Reporter’s Roundtable: A Quarter Century of Higher Ed Controversies

Jeff, over the years, I know one of our personal favorites at Future youe has been the Reporters Roundtable. And that's where we get to bring in a few higher ed reporters to talk through the news of the day and what it means. And we get to go really behind the story, if you will.

And today we're going to do a variation on that format because recently the Chronicle of Higher Education did their own take on the March Madness bracket with a lineup of the top scandals and controversies in higher ed over the past quarter century. A Chronicle reporter is joining us to talk about what this version of March Madness says about college life and the future of higher education. That's ahead on this episode of Future you.

This episode of Future youe is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, working to eliminate race, ethnicity and income as predictors of student educational success. This episode of Future youe is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org subscribe to future you wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy the show, send it along to a friend so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

I'm Michael Horn.

And I'm Jeff Salingo. All right, Michael, I hope you and our listeners are ready for something different. As regular listeners of the show know, I used to be editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's really where I learned all about higher ed. And when I left, I stayed connected with many of the reporters there. We've had several on the show over the years, as you know, for our reporter roundtables. And both of us, of course, have contributed articles to the Chronicle.

Yes, I'm tracking you so far, Jeff, where's it going?

Okay. So Michael, when one of those reporters, Jack Stripling, who now hosts the Chronicles College Matters podcast, reached out to me with the idea of effectively being on each other's podcast, I was kind of intrigued. And then he presented this in their March 25 episode, Jack, along with Sarah, Sarah Brown, a senior editor at the Chronicle, and Andy Thomason, who's assistant managing editor. They sat down to effectively have a fantasy football type of draft. But they were drafting controversies in higher ed, in their words, reliving the most memorable presidential gaffes, faculty feuds, and maybe a sex scandal or two. Now, Jack was one of the last people I hired before I moved out of being editor of the Chronicle. So Jack, who's joining us now Maybe I'll blame you for that, but I'm not going to give you a copy of the Art of War like you did to Ed Richardson. And for our listeners to understand that reference, you're going to go need to listen to that March 25 episode of College Matters.

Yeah, that's true, Jeff. So when I was a reporter at the Opelaka Auburn News, early in my reporting career, I had a little bit of a, a feud with the president there, the interim president there, Ed Richardson, and at one point he actually issued a press release saying he would never talk to me again, which was, which was kind of hilarious. We did make up. And then after we made up, I did give him a copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War, which I think smoothed the waters.

That's an amazing, that's an amazing story.

I, I, I love the fact that you had a, a, a press release issued about you. That's, I don't think that has ever happened to me. So I hope you have that framed somewhere.

You know, I don't have it framed, but Inside Higher Ed did write a story about it, which you can find the Auburn President's Permanent no Comment is the headline.

Oh, I gotta have to look at that. Well, besides a long career in journalism, Jack worked at the CR has worked at the Chronicle, the Washington Post, the Gainesville Sun, Inside Higher Ed. The other thing to know about Jack is that he graduated from Florida State, where he got his bachelor's degree, and then Auburn, where he earned his master's degree. And, and Jack, before you got to the Chronicle, I recall Scott Smallwood and I, who was an editor there with me, we did an analysis of where reporters and editors in the newsroom went to college. And all I recall is that we were really underrepresented among public universities. So the fact that you have two degrees from big publics that probably put you over the top in getting hired.

Well, Jeff, I mean, the fact that you reached down into the Great Unwashed and pulled me from my swampy existence into the Chronicle is something to which I'm eternally grateful to you for. But yes, I do think we have pretty good public school representation at the Chronicle.

Indeed, the other counterparts that you had on this episode, they also went to a public. Of course, they went to Carolina. So things must be really changing at the, at the Chronicle.

Fair enough. Yes. They actually both went to Chapel Hill, the people I did the show with.

So it's great to see you, Jack, and welcome to future year.

Thank you.

So on the heels of the draft of controversies in higher ed on your show. Do you now feel a bit like you're playing an away game coming as a visitor on our show?

I do. I do. And I'm very nervous because the crowd, I think, is going to be on your side, but I'm going to try to win them over. To College Matters from the Chronicle, my podcast. I think if, you know, let's let a thousand flowers bloom here. Jeff, I think people can listen to both of us.

I love it. And in all seriousness, you had a lot of fun on this episode on the topic. It shows it was original. You did avoid tragedies among your stories. I think that was a good choice. And you all have three very different rosters of storylines that came out at the end of four common categories. You had Hot Mic. Hey, Big Spender. Presidents behaving Badly. That sounds like a spring break episode or something. And then you had the wild card. And just so folks know where each landed, I'll, I'll get to say, the starting lineup, if you will, for each of you. Sarah. I think we could nickname her team the Cinderellas because, as she said, many of hers were very under the radar. But for Hot Mike, she had Drown the Bunnies. For those that don't remember, that occurred at Mount St. Mary's University. From the president there, we'll get more. Hey, Big Spender. Her one was the student recruitment effort by going on safaris from the president at Western New Mexico University for presidents Behaving Badly. She had the lost souls at Bluefield State University. We're definitely going to get into that one. And then her wild card was, is that our chancellor in a porno? Which was, of course, the University of Wisconsin lacrosse story that has really unfolded over the last year or two. That's one of the more recent of these scandals. And then Andy's lineup he had. He went to his alma mater, UNC Chapel Hill, for the academic fraud scandal for Hot Mic. For hey, Big Spender, he had the 550 olive jar with Scott Scarborough at the University of Akron. The president there. President's behaving badly. He had Robert Casselin at the University of South Carolina, who had this gaffe where he plagiarized the speech and called it the University of California to grads. I confess that would have been under Hot Mic for me.

