Let me describe the difficulties in hiring a college president.
Number
1 – You must look for a president who has been a president before as
nothing qualifies a president to be a president more than being a
president. Too often systems hire provosts from
other systems to move into a president’s job and it simply doesn’t
work.
Number
2 – UNLV needs its new president to have been a former college
president. Other than Carol Harter, UNLV has never hired a college
president who was a president of some other university.
That creates a big risk.
Number
3 – You don’t want to hire a president who doesn’t presently have a
job. Those presidents who are out of work are out of work for a good
reason and you don’t want them.
Number
4 – The field of candidates for president is at most 50. Because all
those 50 are presently employed, it’s difficult to get them to apply.
Number
5 – If you can get a presently-sitting president interested in the job,
these are the risks they run. If they apply for the job at your
school, they’ll be terminated at the end of
the year at their school even if they don’t get your job. Therefore,
few sitting presidents want to take the risk of applying for the job
unless they are guaranteed the job at the time they apply and that can’t
happen.
Number
6 – Hiring a college president is a very difficult and very public
affair. Everyone associated with the institution wants to be able to
interview that person, express an opinion of
that person’s competence and see if that candidate is compatible with
the environment of the university.
Number
7 - How then do you simply look for a president without prejudicing
that president’s present job? Simply hire a company that is a
headhunter to seek out the candidates.
Number
8 - When I was the Chancellor, I found headhunters were very competent
in what they do. They know every president of every major university in
the United States. That number is between
100 and 150 presidents. When retained, the headhunter will then talk
to the presidents they believe might want a new job.
Number
9 - Headhunters are not required to inform the university seeking the
new president of those presidents with whom they are speaking. If they
did so, the information would be leaked
and the president would find his or her job prejudiced.
Number
10 – The institution will probably have the headhunter reduce the
potential candidates to three or five, and with the permission of the
candidates, the names will be released to the
Board of Regents who will pursue the hiring of the new president.
Number
11- Applying for a job of a new president of a university is taking
your life and career into your hands. One false move and you end up
with no job.
I
have been involved in at least 15 presidential searches at various
universities. It is the most ticklish position to be involved in. One
of the primary representations you must make to
the applicant is that there has been no decision already made by the
governing board and that the search is merely a cover for supporting a
prior in-house candidate for the job.
UNLV
is mature enough to be able to recruit a first-class president who has
served as a president of a first-class university. I don’t want to see
this Board of Regents screw this search
up like it did in the hiring of Don Snyder as the acting president.
If
I were the president at a major university and saw how the selection of
Don Snyder was made, I would never prejudice my present position as a
college president by becoming involved in a
selection process that is at least suspect.
Carol Harter's academic productivity does not sustain Rogers' boasting of her capacity as a scholar let alone a philosopher. Two very short, unrecognized pedestrian and jointly authored books published by one of the field's weakest publishers and meant for middle and high school students do not constitute notable scholarship. Instead, they are cheap credentials. She authored very few essays and gained few citations to her work. Moreover, her administrative style is best depicted by a case she lost when president of SUNY Geneseo. The decision is available at http://www.reocities.com/Athens/crete/9234/ and undercuts any pretension she has as principled administrator, let alone a feminist. As president of UNLV, Harter's expulsion of Marcia Mcclure (probably the most productive scientist ever at UNLV) from UNLV further undercuts her claims as a feminist and competent administrator. Harter failed to move UNLV along. She ran the university as a political clubhouse, rewarding loyalists and punishing critics rather than recognizing merit, notably scholarship. She failed to attract outstanding personnel to the university. Smatresk was a similar sort of administrator, all hype and little delivery. If anything the momentum at the university is backwards in light of the cuts and the small amount of financial support from the university. New leadership is needed along with great support of its academic mission. That support needs to be expressed in cash. Moroever, his comments about recruitment are absurd especially as an argument for reappointing Harter. The barrier to recruiting outstanding administrators and faculty to UNLV starts with the university's poor quality, its disrespect for scholarship and the problems of Nevada itself, not least its aversion to sustaining public services, notably education. It might also be added that heavy handed private donors who wish to dominate university policy also erects a barrier to recruitment. Lamentably, someone as generous as Rogers has embarked on such an ill advised and intemperate course. He is losing much of his wonderful reputation. Still, it is for all of us to wish him a speedy recovery from his current bout with cancer and simply ignore his boorish behavior in this episode.
ReplyDeleteCarol Harter's academic productivity does not sustain Rogers' boasting of her capacity as a scholar let alone a philosopher. Two very short, unrecognized pedestrian and jointly authored books published by one of the field's weakest publishers and meant for middle and high school students do not constitute notable scholarship. Instead, they are cheap credentials. She authored very few essays and gained few citations to her work. Moreover, her administrative style is best depicted by a case she lost when president of SUNY Geneseo. The decision is available at http://www.reocities.com/Athens/crete/9234/ and undercuts any pretension she has as principled administrator, let alone a feminist. As president of UNLV, Harter's expulsion of Marcia Mcclure (probably the most productive scientist ever at UNLV) from UNLV further undercuts her claims as a feminist and competent administrator. Harter failed to move UNLV along. She ran the university as a political clubhouse, rewarding loyalists and punishing critics rather than recognizing merit, notably scholarship. She failed to attract outstanding personnel to the university. Smatresk was a similar sort of administrator, all hype and little delivery. If anything the momentum at the university is backwards in light of the cuts and the small amount of financial support from the university. New leadership is needed along with great support of its academic mission. That support needs to be expressed in cash. Moroever, his comments about recruitment are absurd especially as an argument for reappointing Harter. The barrier to recruiting outstanding administrators and faculty to UNLV starts with the university's poor quality, its disrespect for scholarship and the problems of Nevada itself, not least its aversion to sustaining public services, notably education. It might also be added that heavy handed private donors who wish to dominate university policy also erects a barrier to recruitment. Lamentably, someone as generous as Rogers has embarked on such an ill advised and intemperate course. He is losing much of his wonderful reputation. Still, it is for all of us to wish him a speedy recovery from his current bout with cancer and simply ignore his boorish behavior in this episode.
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