- Abuse of power by Heads of Departments and Deans can weaken academic integrity, fairness, and institutional performance.
- Academic goonism promotes favoritism, intimidation, and corruption, harming staff, students, and the quality of higher education.
- Greater transparency, accountability, and ethical leadership are essential to strengthen governance and protect academic excellence.
When discussions about governance failures in universities/colleges arise, public attention is often directed toward Vice-Chancellors (VCs)/Principals, Deputy Vice-Chancellors (DVCs)/ Deputy Principals, and Councils/Boards of Management. These are the visible faces of institutional leadership and, understandably, the focus of scrutiny whenever allegations of mismanagement emerge. However, beneath this upper tier of top management, lies a less examined but highly influential layer of administration: institutional middle management that include Heads of Departments (HoDs) and Deans.
Unlike scandals involving top management, abuses at the middle management level rarely make headlines. Their cumulative impact on academic quality, staff morale, and institutional integrity can be profound, in what I call -Academic goonism.
Academic goonism refers to the use of intimidation, manipulation, patronage, or coercive tactics within academic spaces to protect personal interests, suppress dissent, or influence institutional decisions. The term borrows from “goonism,” meaning the deployment of loyal enforcers or aggressive tactics, but applies it to universities and colleges. In simple terms: academic goonism is when the university/college stops being a place of ideas and becomes a battlefield of power.
In many African universities/colleges—including in Kenya—academic goonism is often linked to broader societal politics, ethnic alignments, and resource competition. This can affect recruitment, promotions, and leadership contests, mirroring national political cultures.
Power and Influence of HoDs and Deans
The HoDs and Deans occupy strategic positions within universities/colleges. They serve as the bridge between institutional leadership and academic staff, translating policy into practice and overseeing the daily academic and administrative life of faculties/schools and departments. While they play an indispensable role in ensuring smooth operations, their offices can also become centres of hidden power, where decisions affecting careers, research, teaching, and student welfare are made with minimal oversight.
The authority vested in HoDs and Deans extends far beyond routine administration. They influence staff workload allocation, postgraduate supervision, promotion recommendations, budget utilization, procurement requests, committee appointments, and performance evaluations.
For many academic staff members, the HoD or Dean is the most powerful person they interact with on a daily basis. Their recommendations can determine whether a lecturer receives a promotion, attends a conference, secures research support, or accesses training opportunities. Their decisions shape departmental culture and establish what behaviours are rewarded or discouraged. When exercised ethically, such authority promotes excellence. When abused, it creates fertile ground for favoritism, victimization, and corruption.
While many HoDs and Deans discharge their duties with diligence and professionalism, there remains an equal number who fall short of expectations. This underperformance may stem from limited managerial competence, entrenched dysfunctional or corrupt mindset, or, in some cases, a disengaged and indifferent attitude toward their responsibilities.
At the Department
A department is the most basic academic unit in a university/college and where many academics experience governance either positively or negatively. In some departments, teaching workloads are allocated fairly and transparently. In others, preferred lecturers receive lighter workloads and highly marketable courses (with extra pay), while perceived critics are burdened with excessive teaching responsibilities and less desirable assignments.
Examination processes, which should be sacrosanct, can also become vulnerable. Allegations occasionally emerge of HoDs influencing moderation decisions, delaying the release of results because they are not ready themselves, or exerting pressure on examination processes to favour particular students or staff interests or the opposite.
Postgraduate supervision presents a major area of concern. In some universities, HoDs/Deans insist on being listed as supervisors in the final copies master’s and doctoral degree theses, despite making no meaningful academic contribution. This anomaly happens in the period when candidates hand in their intent to submit theses. They simply take advantage of their privileged positions that enable them to know which thesis is being processed for examination. This mess is later unsuspiciously authenticated by senate and council in form of graduation list approval minutes and ends up in the much-coveted graduation booklet. It happens in total disregard to earlier legitimate approvals by Departmental Graduate Committees (DGCs), School Graduate Committees (SGCs) and the Senate.
Cases have therefore emerged where master’s candidates have three or four supervisors instead of the normal two, while PhD candidates have four or five supervisors instead of the usual three in their theses. All this is not because of academic necessity but because the administrators wish to appear on supervision records. This makes them to benefit unfairly from associated recognition and promotion.
If the legitimate supervisors object, the repercussions are that the theses submission documents are sat on, delayed or blocked altogether. Some of these purported punishments are malicious goofs. It is for instance unfathomable that a HoD can constitute a departmental committee in which a graduate assistant, tutorial fellow or a part-timer is the chair and a full professor is the secretary. If this is not abuse of power or academic goonism, then I should be educated on what it is.
Research processes may also suffer. Approval of research proposals, ethics applications, or student’s thesis defenses can be delayed for reasons unrelated to academic quality. Some lecturers complain of documents being withheld at departmental level, effectively blocking career progression because of personal disagreements or institutional politics.
Administrative malpractice can be equally damaging. Departmental appointments may be influenced by personal friendships, family relationships, ethnic affiliations, or political considerations. In some cases, qualified candidates are overlooked while relatives, friends, or members of particular communities associated with the administrator receive preferential treatment. For instance, why would a HoD recruit an MSc holder as a part-time lecturer while sidelining a PhD holder in the very same specialty, if not for questionable motives?
Even more troubling is the recurring pattern in some departments where a majority of newly appointed staff appear to share the same ethnic background as the sitting HoD. Is this merely coincidence, or does it point to a deeper culture of favoritism, tribalism and corruption? Students are very sensitive to ethnic compositions of lecturers in departments. Academic programmes in departments can easily go under in terms of students’ numbers if perceived to be ethnically non-cosmopolitan or biased.
