Sullivan’s dismissal was justified
By Peter Morici
Higher education is in crisis, and leaders like recently dismissed University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan bear a heavy burden of responsibility, simply put, for not effectively leading.
High-quality universities have become too expensive and increasingly inaccessible because their presidents have failed to recognize and address the challenges and opportunities posed by new technologies.
Morici is a business economist and professor in the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park.
June 22, 2012 - 6:09 AM
Mr. Morici, there are about a half-dozen schools in VA superior in performance and reputation to UMD. I haven’t heard a single person clamoring to emulate your successes. I assume you know nothing more than anyone else in Charlottesville about the specifics of this event; therefore, it would be wise to keep your opinions to yourself. Your state and academia deserve better representation.
First off, the article states “Morici is a business economist and professor in the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park.” He’s a suspect right out of the box!
He says, “America’s great universities have become too selective. Admission standards exceed those necessary to cull high school graduating classes for students best able to profit from what they offer.”
Too selective? Then why all the remedial courses offered at universities?
He goes on to say, “Ultimately, boards of trustees hold the reins — they hire and fire presidents — but those processes sit atop a platonic democracy where decisions both academic and business are made de facto, if not dejure, by committees.”
If I understand this correctly he’s basically against economic democracy. That is, he doesn’t want the people who make up the work force to have a say in the running of the place. You see, a university should be run as a factory he seems to think.
Poor Mr. Morici is blinded by his “education” in business. He hasn’t learned to consider other ways of doing things let alone the idea that something should and some things should not be subject to market forces.
His writing doesn’t say as much about the tenure of Ms. Sullivan as it does about what is taught in economics these days.
Mr. Morici mentioned that Sullivan was given fair warning about her performance. I would like to know more about that.
What aspects of her performance?
What constitutes “fair warning”…six months? A year? Were consequences identified?
What was her reaction? Did she ignore the warning, respond positively, negatively, constructively?
We need to know more from the BOV – and shame on them for their lack of openness – and it would good to hear Sullivan’s views as well. Only after we know all the facts can we determine how she was treated.
Text of an email from Helen Dragas. I will offer my own comment on a subsequent post.
June 22, 2012
In my statement to the Board on Monday, I conveyed my heartfelt apologies for the pain, anger and confusion that has swept the Grounds over the last 10 days, and said that the UVA family deserved better from your Board.
I also indicated that this University was entitled to a fuller explanation of the Board’s thinking for collectively taking the action that we did, and explained that, as Visitors, we have the very highest aspirations for the University of Virginia — for it to reach its fullest potential as a 21st century Academical Village, always rooted firmly in our enduring values of honor, integrity and trust — and that we want the University to be a leader in fulfilling its mission, not a follower.
Although I was reluctant to go into detail on our concerns, as I said, we owe you a more specific outline of the serious strategic challenges that alarmed us about the direction of the University. No matter how you feel about our actions, these challenges represent some very high hurdles that stand in the way of our University’s path to continued success in the coming decade, and they are going to remain front and center for the next Board and the next President over the coming years. Simply put, the UVA family must be clear-eyed about the shoals and dangers that exist below the surface, and the hard work and strategic planning it will take for this community to navigate them together.
While the UVA student experience remains premiere, though our faculty creates dynamic newknowledge every day, and despite the enduring magic of Mr. Jefferson’s University, the bottom line is the days of incremental decision-making in higher education are over, or should be. For some time, the Board of Visitors has been concerned about the following difficult challenges facing the University – most of which are not unique to UVA — and we concluded that their structural and long-term nature demanded a deliberate and strategic approach, not an incremental one.
1. State and federal funding challenges – Since 2000, state funding per student has declined from $15,300 to $8,300 per student in constant dollars. Governor McDonnell has done much to restore stability to state funding, but the outlook for economic growth in this area over the long term is bleak. Federal research funding and federal support of student loans are both in decline, with no expectation of a recovery, putting pressure on the University to replace these revenue sources with sustainable alternatives. The University has no long-range plan to do so.
2. The changing role of technology in adding value to the reach and quality of the educational experience of our students. Bold experimentation and advances by the distinguished likes of Stanford, Harvard, and MIT have brought online learning into the mainstream, virtually overnight. Stanford’s president, John Hennessy, predicted that “there’s a tsunami coming”, based on the response to online course offerings at Stanford (one course enrolled an astounding 160,000 students). Michigan, Penn, Princeton, Yale, and Carnegie Mellon are all taking aggressive steps in this direction. The University of Virginia has no centralized approach to dealing with this potentially transformational development.
3. A dynamic and rapidly changing health care environment. The UVA Medical Center, while excelling at cutting edge patient care and research, competes with competent and sophisticated private health systems providing high quality health care in a market undergoing substantive structural change. At the behest of the Board of Visitors, the Medical Center undertook a strategic planning study in 2011 that resulted in a well-articulated plan. Implementation will require strong leadership and very ambitious interim steps.
