<p>The program overall is now costing UVa $100 Million a year–most out of funds that are badly needed in other areas. It has hamstrung improvements they had planned in academics, faculty pay, improving research, and maintenance of facilites which has again fallen way behind plan. </p>
<p>Why–adverse selection.</p>
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<p>Oh, please. Teresa Sullivan came to the position of President of UVA after serving as Provost at Michigan and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Texas. She was not naive about the role of a public university president as fundraiser-in-chief.</p>
<p>The public comments made by the rector of the board said nothing about fundraising. The board wanted her to move faster on budget-cutting and on competing for online enrollment. Perhaps those are necessary changes but they are also areas where haste could prove disastrous to maintaining the quality of the brand. Perhaps she was overly cautious, I don’t know, but she was on the job for only two years, just barely long enough to begin to get a handle on how an institution of that size really functions, so I’d be inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it’s some members of the board who have naive expectations that a university president can simply wave her wand and do an overnight restructuring, like the CEO of a for-profit company. Universities tend not to work that way.</p>
<p>I do know that Teresa Sullivan and her husband Doug Laycock are highly respected scholars, and Sullivan is a highly respected administrator around the academic world. Michigan would have them back in a heartbeat, but apparently a number of other big-name schools are interested as well. </p>
<p>I fear more for UVA’s future than for Sullivan’s. A lot of top potential replacements are going to be very gun-shy after Sullivan’s abrupt, and frankly rather bizarre, dismissal. So there’s a chance they’ll end up with some third-rate lackey who will step up to do their hatchet work, or bring in some cocky CEO from the private sector who will try to run the university more like a business. Then all hell could break loose.</p>
<p>The new president at Iowa State knows that he will have to travel and fund raise. This is the norm. </p>
<p>[New</a> ISU president says fundraising is top issue | Ames Tribune](<a href=“http://www.amestrib.com/sections/news/ames-and-story-county/new-isu-president-says-fundraising-top-issue.html]New”>http://www.amestrib.com/sections/news/ames-and-story-county/new-isu-president-says-fundraising-top-issue.html)</p>
<p>Let’s take a look at the lay of the land two years ago just as she was taking office:</p>
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<p>[Teresa</a> Sullivan is the first female president to lead University of Virginia](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/18/AR2010011803847.html]Teresa”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/18/AR2010011803847.html)</p>
<p>Let’s also remember that UVA had just completed a $3 billion capital campaign and was the proud possessor of a per student endowment ratio of $255,000 as of August of 2011 (that’s more than some NESCAC colleges.) If UVA were teetering on the edge of financial ruin two years ago, they were doing a fine job of hiding it, and I wouldn’t blame a brand new president for being taken aback for being sold a bill of goods.</p>
<p>UVa and its Board of Visitors looks just awful in this. </p>
<p>I hesitate to make this point and possibly politicize this thread, but every time Romney talks about how his business experience means he knows what needs to be done, I think of exactly how businesspeople get things done – like this, palace politics, closed-door coups, and executive committee putschs – and how inappropriate that is for public institutions. Business leaders generally have one criterion of success – shareholder value – and no significant oversight other than a handful of board members and the possibility of getting so undervalued as to attract a hostile takeover bid. Public officials – and that includes university presidents – answer to myriad constituencies, and don’t have the luxury or the excuse of getting daily report cards that matter from stock traders.</p>
<p>This is almost exactly what happened at Cornell seven years ago, by the way. No real explanation – ever, even since – most of the board found out about it after the fact, b.s.-laden announcements. Cornell has survived just fine. One trusts the same will be true of UVa, but they really ought to do a better job of picking rectors.</p>
<p>The Rector’s term on the board expires in a couple weeks. As of a few days ago, the Board had not been informed by the Governor about whether she would be re-appointed. It will be interesting if he does re-appoint her. If not, it might be viewed as trying to distance himself from the controversy. If he does reappoint her, it might look like she was told to fire Sullivan in order to get re-appointed.</p>