But anyway, a personal favorite nonetheless. It's a good one.

Nothing says I really want to be here like, anyway. And then wild card was don't tase me, bro. We're gonna come back to that because you were in that story.

I was not tased. Just to clarify.

No, you were not.

I don't wanna. I know you're trying to build tension here, Michael, but.

And then, Jack, your team, I, I think, I think of your team as sort of like the, the blue chips, right?

You were chalk picks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Hot mic. You had Teresa Sullivan's firing and rehiring at the University of Virginia. Hey, big spender. You went with, I think, what has to be the crowd favorite, Varsity blues, presidents behaving badly. You had everyone's favorite, multi time president, Gordon Gee and some of the spending in Vanderbilt, including a marijuana being found at the mansion. And then your wild card was Jetgate from your. One of your past colleges, Auburn University, and Tommy Tuberville there.

Yeah. Complicated story to. To explain, but a personal favorite.

Yeah, yeah. So, well, so maybe to start, what surprised you about the controversies that you all selected? You know, you've had a couple weeks since the draft. What do you think you or your fellow reporters perhaps missed?

Well, I mean, look, you can't pick them all. We held ourselves to a standard. We have a high standard. We can only pick four. You know, Jeff is an esteemed man of letters, now a New York Times best seller, but you know, back in the days when he was plucking people from the obscurity of the Florida State graduate pool, Jeff enjoyed a good controversy too, I will say that. And I mentioned this on the show, it felt like a criminal act to leave Jerry Falwell Jr. Off of this list.

Agreed.

And you know, truth be told, if I'd really cared about winning the draft, I probably would have picked him. People know this story as Jerry and the pool boy. This was back in. When was it that this happened?

I think it was like 20, 19, 18.

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah.

2020. Reuters broke the story that Jerry Falwell's wife, Jerry Falwell Jr. Was president of Liberty University at the time, had had an affair with a pool attendant. They met in M. And this was kind of the culmination of the fall from grace for Falwell, who is a complex figure. He, Liberty's name and its money are all tied to his father, Jerry Falwell Sr. And what's interesting about Jerry Falwell Sr. Is that he's known in part as the televangelist who survived the 80s without having a sex scandal. So it's kind of ironic that Jerry Falwell Jr. Essentially had his career undone by a sex scandal, not even his own. But yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly Well, I mean, the jury's out on whether he was present for any of these activities, but he says he wasn't. But he's a figure that always has intrigued me as a reporter. And that's part of what the fun of revisiting these controversies were, was opening our notebooks as reporters and talking about things we had done with these presidents or stories we had reported about them. Back in 2015, Jerry Falwell Jr. Was making all sorts of news because he loved guns and he wanted all of the students at Liberty, this evangelical university, to get concealed carry permits. And he even carried, said he carried a gun on the stage at some kind of, at some kind of Liberty event. But I was so intrigued by this gun nut president that I actually went out and shotguns with Jerry, really, at a, at a gun range that was at Liberty. And so he's always been one of these very eccentric figures, not unlike Gordon Gee. I mean, he is unlike Gordon Gee, but he's, he's one of these interesting personalities in higher education that make this such a fun thing to write about. And I really wish I'd been able to find room for him on my bracket, but I just couldn't do it.

Yeah, we're going to get back to that, Jack, because, you know, I sometimes think that presidents have become a little boring, don't you think, Michael?

Well, Jeff, this is where I wanted to bring you in because you have this austere background when you were the Chronicle, you know, is there something you would have had on your list or you can comment, if you prefer, around the three teams we have here and what surprised you about theirs?

Well, first of all, I want to point out for those who are watching us on video, they actually have like a little bingo card here that they put together. Jack, is this available or did you just send this?

I will make sure you get a copy. I'm sure we've tweeted them out.

Put it in the show notes.

Yeah, we'll put in the show notes. But it's a great bingo card so you can follow along, which.

Yeah, listeners are trying to follow along. They don't know how to process this information. Jeff.

