This is an interesting and informative book. Written by the former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, it is a useful introduction to research-university and research-college culture. It is written with grace and humor and includes sufficient data to support its authority and sufficient anecdotal material to support its wisdom.
It is also a very limited book. It offers a sense of the `feel' of administration, the daily life of a dean, the nature of university relationships, principles and values. It is an account of university `culture'. It has almost nothing to say about the external forces that impinge on universities and the individuals (and share of the budget) devoted to dealing with them. It acknowledges the presence of university critics but opts for optimism rather than pessimism, even as it notes that some of the critics' claims are legitimate (grade inflation, trendy curricula, e.g.). Rosovsky's personal impulses are `old Harvard': moderate/liberal, northeastern and boosterish with a dab of sherry here and a love of crimson, silk robes there. The fact that he is an economist with an Asian area studies emphasis adds both rigor and breadth to some of his insights. The thrust of his comments is one of reassurance. "Here are the reasons for our procedures; they are rational and both tried and true."
The book should be of great interest to keepers of the Harvard flame. He describes the book as an `owner's manual'; it is actually a stakeholders' manual. Stakeholders are not the same as owners and the stakeholders here (Harvard students, Harvard faculty, Harvard alumni/ae, Cambridge residents and so on) will be interested in how the academic core of this particular University functions.
The problem for the rest of the reading public will be that Harvard is such an exception to the experience of nearly all other American institutions, including those whose stature approaches Harvard's. Its endowment, for example, offers it opportunities which few others enjoy; at the same time its dependency upon its endowment makes it subject to far greater threats when the market tanks. Its tenuring procedures are similar to a tiny handful of other institutions but markedly different from nearly everyone else's, including the 60+ members of the Association of American Universities--the top private/public research universities in America. Harvard does not tenure associate professors; nearly everyone else does. Harvard thus has a longer probationary period for junior staff, but then it requires candidates for tenure to compete with anyone and everyone outside of Harvard in the field in question. Harvard's every-tub-on-its-own-bottom budgeting is enormously expensive because it is duplicative. Its traditional `section man' teaching format, with large lectures presided over by tenured faculty with breakout sections managed by graduate students makes for larger class sizes than its cost and reputation would lead one to expect. Its size is relatively large and the number of professional students there creates an ethos that is not only vastly different from that of research colleges but also differently-proportioned than, e.g., top public institutions.
These are more descriptions of the book than criticisms of the book. I believe that nearly all of the author's values, instincts and principles are solid ones. He has actually written a superb book, but one whose title should have been something like "The Culture and Governance of the Arts and Sciences at Harvard University--A Stakeholder's Introduction."
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Reviewed in Germany on July 23, 2023