Five Years Of Spence: Technocrat Or Visionary?

When Thomas C. Schelling was on an Economics Department senior search committee in 1976, he wanted Harvard to hire a Stanford economist named A. Michael Spence.

The problem: Many members of the department were reluctant to tenure Spence because they were not familiar with the young scholar's work, Schelling says.

"I delivered 20-some copies of Mike's book to members of the department and said, `read it over the weekend,' and they did," Schelling recounts. "By the meeting on Tuesday they were, I would say, wildly enthusiastic--because they had read the book."

Schelling's story paints a revealing picture of the young Mike Spence--the 40-year-old wunderkind who became dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences after a rapid rise in Harvard'sEconomics Department.

But five years after Spence took over inUniversity Hall, some faculty and administratorswonder whether his early promise has resulted inconcrete improvements for a rapidly growingfaculty.

Most agree that Spence's tenure has been aquiet one--not much has visibly changed in FAS,according to both the dean's supporters and hisdetractors. Instead, the main issue of contentionis whether Spence's next five years will alterHarvard in the ways he says they will.

"As far as I can understand, he is working atchanging the fundamentals with much less concernfor the immediate appearance, which I think isadmirable and unusual," says Richard J. Zeckhauser'62 Ramsey professor of political economy at theKennedy School of Government.

Spence has billed himself as a long-rangeplanner, and has occupied his first five years asdean with the types of studies and analyses morecommon to management consultants than to managersthemselves.

`A Two-Edged Sword'

As a result, faculty members often findthemselves questioning whether Spence's ambitiousplans have come at the expense of short-termresults. Some even suggest that the dean'sdeliberative style can function as an excuse forinaction.

"That kind of caution is fine and good--youhave to be prudent but it's a two-edged sword,"says Professor of History Steven Ozment. "Cautionand prudence can lead you to dawdle to a pointwhere no change occurs."

Still Spence's defenders say his caution is anintegral part of his method: To work effectively,Spence reasons, he must understand problemsthoroughly before attacking them.

In practice, this means Spence has namedcommittee after committee to report on problemafter problem--from the hiring of minorities andwomen to the office space crunch which is anever-growing problem for FAS and even thepotential restructuring of the Faculty'sgovernance.

"He has a very broad view of Harvard and of theFAS, and he takes the long view on what isimportant," says Kennedy School Dean Robert D.Putnam, who worked closely with Spence as theformer chair of the Government Department.

Perhaps Spence's focus on the big picturerather than the short-term payoff, is particularlyapparent because of the footsteps in which he hasfollowed.

Henry Rosovsky, the flamboyant and outspokenformer dean of the Faculty, guided FAS through thechanges of the 1970s and masterminded the creationof the Core Curriculum--an innovation which drewnational attention to Harvard's undergraduateprogram.

"I don't ever want to be dean, but if I everhad to be a dean, I would not want to be deanafter Henry Rosovsky," says Zeckhauser, whoadvised Spence on his Ph.D thesis and recruitedthe young scholar to teach at the Kennedy Schoolin the 1970s.

Spence himself admits that when he took overthe second-floor corner office in University Hallfive years ago, "It was a little frightening. Theywere quite big shoes to fill."

Particularly for Spence, who brought anunassuming personality to the deanship. In fact,some colleagues say his outward demeanor sometimesborders on the diffident.

R. Norman Wood '54, who coached Spence as avarsity hockey player at Princeton, says even inhis undergraduate days Spence was not one toattract attention to himself.

"He's not going to pound you on the back andput a cigar in your mouth," says Wood. "He's notthat type. He's all there."

Not a Headline-Maker

Spence has also taken a much less visibleapproach to the deanship than Rosovsky did.Instead of headline-maker Spence says he prefersto see his role as that of consensus-builder.

"I think of it as being a sort of workingpartner, somebody who discusses it and somebodywho, when it is needed, puts the resources behindthe initiative," Spence says.

Ozment says this ability to "harmonize a group"is the most important quality for a dean at aschool as tradition-bound as Harvard. "The lastthing you want to do is stand out as anindividual. Mike Spence has that special gift,that skill," says Ozment, who worked closely withSpence as a former associate dean forundergraduate education.

Indeed, his associates say Spence has created anew group of faculty insiders to help him grapplewith what he saw as the most pressing need of hisfirst few years: How to gather all the informationneeded to reassess the Faculty's direction.

"The first five years the institution isinvesting in the dean, and the payoff is notimmediate because there are a lot of things tolearn," says Associate Dean for Academic PlanningPhyllis Keller, one of Spence's chief assistants."And he has set out to learn them all, trying toeducate himself about what the needs of theCollege are, really to the end of the century."