Well, yeah, I'm probably the oldster here, so I would have loved to crash that Chronicle draft. I'm a little disappointed. And invite me. And, you know, you said the show was about a quarter of century, a quarter century of scandals. So I wanted to go back a bit further, Michael, all the way back to 2003, because it's amazing to me how sometimes higher Ed, scandals repeat themselves. And in fact, when I first saw Jack's bingo card and I saw Jet Gate, I thought, that's interesting. I thought of John Shoemaker, who was forced to resign from the University of Tennessee's presidency in 2003 after his use of a university aircraft came under scrutiny. Now, what jogged my memory about the scandal, Jack, is that on the College Matters podcast, you said something like, you know, all these scandals are derived from unforced errors, right? The hubris. The hubris of people who sometimes hold these jobs, they just, they just do things that are just kind of dumb sometimes. So that the part of the Shoemaker story that I always found interesting is that, you know, he's lured away from the presidency of the University of Louisville, where he had famously hired Rick Pitino as the men's basketball coach. Now, Louisville liked him so much that they offered to pay him a bonus of one and a half million dollars if he would stay. Now, back in 2003, it's still a lot of money. Back in 2003, that was a lot of money, but he left anyway. And within a year at Tennessee, the story goes, he didn't like the university plane, so he asked the university to buy a new one. And that's when the trouble started, because the university said, why doesn't he like the plane? Wow, he's using this plane an awful lot. So they started looking into his travel. They found that he took the plane on a lot of personal trips. I mean, he forgot to tell Tennessee, for example, that he was serving as a trustee of a college in Greece, of all places. Now, some of this, what's interesting also about this is that some of this story came out because Shoemaker at the time was getting a divorce. And his former wife also testified about a lot of this stuff. And one of the things she had testified was that her husband had become president of Tennessee through a rigged process. She said that the university official had provided Shoemaker with questions that were asked of him later during the job interview with university trustees. In fact, he got, in other words, he got the test answers in advance. And, you know, after he stepped down, there was a full audit of his time at Tennessee. And there were so many eye popping numbers. He had ordered $500,000 in renovations and new furnishings for the president's house, which had just been remodeled for $800,000 less than a year earlier. So a lot of other presidents in your draft who got done in by expensive tastes, but Jack, probably the one that surprised me the most on your team, and that's Theresa Sullivan because it's really not a name that probably would be remembered today if not for the efforts to oust her over not moving fast enough at the University of Virginia to adopt online education. And this was particularly in the moment when MOOCs, massive online open courses were coming onto the scene. You know, it was definitely controversial, but I don't know if it was scandalous and. And you even admitted on the show that it might not break through in today's, you know, fractured media environment. So I'm kind of curious about why you included that. Part of me makes it, you know, part of what makes it interesting in today's higher ed landscape, of course, is that I'm not sure that there would be any president out there who would have the faculty rally to their defense like UVA's faculty did with Sullivan. What do you think about that? Do you think that there would be that many faculty rallying to a president's defense these days?

I'm still stuck on the fact that you said, I admitted that it wouldn't break through. Today. I made this concession that this was a lesser pick. You remember this, Jeff? This was like the biggest thing in our world. It was like the biggest thing that had ever happened was the firing and rehiring of Teresa Sullivan. And there are some reasons for that. But I think you are onto something about what the faculty may have been. We just did an episode with Lee Gardner recently about the deterioration of faculty administrative relations. So we know that no confidence votes are on the rise and presidential tenures are getting shorter. There's so much acrimony between faculty and presidents now that it's hard to envision presidents rallying around a president like she's a rock star, which is essentially what happened to Theresa Sullivan, who is decidedly not a rock star, as we know. But at the same time, that was the treatment she got. But here's why I think it might still happen if the fact pattern was the same. Sullivan, if you'll recall that turmoil which happened in 2012, she was siding with what I would say is the faculty position. She was saying to this board, wait a minute. We're not going to dive headlong into online education. We're going to study this. I'm an incrementalist. We're going to think hard about the implications of this. We're probably gonna have a bunch of committees, which is faculty's love language, that we're gonna potentially have some committees. And so something remarkable happens, right? The board folds. They reinstate Theresa Sullivan because public opinion is so strongly on her side. So I think you're right. Maybe that wouldn't happen with faculty. But the thing that. And I'm curious what you think about this, Jeff. I think that if this happens today, the board never reinstates her. I think that these boards are stacked with these political appointees and we have seen that they are impervious to public. I mean, I don't think they'd care one bit if there was a faculty uprising over their firing of a president. Do you, Jeff?

No, I don't think so necessarily. Especially they don't really care about the faculty. I think if there was an uprising among maybe some other stakeholder groups, maybe. And you know, I guess we did

see that at Penn, right?

Yeah, we saw that at Penn. And, and, or. And I'm also kind of fascinated. Sarah mentions this photo that you have in the conference room at the Chronicle of the faculty kind of surrounding Teresa Sul. Arrived it on the, on the show.

Yeah. She heads to the rotunda. There's this throng of supporters around.

Yeah. And again, I just, as she was describing that, I'm like, could I imagine that? I could imagine a throng of people around a president, but not in support. Right.

Well, it's interesting because I remembered also is part of it was that she was also under negotiate. Like she had been talking to Coursera or EDX or whoever it was at the time. And then they were like, oh, you were having the conversation. And it was like just rampant lack of remembrance or communication from the president and the board on all sides. That, that feels very common still, frankly today. But actually it leads me to a different point, which is. So I remember that one pretty well. But if I'm being super honest, I don't think I knew or perhaps remembered if I'm being charitable to myself. Four of the 16 picks that you all, that you all had, two of those happened to be on Sarah's team. The safaris at Western State, New Mexico. I did not know that. The Bluefield story, which is an incredible one, the olive jar on Andy's team. And Jack, you're going to be mortified by this, given your role in the story not being tased, but being present for the tasing. I guess I must have been under a rock or I was writing my first book at the time with no salary. But I have zero recollection of the don't tase me bro story.

