Matasar: Being an Academic Fiduciary

Following up my posts on combatting law prof free agency (here and here):  Bill Henderson blogs the recent article by New York Law School Dean Richard Matasar -- "one of the truly great deans of our generation" -- Defining Our Responsibilities: Being an Academic Fiduciary, 17 J. Contemp. Legal Issues 67 (2008).  Here is the abstract:

Legal education is evolving from a traditional model of shared governance focused on teaching, scholarship, and service to concerns about our stakeholders: students, graduates, donors, regulators, etc. Market sensitivity may indeed be a superior metaphor to organize us than one relying solely on the faculty-centered holy trinity of teaching, scholarship, and service.

But the market metaphor fails to embrace the spirit and nature of higher education. The market conjures up too deep a commitment to selfish ends. This essay suggests another metaphor that may more comfortably fit our schools. I argue that the next step is to delineate our responsibilities as academic fiduciaries - a definition more closely comporting to the way we must act than either as self-interested governors or market actors. First, I discuss the move from faculty centered enterprises, to commercial enterprises, to an emerging trust model. I then define this trust and the consequences of a fiduciary model for every beneficiary of the trust. Next I turn to what a new law school culture might look like and the various forms it might take. This is not merely a question of metaphor, or of nebulous institutional culture. The essay suggest a variety of practical ways that a law school - its faculty and administration - can be successful as fiduciaries: advancing the legitimate ambitions of the school and its faculty through a spirit of trusteeship rather than of self-dealing. Finally, I argue that this model may be the only way for our schools to continue to prosper in the years to come - and the risk to our futures if we persist along the current path.

Bill notes that "[t]wo of Rick's most recent accomplishments are selling his school's 'air rights' in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, which financed a new building and created a large NYLS endowment, and implementation of a data-driven curriculum over the last five years that resulted in a 2007 NY first-time bar passage rate of 90.2%, which is 1 point below Cornell and 1 point above Fordham."