Equally troubling is the tendency of some HoDs to bypass departmental committees altogether. Decisions that should emerge through collective consultation are made unilaterally, reducing departments into personal fiefdoms rather than collegial academic units.
At Faculties/ Schools
At the faculty/school level, Deans wield even broader influence. Their decisions affect multiple departments and larger budgets.
One recurring concern involves the manipulation of performance indicators. Faculty/Schools increasingly compete on graduation rates, research output, and programme growth. This pressure can create incentives to present an overly favourable picture of performance. Instances have been reported where student progression decisions are influenced to improve completion statistics or where degree classifications are aggressively defended to portray one school as outperforming others. While outright fabrication would constitute serious misconduct, the temptation to manage academic outcomes for institutional image remains a governance risk.
Promotion processes also fall significantly within the influence of Deans. A supportive Dean can facilitate the growth of talented academics. An unsupportive one can delay recommendations, suppress achievements, or selectively interpret promotion criteria.
Similarly, faculty leaders are influential in the appointment of external examiners, allocation of resources among departments, and approval of postgraduate supervisors. These decisions should be guided by merit and institutional needs, yet personal relationships and loyalty networks sometimes interfere.
The ethnic card is not confined to departments alone; it is equally evident in faculties/ schools under the stewardship of deans. In Kenya, this trend is particularly pronounced in universities where deans are elected rather than competitively appointed through interviews. In such settings, some deans are accused of influencing recruitment in favour of individuals they perceive as potential voting blocs—often along ethnic lines. What begins as an administrative process thus risks being reduced to a strategy for consolidating power, at the expense of merit, diversity, and institutional integrity.
Resource-Related Malpractices
Financial misconduct at middle management level often receives less attention than large-scale institutional scandals, though its impact can be substantial. School budgets are vulnerable to misuse when transparency is lacking. Unproportional budget allocations to departments, favoritism in committee appointments, manipulation of staff appraisal systems, and irregular recruitment practices can undermine trust across entire faculties.
Research funding, award of scholarships and collaborations present another area of concern. Opportunities intended to support scholarly excellence, especially international scholarships and collaborations with travel abroad benefits, may be selectively distributed among favoured individuals, leaving equally deserving academics excluded. Such practices discourage merit and weaken institutional competitiveness.
Income-generating programmes can also become vulnerable. Revenue generated through parallel programmes, short courses, consultancies, or professional training initiatives may not always be managed transparently. When accountability mechanisms are weak, opportunities for misuse increase.
Impact on Academic Freedom
The consequences of these practices extend far beyond individual grievances. For academic staff, persistent favoritism and abuse of authority erode morale. Talented scholars become discouraged when merit is repeatedly overshadowed by departmental or school politics. Innovation suffers because academics become more focused on navigating administrative power structures than pursuing intellectual excellence. Over time, institutions risk losing their best minds. Skilled researchers and lecturers often seek opportunities elsewhere, contributing to institutional brain drain and turnover.
Students are equally affected. Delayed thesis approvals, poor supervision, compromised examination processes, and administrative inefficiencies diminish the quality of their educational experience. Students may never fully understand why delays occur, but they bear the consequences nonetheless.
At an institutional level, meritocracy weakens, research productivity declines, and reputational damage accumulates. Universities/colleges cannot achieve global competitiveness when internal governance systems reward loyalty over competence. The end result is the VC/Principal being blamed for messes by HoDs and Deans.
Why Practices Remain Hidden
One reason these problems persist is that they are difficult to detect. Financial corruption leaves audit trails. Abuse of administrative power and academic goonism often leave none. Many times, the perpetrators serve as the CEO’s blue-eyed boys and girls who are never doubted, yet it is their actions that pull down the top management’s legacy.
Many staff members face retaliation when they speak out. A professor who challenges a HoD faces unfavourable workload allocations of large undergraduate courses while non-PhD lecturers are allocated postgraduate classes. An academic who questions a dean may encounter obstacles in promotion or access to institutional opportunities.
Internal grievance mechanisms are frequently weak or perceived as ineffective. Also, universities/colleges often possess cultures that prioritize institutional harmony over uncomfortable accountability conversations. As a result, many cases remain unreported, unresolved, and largely invisible to outsiders.
Strengthening Accountability
Addressing these challenges requires deliberate reforms. Workload allocation systems, part-time or full-time, should be transparent and accessible to all staff in departmental board meetings. Thus, it is highly irregular to invite part-timers to a departmental board meeting to compete in workload distributions alongside full-time staff. The best practice is to engage full-time staff separately first before onboarding part-timers.
Equally, recruitment, promotion, and postgraduate supervision assignments should be guided by clearly documented criteria rather than personal discretion of HoDs or Deans.
Universities/colleges should conduct regular governance and ethics audits focusing not only on finances but also on administrative practices. Independent grievance and appeals mechanisms can provide staff with safe avenues for reporting concerns.
Whistleblower protection policies must be strengthened, while anonymous reporting channels should become standard governance tools. Equally important is leadership accountability. HoDs and Deans should undergo periodic performance evaluations that assess not only administrative efficiency but also fairness, integrity, and adherence to governance principles.
Leadership training in ethics, social capital management and accountability should be mandatory, and sanctions for abuse of office should be consistently enforced.
If universities/colleges are to fulfil their mission as centres of knowledge, merit, and ethical leadership, governance reform must extend beyond the executive offices and into the departments and faculties/schools/centres where the real work of higher education takes place. Transparency, accountability, and integrity must become the defining principles of institution middle management, for it is there that the future of academic excellence is ultimately determined.
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The Author is a Professor of Chemistry; a former Vice-Chancellor; a Higher Education Expert; a Quality Assurance Consultant and Trainer. Contact: okothmdo@uoeld.ac.ke