Spence now says that the first few years wereformative in his concept of the deanship.

"I didn't have a good sense of how big thefaculty was, of where the staff was. I didn't havea good sense of our finances, I didn't have a goodsense of what the needs were," says Spence. "Ididn't have an operating plan in financialterms...I'm quite determined that my successorwill have all of that available."

So, Spence says he has assembled a network ofsenior faculty members who have a permanentworking knowledge of FAS's administrative side.Over the course of his first five years, Spencehas strengthened the role of department chairs,added several academic deanships and brought moreprofessors into the planning process.

In addition, Spence has been reviewing thebread and butter of the College's dailybusiness--undergraduate education. Associate Deanfor Undergraduate Education David Pilbeam says hehas been conducting a department by departmentcurriculum review of advising, teaching fellowsand course offerings.

And, always the scholar, Spence also analyzedthe demographic and economic trends which willaffect faculty hiring in the coming decades. Hisconclusion--that the only way for Harvard toremain competitive was for FAS to tenure more ofits own junior faculty--led to what he hopes willhis most substantial contribution as dean.

If all this has the ring more of a BusinessSchool case study or an Economics Departmentjournal article than a blueprint for the deanshipof what is arguably the most watched faculty inthe nation, then it is not surprising givenSpence's background.

After graduating from Princeton, Spenceembarked on a stellar academic career earning aname for himself as a prolific scholar who wroteon such topics as industrial organization,imperfectly competitive markets and the theory of"signalling"--which shows how consumers often makepurchasing decisions based on superficialcharacteristics.

"He is unusual in that he has all the talentsof a highly mathematical theoretician but he issimultaneously very much interested in practicalmatters of economics and business administration,"says Schelling, now Littauer professor ofpolitical economy at the Kennedy School.

Spence held a joint appointment between theEconomics Department and the Business School,demonstrating, according to Schelling, thediversity of his scholarship.

Deanship as Case Study

"I think one of the reasons he wanted to becomedean was so that he could practice what he hadbeen studying," says Schelling.

Spence's only previous administrativeexperience had been as chair of the EconomicsDepartment from 1983 till he became dean, and hehad not made a name for himself in that capacity,professors say.

"He was a very effective department chair insomewhat the same style," says James S.Duesenberry, Maier professor of money and banking."He was very effective but he wasn't verynoticeable."

Spence, though might think that a fittingdescription of both his Ec Department tenure andhis deanship.

Despite his extensive study of Harvard's juniorprofessors, Spence has avoided rhetoric orsweeping statements about the need to improve thelot of untenured professors. Instead, he quietlydismantled the old Graustein system, a rigidformula which for decades had determined how manysenior-level appointments a department could makeand when.

Spence's plan is designed to increase thechances junior professors have at internalpromotion to tenure, but he says that Harvard hasenough institutional inertia that it will probablytake another five years before his reforms beginto have a noticeable effect.

Like many of Spence's initiatives his juniorfaculty plan has left many faculty membersquestioning whether anything is really changing.

"I don't think he has gone back on his word, Isimply think he hasn't been powerful enough," saysone department chair who asked to remainanonymous. "His heart is in the right place. He isjust not really making points."

In the next few years Spence's decision-makingpowers will come even more under scrutiny as hemust attempt to balance the immense timeconstraints which a major new fundraising campaignwill place on him with the never-ending daily workof the deanship.

To help ease the burden. Spence says he mayconsider adding associate deans to administerdifferent groups of disciplines while heincreasingly concentrates on the money-raisingaspects of his job.

"It is fair to say that I made a consciouschoice early on in a number of areas on theadministrative side to build up," says Spence,"and I guess `professionalize' is a fair word, forthe exclusive purpose of serving the needs of thefaculty as I saw them better."

But the burgeoning bureaucracy at UniversityHall is not without its critics within a facultycommitted to departmental autonomy.

"I would say the one complaint about hisadminstration is that the number of people in thedean's office seems to have multiplied more thanis really necessary," says Lee Professor ofEconomics Hendrik S. Houthakker. "I think he haspersonally overseen an undue expansion of thebureaucracy, and that becomes contrary to theHarvard tradition where there has not been alarge, central bureaucracy."

Going Places Slowly?

Spence has always been painted by hiscolleagues as a young man going places--quickly.His name has already been touted as a possiblecollege president at the University of Michiganand Princeton.

But the challenges of Harvard's deanship havealready taken their toll on that image of Spence.

Says Ozment, "You can't really be successful asan administrator if you're in a hurry. Peopledon't want you to do anything too fast...Theability to dawdle is an important one for a dean."

Matthew M. Hoffman contributed to thereporting of this article.Dean of the Faculty A. MICHAEL SPENCE