That’s not “mission creep”, that’s a badly planned initiative. Mission creep is when a college decides that their faculty, who were hired to teach, and have 5/5 teaching loads, should also do research, because the administration wants some extra research money, and the prestige that having research brings. The college’s original mission was teaching, but now they add research into it, even though A, they are not set up for research, B, they are not providing faculty with the required resources, and C, the faculty are already teaching full time, and research would be required without any reduction in their full time teaching load.
A college whose mission is primarily research has no business accepting a huge donation for the purpose of building a research institute, unless they have a detailed plan that includes long-term sustainability of the effort. This should be explained to the donor, and the plan should be showed o the donor. this is usually the case, since I do not think that there are very many donors who walk into a college and say “here are $45 million, build me a Center, and make it look good”. Most want an institute that won’t collapse in a decade or so.
Mission creep is not the result of some rich person wanting to donate money, it’s the result of somebody in the higher administration who wants to “make their mark”, and demonstrate an increase in finances within their tenure as provost, or whatever, position. However, an ill thought pout use of a donation is also the sort of thing that such a person “with a vision” will do. Mostly this vision has to do with increased finances or increasing in the rankings. The problem with all of them is that they are almost always short-term.
Deans, provosts, presidents, etc, generally stay at colleges for a fairly short period, compared to faculty. So they look to accomplish something that can go on their resume as they move off the the next position, either at a larger school, or a promotion at a school of the same size. The rarely think about the effects if their action 10 or 15 years down the road. At the same time, they rarely care about faculty opinion, they rarely check with the extensive institutional memory which exists among the faculty, and they rarely have the insight as to the actual cost of things like adding research requirements to faculty with a 5/5 teaching load. They rarely have ever stayed at a college long enough to see how their initiatives play out in the longer term.
A multi-million dollar donation that will require a cost of twice that over the next 15 years is exactly the sort of thing that can be avoided with shared governance, since the faculty will both have knowledge of the long term success of previous such donations, and actually care that the finances of the college will crash five years after the Provost has moved to another college. It’s also the exact sort of thing that many administrators don’t want to hear or know. They get to add the “brought in a $45,000,000 donation which allowed the establishment of an Asian Studies institute” to their CV, and off they go. They will likely never be associated with whatever mess was caused by their “initiative” ten years after they leave.
So yes, turning down donations that will collapse the college 20 years down the road is exactly what a provost, president, or head of development should do.
@MAandMEmom You are absolutely correct, it happens across all classifications. Richer colleges, or colleges with better planning capabilities can, generally, weather it and even grow. But at the end, it’s the faculty who pay the price, while the people who landed the college in the mess are off being promoted to another college, or have retired, and are busy enjoying their nice retirement packages.