Oh, Michael, Michael. I don't feel bad. I didn't remember two of them. Jack. Okay. The Bluefield State where the President published the substack newslet bashing his own faculty for months. Also the $550 olive jar for the renovation of the president's house at the University of Akan. And also this angry olive game that I guess was created from it, which I just laughed when I heard about that. And I guess going back to the shoemaker story I just told at the University of Tennessee, it seems like there used to be a lot more presidential house renovation scandals. You know, heck, even the Chronicles presidential salary survey from the form 990s used to just generate a lot more controversy, I think, than it does now. And, and I kind of wonder why. Jack, I'd be kind of curious about your reaction, but I think one is that in the modern presidency, first of all, I don't know how many are living in formal presidential houses anymore. That might be a story idea, by the way. You know, I was at a meeting last year where a president of small college asked her counterparts how many of them sold off the university house or they used it for something else than living now, than living in it now if it's on campus. And almost every hand in the room of maybe a dozen went up. So it was kind of surprising to me, you know, and add to that, you know, the million dollar pres. You know, a president making a million dollars or over a million dollars, it just doesn't seem to raise the hackles that it once did.

I think it's just because they're all doing such a great job, Jeff. I mean,

there's so many other things to raise hackles about.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love this question because I've not too. Jeff, that we. I used to work directly on the Chronicles compensation survey, less so now. But I think that people like the late Ray Cotton, who was a lawyer who negotiated just countless college presidents contracts, helped to normalize the multimillion dollar presidential salary. And I think the only thing that makes people's jaws drop now is the football coach's salary or, or, or, or how much it cost to fire the football coach. I was looking at a story, USA Today did an analysis, I guess last year that, that showed that major college athletics departments were going to spend $200 million collectively in the hiring and firing of football coaches and staff. So if you want to get ticked off about something, it's probably going to be athletic spending. The other thing I'd say about this, Jeff, and I think that this is part of why we did the controversy draft. It was fun, but we were also trying to say what's changed in our country, what's changed in our society and how people react to controversies and what makes for one is part of that story. If you think about the financial crisis of 2008 or Occupy Wall street in 2011, these were historical and cultural moments where people were really angry over compensation and college presidents were swept up in that. People were looking at college presidents compensation and they weren't Goldman Sachs figures, but they were part of the same soup of just, you know, executives just being overpaid. So context matters. The other thing is, is that people may not get ticked off about a few dozen college presidents who make over a million dollars in base salary, but they get really upset about the tiniest things. Not the tiniest things, but smaller things than that. And a great example of this is Ben Sasse. You know, he's the former US Senator who ran the University of Florida. Self styled fiscal conservative, but you know, he had a party with a $38,000 sushi bar. And that kind of thing will still get you in trouble. These, these $500 olive jars or $38,000 sushi bars, those things still, still matter.

It's funny, when you put those numbers in contrast with each other, the olive jar doesn't sound that bad.

But they got a steep deal on the olive jar.

Yeah, they're right. Like it sort of got off a little, little harsh, but okay. So what I really want to ask though is we've having a lot of fun with some of these stories, but I'm curious, like what they say about higher ed. Not just at the time that they occurred, but you know, as far as this show is concerned, like what it means about the future of higher ed. And you just sort of hit on it, Jack, which is that athletics is a re part of the zeitgeist right now in a lot of ways around sort of outrage in different ways around higher ed. And it figures prominently in three of the stories that you picked out of the, you know, that you all picked out of the 16. You had Jetgate with the Auburn president, board members looking to replace Tommy Tuberville. You had the UNC athletics, right, and the falsifying. Not just grades, but also classes in some cases. And then even Varsity Blues has an athletic angle to it in terms of people fabricating, putting their faces on top of bodies that were not theirs and showing that they played sports, that they had never touched a lacrosse stick or whatever it was. So what do you make of that? That athletics is, you know, is really a big undercurrent of These scandals in

higher ed, you know, I think you're onto something there too. The, the relationship that colleges have to their athletics departments probably has something to do with this. This is a little outside of my expertise, but it is the front porch of the university, but it's also kind of running its own affairs. I think we've seen this with like really, you know, wealthy med schools, for example, that kind of are their own fiefdoms and they're not necessarily operating by the systems and values of the institution. I think that's one of them. The other thing is, is that I think a great higher ed controversy. And I'm saying great in the context of memorable, absurd, delicious.

Right, right. Not, not one that you are endorsing.

Yeah. Something that I, I, I'm drawn to as a reporter. It usually bridges the interests and passions of the university community and the public at large. And, and there's no better way to do that than with athletics. So a great controversy usually confirms some sort of societal suspicion. All three of the cases that you mentioned do that. They do involve athletics, but they also confirm preconceived notions about the institution. So everybody thinks the game is rigged for rich people. And Varsity Blues says, you know what, you're absolutely right, it is. So you have federal prosecutors charging at least 50 people for using bribery and fraud and all these deplorable tactics to get students into highly selective colleges like Yale. And then, you know, same thing with.

That was a good drop.

Okay, that was a good drop of Yale there. We appreciate that.