4. Heightened pressure for prioritization of scarce resources. Difficult choices will have to be made to balance competing demands for financial aid (the University’s generous, $95 million per year financial aid program, AccessUVA, has consumed resources at an unsustainable and alarming rate over the last five years, yet it is considered necessary to compete with many elite private institutions in attracting the best and the brightest students) and faculty and staff recruitment, and retention. A wave of faculty retirements is coming over the next seven years, and faculty retention is increasingly difficult due to stagnation in faculty salaries. The College of Arts and Sciences alone estimates it would take $130 million by 2016 to provide competitive compensation and start-up costs to fulfill its aspirations in the humanities and the sciences. Yet, the University has no articulated long-range plan that prioritizes these competing demands for resources.
5. Issues of faculty workload and the quality of the student experience. The ratio of students to faculty is deteriorating. This change has not occurred as a part of a thoughtful process and planned strategy to integrate technology into introductory courses while extending importantsmall group and individual interactions between faculty and students. Rather, it reflects the stresses of increased enrollment and insufficient resource prioritization.
6. Issues of declining relative faculty compensation. In a letter dated May 11, 2012, the College of Arts and Sciences faculty issued a letter to the Board almost identical to one it issued to the Presidential search committee in 2009. It demanded urgency in addressing the decline of UVA in faculty compensation from 26th to 36th since 2005 among Association of American University peers, and noted our relatively poor performance vis-à-vis key public competitors such as UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, and UNC.
7. Drifting engagement direction – The securing of philanthropic gifts and grants from a broader base of supporters is critically important as our devoted volunteer leadership attempts to finish the UVA capital campaign. Large gifts received over the last year include much appreciated, donor-driven funds for international squash courts and contemplative sciences (the confluence of Eastern thought, yoga, meditation, etc.). Central institutional priorities should be articulated and highlighted for engagement, but cannot be without development of a specific vision and plan.
8. Research funding and activity – Research funding has been in decline, and we have decreased in federal higher education research rankings in the past five years. In 2008, we were #70 in the nation overall (compared to Virginia Tech’s #43 ranking). These statistics are incongruous with other characteristics of the University that suggest we should be a research powerhouse. Mr. Jefferson’s vision for his University and his early encouragement of the sciences suggests the same. In areas of applied research, UVA often is not the first institution in Virginia that governmental units and businesses go to when they need a partner.
9. Increasing accountability for academic quality and productivity. These issues are foremost on the minds of students, family, and legislators. The Board well understands that curricular programming is the responsibility of the faculty, and the Board has never suggested any specific curricular adjustments. It is the Board’s responsibility, however, to ask for evidence that the current curriculum is meeting its stated goals and also to ask how well anyparticular curriculum or program actually prepares UVA graduates for the increasingly complex, international world in which they will live and compete. There is no long-term program in place for assessment, reporting, and improvement in many disciplines.
10. Increasing importance of a proactive, contemporary communications function. The recent events unfolding at UVA have proven a demonstrated need to fortify university communications functions with updated technologies. We need faster, multi-platform communications including cutting-edge use of mobile, digital and social media to complement a more traditional media-relations function and press outreach to tell the UVA story.
This is but a partial list. Put together, these challenges represent an extremely steep climb, even if the University were lean and on top of its game. Yet in the face of these challenges, the University still lacks an updated strategic plan.
Believe it or not, the last time the University developed a concrete, strategic plan was a decade ago – in2002. We deserve better – the rapid development of a plan that includes goals, costs, sources of funds, timelines and individual accountability. And, without micromanaging details such as calling for the elimination of specific programs or mandating distance learning, the Board did insist, and still insists, that the University leadership move in a timely, thoughtful, and organized fashion to address these and similar issues. Failing this, the University of Virginia will continue to drift in yesterday.
At the time of President Casteen’s retirement, the search process should have included a thoughtful assessment by uninvested third parties who, in collaboration with the institution’s stakeholders, would have examined everything from academic programs, faculty assignments, student services, research activity, technology, tuition and admissions strategies, administrative expenditures,public service and outreach, private support, the Medical School and hospital, and, yes, governance, both at the administrative and board levels.
With this said, I agree with critics who say that we should have handled the situation better. In my view, we did the right thing, the wrong way. For this, I sincerely apologize, and this and future boards will learn from our mistakes. However, as much as our action to effect a change in leadership has created a wave of controversy, it was motivated by an understanding of the very stiff headwinds we face as a University, and our resolve to push through them to forge a future that is even brighter than imaginable today.
On behalf of the Board of Visitors,
Helen E. Dragas, Rector
Re Dragas’ comments (post 4)…it goes a way to answer some questions. Agree or disagree, the decision to force a resignation does NOT appear to be a spurious one, and the Rector’s message points to some real, legitimate concerns at the University. If Sullivan was indeed negligent in dealing with these issues, or nonresponsive, than she SHOULD have been fired.
