The Impossible Life of a College President
Rose, Julie
The Impossible Life of a College President You think it's a life of oak panels and big ideas. It's more like being a PAC fundraiser. by Julie Rose It's the kind of fantasy that might creep...
...For the moment, Dunn has done her work—she went off for a drink with a few friends and unearthed a prospective donor...
...This is an enormous fundraising effort for a school whose enrollment has never exceeded 3,000 students, and in the past month-andahalf it has kept Dunn on the road almost 50 percent of the time...
...No one expects that running an institution is a lowbudget affair...
...It's a great job for the butterflyminded," he says...
...This helps to explain why presidents of colleges with academic backgrounds find themselves acting as chief executive officers, responding to the nonacademic parts of the college...
...It's not that spending ten hours a day with the tax code has lost its appeal, exactly...
...Adele Simmons, until recently president of Hampshire College, says being a college president means thinking in 15-minute segments...
...No, no, she says, shaking her head...
...when B.U...
...Dunn leaves the conversation with the impression that this woman had even attended Smith for a year...
...Because Smith's neighbor, Mount Holyoke, has just built the largest equestrian center in New England at a price of $1.8 million...
...Their fundraising pitch often sounds like that of Cold War generals justifying the arms race: we need more because the competition has more...
...Austin: Gerry Fonken, vice president for academic affairs and research, and William Cunningham, the dean of the business school...
...of robes, ceremonies, and honorary degrees...
...Another Canadian Club, please .") Why do I live like this...
...More often, however, the race for funds has become the sine qua non of the academic institution...
...In fact, she must raise $6 million in the next three months to meet a deadline for the construction of a new $12 million science center...
...And that's just one small part of Smith's five-year campaign to raise $125 million— a goal that has dominated much of Dunn's presidency since it began in 1985...
...Money stocks the library, stokes the boilers, hires the faculty, modernizes the computers...
...But Cunningham had done a terrific job raising funds for the business school...
...There are faculty who come for one hour to converse about the geology department's postal budget" Where college presidents differ from mayors, however, is this: only one group of constituents vote...
...At the moment, Dunn is a little flustered...
...Realizing her description can't convey what she saw, she admits that she knows very little about art...
...More than 60 of the nation's colleges are now trying to raise more than $100 million each for what are called "capital campaigns" And the presidents of three universities—Stanford, Boston University, and New York University—are each seeking more than $1 billion...
...Even at universities with endowments worth hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars, the presidents I spoke with felt they could never stop raising money...
...In 1987, a congressional study found that tuition at private and public universities during the 1980s grew at more than twice the rate of inflation...
...The shadow loves you," Dunn murmurs with a laugh...
...Kerr calls them "refusniks...
...Take, for example, John Sawyer of Williams College (1961-1973), who rid the school of its backwoods boys club image by dispensing with the entrenched fraternity system and admitting women...
...But the city lights rising up below push the fantasy aside, for now at least, and the life of briefcases and 15-minute billable bytes returns...
...True, these and other presidents also had power that is unknown today...
...She's on her own time now, away from the campus on holiday, visiting a friend of a friend when the Jasper Johns catches her eye...
...It is all she needs to hear...
...It provides aid to students who otherwise would be unable to attend...
...Many of these college presidents are like squirrels, putting nuts away for the future," he says...
...Fragmentation" is how Peter Pouncey, president of Amherst College, describes it...
...There is the presentation of the painting by George Inness that should be arriving soon...
...Since 1980, tuition and fees at Smith and other elite institutions have climbed more than 130 percent, to more than $16,000...
...In opening the drive, Silber said that B.U...
...The mayor analogy becomes even more apt when you realize that college presidents must cope with a number of constituencies—students, faculty, alumni, the board of trustees, and the public...
...At one point the director assures Dunn that he has told a prospective donor that the prints she wants to give are not in lieu of giving money to the capital campaign...
...American industrialists were pouring their fortunes into new schools—the University of Chicago, Stanford, Johns Hopkins...
...William Harper of the University of Chicago (1891-1906...
...if you want to learn something, come to Smith...
...I am not prepared enough ." This potpourri of prosaic presidential concerns inevitably breeds frustration...
...There's another more personal motive driving the culture of college fundraising...
...Another $450,000 will build an indoor riding arena...
...See "How to Be a College President," page 20) Instead of having time to pursue this intellectual grail, most college presidents are left dashing for the Eastern Shuttle in pursuit of the next big deal...
...Dunn asks Nygren to drum up a little fanfare at the museum gallery to honor the donor...
...They speak of donors and potential donors...
...Some are on a continual fundraising roll...
...One is for other administrators or the trustees, who now perform considerable fundraising work, to take on even more...
...It's a life of books...
...She's got the robes and the degrees, but in substance her life seems little different than those the harried professionals dream about fleeing...
...It mostly involves raising money and recruiting students" If the life of a college president is inevitably distracting, it becomes frenetic when the trustees saddle presidents with wildly ambitious fundraising goals...
...Never mind that the brochure also boasts that "Smith now provides the finest athletic facilities intended primarily for women anywhere in the world ." How about a little educational leadership that says: "If you want to ride horses, join the rodeo...
...When governing boards go hunting for presidents, it's often the candidates' fundraising, rather than academic, talents that catch the eye...
...There are at least two solutions...
...Reynolds is a fine academic who clearly strengthened the intellectual standards of the school...
...For Dunn's eye is caught not only by great paintings but by any cash donation that may come her way...
...could "stand still or go ahead...
...More important, maybe she feels enough fondness for Smith to donate a painting or two, perhaps even some cash (a prospect that would grow more likely were the woman, with a little encouragement, to return to finish her degree...