Fair enough, fair enough. But then, then you think about the, the UNC fake classes scandal. So if listeners don't remember this, you know, UNC Chapel Hill had a years long scandal over courses that, that students were enrolling in a lot of athletes that required very little work and that everyone seemed to leave with high grades. Well, this confirms another suspicion. Everyone thinks that the idea of the student athlete is kind of bogus in the Power 5 conferences at this point at least as it relates to football and basketball. These people are not thought to be at the university to study play. D'oh. They're thought to be there to play sports. And so a place like Chapel Hill that had held itself out there to a high standard and says you can have of academic excellence and athletics excellence. This is sort of an unmasking of that idea. My colleague Andy Thomason wrote a whole book called Discredited about this, that is about that amateur ideal coming under scrutiny there. And then just briefly, the Jetgate scandal at Auburn. This was again A case in which some trustees were involved in flying to Louisville and trying to hire Bobby Petrino, who was the football coach there while Tuberville was still not a United States Senator, but was still almost as important, was still the coach of Auburn University.

Yeah, maybe more important.

And again, this was. I lived in Auburn at the time, and this was a period of time in which people were, particularly on the faculty, were just super concerned about these good old boy trustees who were just consumed by football. It's all they seem to care about. And then you have this perfect sort of scandal, which is all these good old boy trustees getting on an airplane and trying to hire a new football coach. I mean, what could possibly confirm the suspicions and anxieties of people more than this? So a great controversy proves the skeptics right. It says, you know what, the stereotypes we've been denying forever, they're actually true. So I think that athletics is a way this can happen because it can take a sometimes boring governance story and make it more relatable because it's going through the lens of athletics and everybody's got a stake in that, usually particularly in a college town.

Yeah. And I think it's also about, you know, follow the money. Right. And the money is in athletics and there's more likely to be scandal there as well. And, you know, and Michael and I talked earlier this year on the show about the unregulated money in the nil collective. So I can only imagine that's probably where the next sports scandal is going to emerge from. But Chuck, the other thing that I realized when I was listening to your show about these, all these stories, many of these stories is two things. One is some of them happened before kind of the social media world. Not. Not many, but a few. But more than that, a lot of these started with local newspapers kind of reporting on them. And you know, our, our friends Scott Smallwood and, and Sarah Hebel, who started Open Campus. You know, this is a big thing of theirs. Right. Local newspapers reporting on higher ed was how many of us got our start. It's how the Chronicle, you know, got a lot of its stories in those early days was. Was following local reporters like you. And, and we seemed so that that's another change I. I have a feeling over the last 10 years is fewer local reporters covering higher ed. So now, you know, president's gone wild. Can they just. Can go even more wild, I guess because no one's really watching them.

And well, student newspapers are doing a good job.

So.

Yeah, so talk about that. Talk about what you see on that front, front about who's really watching what these universities are doing.

Well, I do think that you've pointed something out that's important, Jeff, which is that we. We don't have journalists mining the store in the way we once did. I mean, I. I was a beat reporter, covered two different universities as a beat reporter before I ever moved to Washington. I wrote about the University of Florida, the Gainesville sun, and as I mentioned before, I wrote about Auburn University for the Opelika Auburn News. And you are never going to learn what you learn about the way a university operates as you do as a beat reporter. I don't think. I mean, going to trustee meetings literally every time they happen, going to faculty meetings literally every time they happen, faculty senate meetings and, and turning a story out from them, and going to see John Kerry speak at a university event and seeing some kid get tased. These things happen if you're a local reporter. And so it's super important. I do think that college student newspapers are stepping into the void. A lot of big stories get broken by college student news reporters. The Ben Sasse story about the sushi bar and more importantly, the larger expenses that he incurred hiring people from his former political life was. Was broken by Garrett Shanley, who was a reporter for the Independent Florida Alligator and later an intern for the Chronicle. So I'm actually optimistic about the people who are in the pipeline. I'm a little pessimistic about the industry, but there are good people who I think are prepared to write very smartly about higher education, specifically in the accountability space.

So, Jack, the next thing that sort of came out loud and clear to me in the stories that y' all chose is what it says about the shaky finances of higher ed in different regards. So you talked about how the Varsity Blues story is a story about what the rich can buy in America. To me, it was also a story, though, about what it says about a system of higher ed that lets people buy their way in and sort of the desperation, if you will, around donors and things of that nature. The UNC story, similarly, yes, it's about athletics, but it's also about a school trying to keep its finances and fundraising in order through its preeminence in sports. Trying to have it all, if you will. The Mount St. Mary's story, the President, you know, the Drown the Bunnies, has this element of trying to get the college's finances in order through a very weird sense of what student success means. But like Varsity Blues, it raises a very real question. Of Jeff, this is going to be a plug for you of who gets in and why and whether they should. And then Bluefield State has this element of cleaning up the finances of a school that's really struggling in West Virginia. And obviously, the big spender stories, right, they all directly talk about finances, whether it's the olive jar or the safaris to allegedly recruit international students. And then you've got this $6 million renovation at Vanderbilt with Gordon Gee. And as a side note, since you brought up college reporting, one of the stories I wrote at the Yale Daily News when I was a reporter there was when Guy decided to leave Brown after just two years for the greener, more pos. Pastures at Vanderbilt, where his salary would be couple hundred thousand dollars higher and his wife would get a nice tenured post and presumably before the marijuana got thrown in. So, Jack, I.

And the story ended after that. Nothing else. Right, Exactly.

