Role of Academic Senate

There are numerous examples where universities have an academic senate in
theory. But in practice the decisions made by the senate have been bypassed by
senior management (including vice-chancellors, directors, presidents).
The usual reason is that the senate only give advice and that
its decision is not binding. The university council typically sides with the
senior management. The vice-chancellor, president, director of the university
is viewed as the CEO and hence has the right to override academic senate.
Unless the academic senate has statutory powers, they have are viewed as
a quarrelsome bunch who do not understand the running of the university.

The academic senate is responsible for maintaining academic standards
and processes. While universities are not the most agile of organisations, this
is not necessarily bad. Universities should not follow (or even set)
fashionable that change every few years.
Decisions should be taken after due deliberation where the benefits of change
are demonstrated.

It is therefore important that senior management should be forced to
justify why they are over riding academic senate. That is, the decision
taken by the academic senate has to be shown be incorrect for it to be
overturned and not just because senior management disagree with it.

The proposed changes to the entrance exam (JEE) to the IITs is an example where the above situation has arisen. I hope that the directors do not override the recommendation of their academic senates without appropriate debate.