<p>"Sullivans Academic Strategy memo, obtained by The Washington Post, was written in comparatively candid terms and identified five areas of broad concern.</p>
<p>First, a siloed budgeting model that frustrates innovation and collaboration. Second, a projection that fully half of the U-Va. faculty will depart by 2020, mainly because of retirement. Third, a reputation gap: In many academic areas, Sullivan suggests, the university is reputed to be better than we actually are. Fourth, the fragile Top 10 stature of many university departments and professional schools, driven by a precariously small number of actual academic stars."</p>
<p>That is hilarious, given that Rawlings’ well-regarded successor was removed in a manner that was even more secretive and lacking a comprehensible rationale. (The public statements then make Dragas look like an over-sharer. The most complete attempt at an explanation was when the ousted president said, “It’s like flying to the other side of the world. We all agreed on where we wanted the university to go, but we disagreed on whether to start flying east or west to get there.”) Even today, seven years later, there’s never been anything like an explanation. Everyone moved on, and Cornell is still a great university, but that remains a clownish episode in its history.</p>
<p>I wonder how comments like these, made by a university official that basically just got fired, affect the perception of the University of Virginia by future students. It should at least give pause to those who are considering attending UVA.</p>
<p>In my field, UVa’s decline has been slow but inexorable. Over the years they have lost prominent young faculty members to places like BU, Caltech, Dartmouth, Duke, UC San Diego, etc., but they have had a hard time attracting comparable individuals. Low salaries are certainly part of the problem. It sounds like the president was concerned about the decline in many departments and wanted to address it.</p>
<p>UVa is pretty strong if you look at the stats of the out of state students they admit. In our high school, you have to be in the 1450 ish range to have a chance at admissions, and they tend to only accept 1 or 2 student out of those who are in a competitive range.</p>
<p>“In my field, UVa’s decline has been slow but inexorable.”</p>
<p>“UVa is pretty strong if you look at the stats of the out of state students they admit.”</p>
<p>If things continue as they are the decline in academics, as stated by the x president Sullivan, could also affect a decline in student quality. Universities, like any large businesses, can only live off past reputations for so long.</p>
<p>mommusic is absolutely right! Barrons title is misleading. The memo that is now being made public is from May. President Sullivan was speaking very frankly about some issues where she saw concerns and what she thought needed to be done strategically. The quote taken out of context indeed makes President Sullivan look controversial. That’s not the case at all.</p>
<p>I was trying to edit to add to the above, but got timed out.</p>
<p>If you read the actual report linked to in the Wash Post article, it has some interesting things. She doesn’t talk about raising external funds, (except for getting better at sourcing government grants). She does seem to be suggesting some type of austerity, with faculty spending less time with first and second year students. Unfortunately, to a trustee, this has a ring of “we need to allow the faculty to do what it prefers”. </p>
<p>She also adds:
</p>
<p>Although this is a hypothetical vision, this strikes me as naive. More like what you hear from your high school guidance counselors as opposed to a college president.</p>
<p>I called her the ex-Prez because that is her current status. In my intro is is clear that the memo that might have alienated the BOV was presented prior to the firing. As to what the memo says, if this does not say overrated, well it is hard to say what else would.</p>
<p>“In a number of critical areas we are reputed to be better than we actually are,” she wrote."</p>
<p>This paragraph from the report maybe gives a little hint of what could be a substantial dispute between Sullivan and the Board:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Basically, what the rest of the memo is saying is there needs to be a strategic plan for the Academic Division, and the existing efforts miss the point of the main challenges facing the university’s academic mission.</p>
<p>There is also a somewhat defensive passage later in the report. Talking about the need for administrative reforms in some areas, she anticipates and attempts to refute the argument that these are mere “blocking and tackling”, and therefore presumably not of great moment. I suspect that she had heard the “blocking and tackling” line before, and that it came from one of the addressees of the memo (i.e., the Rector and Vice Rector).</p>