Nothing else. Well, so I'll jump ahead. One of the things that's interesting, I think, is every single time Guy jumped to the next story, sorry, presidency, he said it would be his last. Interestingly enough, he promised every single one. So. So some of these stories, obviously, are from pre 2008 and the financial crisis that really broke open higher ed's business model, in my view. But I guess I'm curious to hear your take about what these stories say about the state of higher ed financing.

Oh, you're gonna get me to make meaning here, Michael.

I'm trying to be serious for a moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Damn it. All right. Okay. We should explain Drown the Bunnies, though. That was a California president. Who. He was the president. Simon Newman was The president of Mount St. Mary's is that right?

Yep, yep, yep. The Mount, as they call it.

Yeah.

And where I went to summer camp for basketball. So it's like a very meaningful place for me. Morgan Wooten used to be the coach there, so Summer. Yeah.

And I think this was a student newspaper. Reported, too, that he had said in some meeting and that you're looking at these students at Cuddly Bunny as cuddly bunnies, and you have to drown the bunnies. They wanted them. I think they wanted them to leave before a certain deadline so they wouldn't be counted as right before the first semester.

Right. So they wouldn't count in. I mean, I think it was probably the retention.

It was about retention rates.

Right?

Yeah.

Right. If you got them out before October, they wouldn't even count as enrolled students

or something like that.

Right, right. So. So just. Just in case people Were wondering about what this bunny drowning was about. Let me explain that. But what's the larger meaning is a great question. I do think that, I mean, look, it's a PR problem anytime you have a scandal, right? And if you look at how public opinion has turned against higher education over the past few years, I think one of the biggest single drivers has to be college costs. So it is related to the business model and it is related to finances. Wellesley College just made news for doing what everyone knew would eventually happen, putting its sticker price above $100,000 a year. You add to that some serious concerns about whether colleges are doing anything for social mobility. Are they helping low income people have better lives or are they just. Just perpetuating the good life for people who were born on third base? And there's a lot of evidence that it's the latter. So I think the business model has everything to do with public skepticism toward higher education, specifically college cost. And if you take high cost and little social mobility and toxic national politics, which we have added in the mix, now, higher ed is losing the public opinion battle. And that means that the public is a lot less forgiving when things go wrong. And I also think that it stokes internal tensions that create internal conflict. When people are afraid about their futures, they turn on each other. And these are all occasions where different constituencies within a university are turning on each other. Higher education is a machine. We write about it as a machine. It's a delicate machine. It only works if all of these little pieces that really have no business working together actually find a way to work together. Students don't have any real reason to get along with college presidents, no matter what they try to tell you. Faculty are perpetually pissed off at presidents. Donors have a lot of say in what goes on in college education. Politicians have a lot of say, particularly at public universities. But now we're even seeing at privates with the pressure that's coming from the White House. So to get all of these pieces of the machine to work together is a problem no matter what. And when you add on top of it huge financial pressures that no one can seem to figure their way out of, it's no wonder that you're having flame ups on college campuses. The ingredients are there.

Yeah, well, okay, so we're going to take a break right there. And when we come back on the other side with Jack, we're going to talk about the professionalization of the presidency and, and tensions. More about these tensions between different factions on campus. That's ahead on Future you.

This episode of Future youe is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. Ascendium believes that system level change and a student centric approach are important for our nation's efforts to boost post secondary education and workforce training opportunities. That's why their philanthropy aims to remove systemic barriers faced by these learners, specifically first generation students, incarcerated adults, veterans, students of color, adult learners, and rural community members. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org

this episode is being brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Today's college students are more than just students. They are workers, parents and caregivers and neighbors. And colleges and universities need to change to meet their changing needs. Learn more about the Foundation's efforts to transform institutions to be more student centered@usprogram.gatesfoundation.org. So welcome back to Future youe. And another theme that comes out loud and clear, Jack, is this changing nature of the presidency in higher ed. And I must say, you know, in listening to this episode, I, I kind of yearn for those old days of these scandals because presidents are kind of boring today. And it's perhaps it's likely the nature of the job and you know, mobile phones and social media that have contributed to all that because they're, they're constantly watching their back. They're more reserved, right. Maybe they're more worried about their job, you know, saying the wrong thing. And they're also, as we know, protected by a slew of public relations officials on campuses. You know, trying to reach a president of a college these days is like trying to reach the president of the United States. And indeed, I'd say Trump offers more press gaggles than the typical college president, that's for sure.

Can probably get him on signal.

Yeah, probably could. They're probably talking about this right now. The one scandal, though, Jack, that Andy mentioned briefly, but I'm glad that you didn't let pass, was Evan Dobell. And he was the former president of the University of Hawaii system who called the University of Maine system impersonating a Chronicle intern to try to find out how much the job paid. He gave a fake name and a number to the, to the person who answered the phone at the University of Maine system, but the caller ID was captured. And so when this person from the University of Maine system called the Chronicle to check up on this fictitious reporter, they gave the number to Paul Fain. I remember, I was there when this happened. And Paul Fane, who was a real reporter, by the way, at the Chronicle. He called the number that the University of Maine gave him, and it turned out to be Evan Dobell.

You think the 808 area code gave the wing?

