to relax the criterion of competitive merit for women and minorities; this practice legitimizes and consolidates unfortunate atti-

tudes and incentives. After all, people ask themselves why they should expose themselves to the criterion of merit when others, their competitors, are evading it. Of course, this means that the policy of affirmative action finally tends to militate against those whom it is supposed to favor. It is less easy than many imagine to circumvent the dictates of equal opportunity and individualized justice.

This application of economic thinking to the university reveals why departments and faculties cannot be expected to adhere to the academic constitution and to fulfill their obligations on a voluntary basis. It is not only a matter of corruption. It is, more realistically, a matter of the personal and well-nigh universal incentives that naturally develop in situations lacking appropriate constraints. In the university, as in the polity and the economy, the problem is to devise constraints that bring individual rationality in line with collective rationality. For the university, the academic constitution provides the solution to this problem. To constitutionalize individual incentives is the appropriate response to academic decline. In the university both moral and intellectual integrity depend on their effective presence. Trust itself requires institutionalization.