<p>So it does look like she was insisting on addressing things that at least some members of the Board felt need not be addressed. And the timing of the memo (May 3) seems to match up with the timing of the secret discussions about firing her. Still, all of this seems like awfully thin grounds for instant termination with no transition plan in place.</p>
<p>ADDING: Technically, I think she is not the Ex-President, since her resignation does not take effect until August. But since she seems to have been relieved of all of her duties and reports, “ex” is clearly accurate in every non-technical sense.</p>
<p>The sentence alone is not a a flag. Many administrators make that comment in various forms. I’ve heard it about companies, businesses, school and it was not a problem. I guess we’ll never know what specific things got the board’s hackles up.</p>
<p>It seems that since BOV members at Virginia are appointed by the governor and not elected by the public, they don’t feel the need to answer to anyone.</p>
<p>While it is entirely possible that students have to be very competitive, it does not require to have 1450ish range to have a chance, unless you meant 1450/2400. Otherwise, 1450 is just below the 75th percentile at UVA. With 71% instate from a competitive state such as Virginia, it is doubtful that the OOS stats would be drastically different from the average.</p>
<p>SAT Critical Reading 610 720
SAT Math 630 740
SAT Writing 620 720</p>
<p>For all intents and purposes, UVA is a school that attracts and admits the type of student described by the loving dad in his Book CrazyU. </p>
<p>For what it is worth, the Sullivan statement about UVA being overrated has been “documented” more than once at the University of Texas in direct comparisons of departments. Could it be that she did in fact look at the data to support the “reputation” without an insider bias, and was able to form an opinion starting in 2002?</p>
<p>What is the agenda of The Hook, The Cavalier Daily, the Daily Progress, New York Times, or the Washington Post not to mention The COHE and other higher ed media which posted the stories quoted here?</p>
<p>It’s interesting to look at the composition of Virginia’s Board of Visitors, and to compare it to the boards of Princeton, Yale, Harvard, or Michigan, the sorts of institutions Virginia feels it belongs with. Virginia’s board seems to be almost entirely people working in financial businesses, with a few business attorneys, and one medical doctor. There may be one non-financial CEO in there. As far as I could tell, there are no academics, no people with political experience other than as contributors, and no people working in the nonprofit sector. The other boards all have their share of financial types and attorneys, too, but they have lots of academics, lots of public interest people, lots of non-financial business people, people with public sector experience, more doctors and other professionals, journalists and artists. Princeton has slots for alumni from recent graduating classes; its board has a TFA elementary school teacher and a graduate student on it. The Virginia board may be split between Democratic and Republican appointees, but it is practically monolithic in its finance-business orientation.</p>
<p>For the class of 2016 the average M&CR SAT was 1395. They don’t give a break down of IS vs OOS scores. The data you have is outdated. Dadx made no other claim than at his kids high school the competitive number was 1450. It is a well known and an accepted fact that admission standards are tougher for OOS students. They get more than twice the applications for 30% of the spots in the class.</p>
<p>Humm, someone is mixing the terms data and speculation. </p>
<p>First of all, my data are NOT outdated. It is actually the most recent DATA available. Here’s the source for the enrolled class at UVA in 2011-2012. Yes, that is the most recent class. Go to section C9:</p>
<p>What you call data for 2016 is nothing but an estimate of a class that has YET to be formed. At best your numbers are representing a combination of admitted student data and a good dosis of wishful thinking as there is ZERO chance to know the enrolled data for a few more months. </p>
<p>A 1395 CR/M average is a reflection of a crystal ball. The current average is 1350. And speaking about speculation, the probability that the same number of 1350 will be on the NEXT Common Data Set form is close to … 100 percent. The probability of being 1395? Close to zero!</p>
<p>You’ll find barrons agenda/opinion at the bottom of the linked post (from the other thread he started on this…). Plus, he just likes to mix it up.</p>