I know. It's like, I mean, of course, left unsaid in all of this was why Dobel left Hawaii. It was ready for this spending. I'll never forget the Chronicle story. And I went back in the archives to find this. This past week, the Chronicle story on the scandal was headlined, wipeout in Hawaii. A President is toppled amid claims of arrogance, cronyism, and misspending. And by the way, Jack, those were the days when the Chronicle regularly sent reporters everywhere, including to Hawaii. They sent me to Hawaii twice, by the way

of the end.

I guess it is. I spent. I spent all of your future salary money, I guess. But my favorite tidbit from the audit of Dobell spending was this. He took 25 donors and staff members to a Janet Jackson concert, and he paid for the tickets through a presidential discretionary fund. It was just a great story. And then, of course, as we've talked a couple of times already, we got Gordon Gee, who probably has the best trick. Whenever you get emails from him. I don't know if you've ever gotten emails from him, but his subject line is a simple period. That's all he puts in the subject line. I once asked him about it, and he said it's really about getting attention in your inbox, because when a message comes in that just has a period in the subject line, it tends to get your attention.

Keep rolling, Jeff. Keep rolling. Who else?

So we also have Robin Capehart at Bluefield, Simon Newman, of course, we've talked about it at St. Mary's Robert Castlin at the University of South Carolina, and not USC in California, Scott Scarborough at Akron, and then on the other side, you have Teresa Sullivan, of course, who we've talked about at UVA as the sort of defender of the. Of how things have been. And. And Jack, you know, a few of these people I listed were known for their scandals, and to be honest with you, not much else. I don't think they were really terribly successful presidents. So. So, you know, that's. I guess the question here is, like, what does it really take to be a successful leader today? You've. You've been watching these presidents for quite some time. These scandals tend to put these presidents in the headlines, but those are not. The presidents are actually doing necessarily the good work.

What does it take to be a good college president Today? I'm so glad you asked because I, I know the answer. Jeff, first of all, don't plagiarize anything, ever.

Stop. Like this is like receiving the tablets right now.

Keep going. Yeah, this is. If it wasn't true before, it is now. There's an army of highly motivated people out there looking for college presidents to plagiarize. It has a lot to do with Claudine Gay no longer being president at Harvard, among other reasons. Other advice that I have heard from other people, and I suspect you guys have heard this too, is make friends before the crisis. That once it hits the fan, it's too late to go around and start having coffees with the faculty. That those alliances have to be shored up before these things happen. And quite frankly, I don't even know whether that rule matters much in this environment. I don't know what you guys think. I really hate the narrative that the college presidency is an impossible job that even a four star general can't do. I kind of find that hard to believe. I know it's a hard job, but I think there are competent people who can do it and we probably don't write about them much because they're doing it well. We don't write a lot about the planes that land safely. And so I know that they are under the microscope, perhaps now more than ever, maybe in the history of higher education, certainly in my lifetime, but I kind of refuse to believe that it can't be done. I do think, rather than saying these are impossible jobs, I do think that a successful college president has to realize that if you're going to make a choice, you're going to take a risk, you are going to alienate a faction in our current polarized environment, no matter what you do. And I think that really is the story of what's happening between the federal government, the White House and college campuses right now. If you look at what happened at Columbia with the Trump administration canceling $400 million in funding to the university and the university accedes to these federal demands related to antisemitism that many had thought would be total non starters for a place with Columbia's resources, essentially allowing the White House to dictate how you handle campus affairs, I think a lot of people prior to this Trump term would have found this unthinkable for a place like Columbia. But when you have two existential threats, and one is your towards your institutional autonomy and the other is toward $400 million, which is another existential amount of money for you, what is your North Star what do you, as the leader of a college, what is the mission? I think that's the question college presidents really have to ask themselves right now. And it's very easy for me, or quite frankly, college presidents who aren't being picked on as much to say, I would have done it this way. But it is a Sophie's Choice, because either way, people are going to get hurt. And that is a moment in which people really have to lean on core values. And if they don't know what they are, which quite frankly, is often the problem, it's impossible. That's what makes the presidency impossible, not knowing what your values are.

Jeff, I'd love your take on if the presidency is impossible these days. Before, I have one last question for Jack.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's impossible at some institutions where they don't really know their core values that they. Michael, I know we're going to be talking about culture on the show coming up on a future episode. But, but going back to Jack's point on Columbia, the other thing is they had an interim president during this issue with Trump. And so that president A. Who knows if they were going to stay in that job. I doubt it anyway. Of course, they stepped down after all of this. But that person, even though they were already at the university, they weren't fully in the role. They weren't in the role for very long. They didn't really know if they were going to have the job forever. I mean, that's not exactly a position of strength, even within the Columbia system where faculty tend to have a ton of power. I also think it's interesting now, Jack, that you're facing a faculty. We tend to think of the faculty as a monolith. And what's interesting to me is that at a place like Columbia, for example, we see all these stories where, where it's the faculty on the sciences, for example, in the medical area who are at risk of losing NIH funding, and it's the faculty, you know, in arts and sciences who tend to be the protesters. And suddenly now you have faculty on faculty. And so a president is having to make a decision on this. And in this case, the interim president came from the medical side. And so all of this, I think, has made the job a lot more difficult. Yet I think you bring up a great point that we had on the podcast a couple months ago around mergers and acquisitions, and Ricardo Aziz sold us. It takes courage, like. And I think this is not only do they not have core values, I think there's a lot of Presidents who just lack courage to make a decision.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's amazing, too. I mean, I'm sorry, Mike, just one last thing on this. It is amazing, too, the degree to which people will cling on to a presidency well past the point that they should have. I mean, I think we underestimate how much people who are college presidents really want to stay college presidents. I mean, I can think of a number of examples when people could have or should have stepped down and didn't, and then it got worse. And your point about the interim presidency is a good one. That person doesn't necessarily have as much juice on the campus. But I'm starting to think this is by design. I mean, the interim presidency has become a pain sponge for the institution. It's resign, absorb, repeat, is kind of what happens here. And I think we see this cycle a lot, and I don't think it's a coincidence. So, anyway, I'm sorry I cut you off.

