Gail Heriot (San Diego), Did ERISA Contribute to the Decline of Faculty Governance on Campus?:

The traditional system … has broken down in the last few decades in part, I believe, because academics have become more mobile. Today’s academic is a free agent who may work at a half dozen different institutions during his or her academic career. Just as baseball free agents are less committed to the team, academic free agents are less committed to their home institution. It’s been a huge change–although one that has sneaked up on us so slowly and quietly that few have noticed it.

Forty years ago, if a dean advised a young academic to try to spend about 40% of his time on scholarship, 40% on teaching and 20% on faculty governance and other university service, the young academic would have some incentive to do exactly that, since it was very likely he’d be spending the rest of his career at that institution. Today it is less likely. The successful academic is the one who “publishes up a storm” and then gets an offer from a more prestigious school. Consequently, when it comes to faculty governance matters (and to a lesser extent teaching), shirking has ballooned. Most people respond to the incentives before them. I guess that’s not news.

Colleges and universities responded as one would expect: They hired administrators to do tasks that once were done by faculty members. Today it is uncommon, for example, for faculty members to review individual admissions files. That’s mainly done by administrators. The ethic is, “Why interfere with the faculty’s valuable research and teaching to do something that a lower-paid administrator can do?” …

I’d be surprised if ERISA's pension mobility were not a contributing factor to the rise of the “academic free agent” and the incentive structure it creates. Yes, I’m sure that there have been other contributing factors to the rise of the “academic free agent,” and no doubt there are other contributing factors besides the free agent problem to the explosion of non-academic middle managers on campus. But ERISA is worth considering as one of the sources of the decline of the faculty governance and the traditional model.