There is still a lot unsaid, but I would guess those are intentional omissions, out of respect for Sullivan and the process. In any event, unless Sullivan herself says something, it’s likely all we are going to hear from official sources.
As a bigger issue, though, I believe this is an early pin-prick in the Education that I, Brian Lindstrom and others have been warning about.
5 …a pin-prick in the Education-bubble I meant to say…
The million dollar question is, did they clearly articulate concerns and expectations to Sullivan? Group think often takes over on Boards, and frequently no one specifically, bluntly communicates expectations. They do so in a manner which expresses concern, but doesn’t explicitly state, “we want to see this” or “we expect you to do this ….” If that was done, then there is cause for removal. If it was not, then that is a failure for which Dragas is accountable, not Sullivan. Either way, this was orchestrated and communicated poorly and unprofessionally, a failure of the Board led by Dragas.
Sorry if I keep harping on this, but everything that 89Hoo posted from Dragas point to the economy’s pressure. And it is directly tied to the staggering national debt in which there is absolutely no hope to combat.
It is truly a shame when universities, colleges, community colleges, public, and private schools are struggling to get money to provide high quality education.
7 – no question it was handled abysmally, and Dragas owned up to that. And as I said before (and I agree with you)…how were these concerns communicated with Sullivan? Did she know about them when she took over, or did the BOV paint a rosier picture than was true when they hired her (which wouldn’t surprise me either)? I’d like to hear what Sullivan has to say.
It may be, if they re-hire her (though she may not even want the job), that this whole incident will serve as the wake-up call that apparently went unheeded, and they can forward with their eyes open and put together a good plan.
8 – yup, like I said, it’s a pin prick in the education bubble, which will burst like the housing bubble, and like the dot-com bubble…
Nothing in Dragas’ letter indicates that Sullivan was unaware of these challenges and unwilling to face them. In fact, statements by Sullivan, if anything, shows that she considers UVa an instituation which is need of getting over complacency. Dragas’ actions have made making necessary changes more difficult, if anything. If Sullivan is not restored to the Presidency, the damage of this episode to UVa will take a very long time to heal.
Actually, Dragas says several times that there is no plan to deal with these issues, implicitly stating that Sullivan knew of the issues but had done little or nothing (or little or nothing well) to address them. That’s her job.
But again, unless and until we know Sullivan’s perspective, we cannot know if she was treated poorly or fairly; to state otherwise is to make some pretty broad assumptions.
Just based on what Dragas wrote, the BOV did the only thing it could, even if executed abysmally.
Sullivan was explicitly directed by the BOV not to develop a new strategic plan upon her hiring. The faculty and staff were said to be fatigued and frustrated by prior partially implemented plans. If Dragas and the rest of the BOV had reversed that decision, then Sullivan should’ve been offered the opportunity to develop one taking into account the perspectives of all relevant stakeholders. If it then became clear after a full and open process that Sullivan’s plan didn’t address the BOV’s concerns or represented a fundamentally different strategy, then her departure would’ve been appropriate.
A lot of “if” in your post Kevin – I’m not saying you are wrong, and it wouldn’t surprise me if your information was better and/or more recent (I make no claim to any information that no one else has)…but I had not heard that Sullivan was told to not develop a new strategic plan; or that if that decision were reversed and Sullivan not given time and resources to respond. I’d like to hear Sullivan on that.
Or possibly, she DID respond, but the BOV didn’t like the response.
I would like to know those details, particularly the third point: if Sullivan did respond to a need for a strategic plan. What was her plan? What were the BOV’s objections to the plan? What discussions did they engage to resolve differences? There is just too much we do not know.
It may be she proposed some changes that were so radical and drastic that the BOV did not want to implement them. If the threats Dragas mentions are real – and I don’t doubt they are, given the economy, the myopia inherent in academia, and the looming education bubble about to burst – drastic measures (a broad term, to be sure) may be the only ones that would work. But they may not be what the BOV wanted to hear, either in terms of scale, direction, scope or all of the above.
We just don’t know enough to be super-critical of a body of officials doing the job it is paid to do. Until we know more, we have to assume they were doing their jobs.
My statements are based purely on what has been said in the last few days, and a concern that we not engage a lynch-mob mentality with regards the BOV until all the facts are known. From what I have read (and Sullivan hasn’t spoken in anything other than generalities yet) they did the only thing they could do.
And again, I agree the process was handled terribly. But that doesn’t meant they were wrong.
It’s been widely reported that Sullivan was instructed not to develop a strategic plan. I’ve included one link, but many more are available.
“Process” is not a nicety. An institution like UVa cannot be managed in the same manner as a privately run business. Major decisons need to be vetted in a trasnparent manner which lets all major stakeholders have input. That doesn’t mean that difficult decisions which adversely affect some of those stakeholders should be avoided, but the process must be seen as legitimate.
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2012/jun/18/statements-sullivan-and-dragas-both-seek-pro-uva-h-ar-1997032/