No, I was going to say the same thing. I think the interim presidency is becoming sort of the way of punting decisions, hard decisions, for the boards of these places in many cases, and try to escape past the infighting, if you will, at a lot of these colleges and universities. And that's the other thing that jumped out to me that I'd love to end the conversation on, which is the fighting faction, if you will, on campus and the struggle to make decisions. And I want to read this part of your podcast, Jack. You're all at the time talking about Robin Caphart, the president of Bluefield State. He's publishing the Substack, Right Newsletter. Bashing his own faculty, not just once, by the way, but for months. And there's this quote that Sarah, I think, reads where she says, this is what Robin wrote, right? Sarah's reading it. That quote. These are the lost souls, those individuals who are chronically miserable and aren't happy unless they're unhappy. We all know these kind of people. And while you find lost souls everywhere, higher education is uniquely endowed with more than it shares. So this is the president of Bluefield State writing this. And then, I've got to be honest with you, maybe the line of the podcast, Andy jumps in and says, fact check. True. And so I just wanted to, like, what does this say about higher education? And in this time of, as you said, public confidence, cratering, antagonistic federal policy and the like, what does this say? If, you know, sort of these. These are the faculty members on our campuses?

Well, I don't know who looks worse in that story. Michael, the faculty member or the president, perhaps, who wrote a blog about this. I'm not sure. I haven't revisited how to win friends and influence people lately, but I don't know that starting a blog about how much you hate them is necessarily consistent with what the Harvard Business Review would tell you. No, no, no.

I mean, it probably puts him in the lost soul category as well, but.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. I do think that it's an example, though, of, you know, I mean, we've seen this with Prince Harry. You know, sometimes you just want a divorce from your family. And I think that may have happened to the president of Bluefield State. But if it says something about dealing with faculty in particular, it is probably that the history of faculty autonomy over certain matters within the institution is a core tenet of higher education that is constantly under threat. And we have a system of shared governance. And sometimes that works, but at other times, it's just very cumbersome system. It's hard if there's no direct chain of command for things to get done. And Kevin McClure, who's an associate professor of higher education at UNC Wilmington, told my colleague Lee Gardner not long ago, faculty are the worst. You know, they are always complaining, but then you invite them to the meeting and they either don't come or they're

unprepared, one faculty member to another, so to speak.

Yeah, they kind of sound like journalists, by the way. Just check.

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough.

Yes.

Always complaining. No solutions. I did give a solution earlier to the presidency. Find your values and you.

Did you stand apart.

Yes, yes. But in any case, I mean, to try to answer your question, I would say that we're just in a precarious time in higher education, and I think temperatures are high. I think that human relationships are always at the core of how any organization functions, and that higher education is certainly no exception. And it's probably more amplified at this moment than in any time I've been covering it. And I guess I would say good night and good luck to the people who are trying to navigate all this.

So, Jack, for those who hopefully will listen to the end of your podcast. So what was the result of March Madness?

I obviously won, Jeff, that that was definitive. No part of this game, if people didn't understand it, was to build essentially a fantasy football team of college scandals. And I noticed from this that everybody's personality was sort of reflected in this. Our producer referred to Sarah Brown's picks as, quote, the record store picks. These were the under the radar indie bands of higher ed controversies that she picked and I think showed a lot about her personality. It's probably not a surprise that I went chalk. I'm both competitive and I just really like a high profile controversy. I think it matters that, you know, the players, even though some of the best ones that ever happen are on campuses you've never heard of, and they tell you just as much about higher ed as another one. And then Andy, I mean, it was just shameless. He just wanted to plug his book. You know, he wrote a book about the UNC academic scandal and that's all he wanted to talk about. We couldn't talk.

I mean, that's why Jeff and I have a podcast.

I mean, that's why we have a podcast.

Right? You guys built a whole industry to promote a book.

Exactly. And, and I just want to know when is the one shiny moment, you know, video going to come out of your, of your time together?

That's, that's what we're, we're working on the highlight reel as we speak.

Good, good. Well, Jack Stripling, this has just been enjoyable. I, I think that's the best word for this time that we spent together. I don't think Michael and I have laughed on our podcast quite this much in, in some time. There's, there was one outtake from years ago where we did laugh quite some time that we had actually take a pause in recording the podcast, but otherwise I don't think we've laughed this much. So, Jack Stripling of the College Matters podcast from the Chronicle of Higher Education, a good friend, a great reporter. Thank you so much for being on Future Year today.

I had so much fun. Thank you guys.

And to all of our listeners, I hope you enjoyed this as much as we did recording, and we'll see you next time on Future Year.