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I understand guilt by association here, however the UVa community didn’t have bupkiss to do with this, have all come out strongly against the manner in which the BOV has handled this. The BOV is to answer for this, alone.</p>
<p>Of course I understand “the UVa community” didn’t do this. Heck, it wasn’t even the whole Board of Visitors, apparently. But, at the end of the day, it’s awfully hard to separate the institution from the people who have the power to control it and who are exercising that power, even if a number of them are doing nothing more than going along with what some others are doing. If UVa is being run by a bunch of yahoos, then UVa looks bad, even though the vast majority of wahoos are anything but yahoos.</p>
<p>This does have the smell of a palace coup. Possibly just a coincidence, but this whole thing was apparently engineered by the rector and vice-rector, both MBA graduates of Darden, UVA’s business school, and the head of Darden’s foundation, former Goldman Sachs partner Peter Kiernan, says he was informed of “this project” to oust Sullivan “several weeks ago” when he was approached by two prominent alums seeking to enlist his support.</p>
<p>Without a meeting of the Board of Visitors, the rector, Helen Dragas, and the vice-rector, Mark Kington, met with Sullivan and asked her to resign, telling her they had enough votes on the board to oust her. It might have been a bluff; if so, it worked, because Sullivan agreed to step down “by mutual agreement” rather than face a public ouster by the entire board. Maybe she should have fought it and forced a showdown; at least then the issues, whatever they were, would have been openly discussed and debated. </p>
<p>The question I have is, did the business school have some kind of beef with Sullivan? Or was this just a case of successful business people being impatient with the more deliberate and deliberative management style of a successful university administrator who they wanted to act more like a decisive, cutthroat, cost-slashing CEO and risk-raking entrpreneur? Or again, were they put up to it by someone in a higher place, who could only have been the governor?</p>
<p>[U.Va</a>. president ousted without warning or board vote | Richmond Times-Dispatch](<a href=“http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/news/2012/jun/12/11/tdmain01-uva-president-learned-of-ouster-friday-af-ar-1980925/]U.Va”>http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/news/2012/jun/12/11/tdmain01-uva-president-learned-of-ouster-friday-af-ar-1980925/)</p>
<p>And what do we make of the chair of the Darden Foundation being told in advance about the coup and not passing word along to the President–presumably his boss–that she needed to watch her back?</p>
<p>Both B schools at UVa are already essentially self-funded and private so they control pretty much everything in their spheres. It is very mysterious as I never saw a bad work about her. Even the sainted Casteen had some expensive misfires. The endowment took a huge fall in the collapse as it was very aggressively invested. The attempt to hire faculty “stars” was an abject failure. Overall the goal to rampup research was a failure.</p>
<p>It’s getting a bit confusing if you’re not following both threads, well even if you are it’s confusing. For now, news outlets are giving conflicting reports. There have been many that have said the board was unanimous. I’ll also try to find the quote again, but I have it on the other thread that states that these talks had been going on for months, so long before Peter Kiernan was brought in. That leads me to believe this wasn’t just three people acting alone.</p>
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<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/outrage-mounts-over-u-va-presidents-ouster/2012/06/11/gJQAU4F0VV_story.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/outrage-mounts-over-u-va-presidents-ouster/2012/06/11/gJQAU4F0VV_story.html</a></p>
<p>UVa student board member was informed before faculty. Backs firing.
[Student</a> Board of Visitors representative supports Sullivan’s resignation | The Cavalier Daily](<a href=“http://www.cavalierdaily.com/2012/06/12/student-board-of-visitors-representative-supports-sullivans-resignation/#.T9exeU0Qk_o.twitter]Student”>http://www.cavalierdaily.com/2012/06/12/student-board-of-visitors-representative-supports-sullivans-resignation/#.T9exeU0Qk_o.twitter)</p>
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<p>Then don’t, particularly without any facts. :D</p>
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<p>well, my personal opinion is that UVA should join with W&M and VT and significantly (more than they do already) increase instate tuition, and come out with public statements that say because the state of Virginia cuts its support, the universities can no longer afford to give instate students the discounts that they previously enjoyed. Make it plain and simple “the state is cutting our funds, so we have to raise tuition… if the taxpayers want lower tuition at their premier state universities, they should encourage their elected representatives to support the schools.”</p>