<p>Zimmer's total take home pay in 2011 was $3.4 million - the highest of any university president that year. Much of this was deferred pay, but his general salary should place him in the top 10 every year.</p>
<p>A UChicago board member, Andrew Alper, stated that retaining Zimmer was vital because this is a critical time in the university's history. I certainly think that's right - the university is experiencing a significant re-formation in its values and directives. The decisions over the next few years will really shape whether the university can continue to be a major player, or may fall behind (especially in STEM related fields).</p>
<p>The UChicago presidency has got to be one of the most difficult jobs out there. First you’ve got to deal with the City of Chicago and all the attendent issues and well known political challenges. Then you’ve got two National labs to manage. Then you have a major medical center to deal with in an area that is sensitive about what UChicago should be doing for it. Then, lest we forget, you manage a major educational / intellectual center, with 15,000 graduates and undergraduates. I could keep going of course.</p>
<p>I read somewhere recently that Presidents of major universities, particular urban universities, had better be very skillful politicians to succeed these days. The article noted, for example, that the skills Donna Shalala developed in Government service have served her well in her presidency at Miami. I can see that for sure. So many demanding constituencies to deal with all at the same time.</p>
<p>Having someone who can deliver is vital, and he has earned every dime. Not just for prestige for prestige’s sake (admittedly, much has been gained here to the benefit for alumni and future students alike), but because the rise in stature of the university in recent years is a reflection of its ability to impact the world. At the end of the day, all of the knowledge and knowledge workers it produces are held to the test of the public interest broadly conceived, and Zimmer has worked hard to make sure that institutional priorities are aligned properly to this end.</p>
<p>In contrast, the university walked in the wilderness under Don Michael Randel’s go with the flow philosophy (who proceeded Zimmer), and even his predecessor (Hugo Sonnenschein) spent time fighting battles with the faculty over changes to the core curriculum that were a foregone conclusion in light of the evolving nature of college education. Generally, there was little meaningful strategic planning at the university level or in terms of the college, with the notion that the institution was fine as it was and any change was surely a capitulation to outside interests or ephemeral trends. Why, computer science is a vocational skill that merely augments serious subjects like physics or math – no need for growth there… Employers will always value well-rounded liberal arts graduates, majors are mostly irrelevant… Professional schools are surely less critical than a menu of difficult to fund PhD programs… Flash forward and there is a president who forcibly changed the college admissions culture to better identify and match talent, pushed three professional schools into “thought leadership” status, all while pulling off major capital improvements that were in many cases vitally necessary. </p>
<p>The truth is he has taken a respectable but definitively second institution that was indistinguishable either in terms of scholarly or social impact from thirty others globally and has pushed it back into mega-elite university bracket where it sat well into the 60’s (Columbia also pulled off this move; in many ways the schools are indistinguishable). I strongly believe that as Chicago comes to terms with key structural trends in higher education: the growing role of STEM, knowledge transfer through formal commercialization, decreased federal spending for R&D, etc. Zimmer will do a decent job in steering the ship. He is a fine scholar by training, but he is rightly a CEO by action.</p>
<p>Hold on there, uchicagoalum. I agree with you that Zimmer has done a great job, but you are attributing stuff to him that he had nothing to do with. I am not certain what your third professional school with thought leadership is, but rest assured that the law school’s and business school’s thought leader status predates both Zimmer and Randel and has been little affected by either (although Zimmer deserves credit for pushing the Friedman Becker Institute). The University of Chicago never lost its first-rank status in key PhD programs. (And, by the way, really being in the top 30 globally qualifies as “first rank,” although I doubt any reasonable assessment in the past 20 years would have placed Chicago anywhere near as low as #30.)</p>
<p>Where the university has made enormous gains on Zimmer’s watch has been in the reputation of the undergraduate college. But that has largely been a continuation (and, yes, acceleration) of changes that have been underway as far back as the Hannah Gray era, and for which Dean John Boyer, now serving under his third president, deserves an awful lot of credit, too. As I understand it, Zimmer and Boyer were faculty allies on these issues before Zimmer left for Brown, and Zimmer has certainly given Boyer full support, so it’s not like Zimmer shouldn’t get praise here. (And I think it was Zimmer who made the controversial, but brilliant, decision to sack Ted O’Neill and to hire Jim Nondorf.)</p>
<p>Zimmer has done a super job raising money, building buildings, and calling positive attention to the university. He has challenged Chicago to achieve the highest standard of excellence in every field, he has supported the agents of excellence in the various components of the university, and he has begun the slow march to engineering. I doubt too many people begrudge him his moment at the top when he collects a bunch of deferred comp. (Although – I have to say it – what genius decided to defer a bunch of comp to a year when tax rates increased substantially?)</p>
<p>^ If you referred to the public image or general popularity, I’d concur the image has increased substantially over the recent years. However, in the eyes of the elite academia space, the image of The University of Chicago has always been stellar since the founding days.</p>
<p>Speaking of Ted O’Neill, he won the 2013 National Association for College Admissions Counseling Excellence in Education Award. There is an interesting video of him speaking about admissions and the the role of those involved with it.</p>