...It's 8:30 p.m.—puts me in at National at 10:00, the Hilton at 10:45, it'll take two more hours to pull the presentation together, and, Jesus, I've got to be sharp at that 7:30 breakfast when I make my pitch...
...College presidents, not without a trace of self-pity, liken themselves to mayors...
...Of a college, that is...
...Why is this necessary...
...If he could sell the mission of the business school, why not the whole university...
...But federal cutbacks alone can't account for the rampant tuition inflation of the past decade...
...Of the $125 million that Mary Maples Dunn is currently chasing, $6 million is for the indoor track and tennis facility...
...She glances for the woman's last name and does not find it...
...The second line of attack—tougher to initiate but potentially transforming—is to rethink how much money colleges really need...
...As harried professionals unlock leather briefcases, pour Canadian Club, and gaze sternly at ledger sheets and legal briefs, minds begin to wander...
...Is this really any way to run an academic institution...
...It is a day in early December in which Dunn has let me sit in on her many meetings on campus...
...A president conceives of his or her constituency as the board of trustees that hired them," the dean said...
...The item mentioned this fact in passing, dwelling instead on Reynolds's two successful capital campaigns...
...Or, perhaps more troublesome, that they would fall behind in the race for the most up-to-date equipment, i.e...
...Such might have been the case in 1984, when the regents of the University of Texas began a search to replace Peter Flawn, the retiring president of U.T...
...had upgraded their athletic facilities...
...computers...
...and Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia (1902-1945), among others...
...Back at her desk a few weeks later, Dunn is meeting with Smith's new museum director, Ed Nygren...
...reached its goal of $200 million a year ahead of schedule, John Silber, the university's president, immediately set his sights on $1 billion by the year 2000...
...Then, for Dunn, her hostess gets to the most important part: her one great ambition left in life is to finish her baccalaureate...
...A college presidency seems like a dream job...
...You get to do something for about a minute and a quarter...
...the men left their mark as well...
...To be sure, their success was due in part to the moment...
...they thumb through the alumni directory a few more times...
...At the University of Chicago, Robert Hutchins (1929-1951) established the Great Books program, which today deserves emulation...
...Woodrow Wilson could dismiss faculty at will...
...Antisemites and backwoods boys American university presidents haven't always been too busy to think about education...
...In the end, the choice came down to two candidates, both at U.T...
...Butterflies and massages The college president's life is, of course, going to be more fragmented and frustrating than The Fantasy allows...
...She and Nygren press on to another subject—gifts already given...
...And, sure enough, Simmons thinks that way—as she ran down for me the many activities of her day, her schedule included time for a massage...
...improving the college's facilities is critical if Smith is to attract these scholar-athletes...
...I don't read as much [in her field of American colonial history] as I used to," she said...
...Austin...
...Soulful...
...Take a recent news item about the retirement of Thomas Reynolds, who has been president of Bates College for the past 20 years...
...I think we'll die first," she says...
...Now meet Mary Maples Dunn, president of Smith College and no stranger to the billable time-byte herself...
...She is trying to describe to Nygrenther hostess's collection...
...As bankers, lawyers, and bureaucratic brass ponder their overworked bodies and underfed souls, The Fantasy takes shape: If only I were president...
...And, as if that didn't tax their time, few can resist invitations to sit on corporate boards, another prestige-enhancer...
...A chance to ask the big questions, like what was Proust trying to say with the madeleine anyway...
...Gone were the ecclesiastical ties that had bound many institutions from their founding in the 17th century through the Civil War...
...They worried about inflation...
...Maybe it's under her maiden name, Dunn muses...
...The position of president has deteriorated," said one typical respondent...
...But it wasn't just the times...
...Completing the background check, however, is someone else's job...
...With a record like that, the public—and college presidents—ought to be more skeptical about what constitutes a necessity...
...The whole house had a feeling of, mmm, the minimalist to it...
...Some brave ones, like Dunn, will even try to teach a course, but it's usually a short-lived attempt...
...All want a piece of the president's day...
...It's just that after a few decades of power and money, it's time for something more, well, cerebral...
...Why would they turn it down...
...And universities correctly argue that they've been hurt by declining federal support, including the erosion of financial aid for needy students during the Reagan years, and the "capital starvation" that has resulted in deterioration of research facilities...
...Joseph Duffy, chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, says his job includes, among other things, running a bus line and providing housing, food, and custodial services...
...Rather than exercising tough leadership to restrain costs, university presidents take to the road...
...Each group could create gridlock for a president," says one former dean...
...Listen to Smith's capital campaign brochure: "By the fall of 1985, most of the colleges that compete with Smith...
...The job of college president should involve a large amount of intellectual leadership, including recruiting talented faculty, weeding out tenured deadwood, and championing curricular reforms...
...During the latter part of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century there were presidents whose leadership, intellectual and otherwise, was never in question: Charles Eliot of Harvard (1869-1909...
...the home's striking works of contemporary art, and Dunn listens attentively as her hostess describes her collection...
...It's a great way to be remembered...
...by Julie Rose It's the kind of fantasy that might creep through the cabin of the Eastern Shuttle just after take-off...
...that salaries, library, and maintenance costs would rise unchecked...
...His contemporary, Nicholas Murray Butler, saved Lionel Trilling's job at Columbia by intervening with the WASPish English department dons who wanted to deny Trilling tenure because he was a Jew...
...It is an important work...
...Woodrow Wilson of Princeton (1902-1910...
...No wonder, then, that when Clark Kerr, the former president of the University of California, conducted a study for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education in 1986, he found that 50 percent of the traditional candidates for the top college job— provosts, deans, and vice presidents for academic affairs—didn't want it...
...But at least one college president, who declined to be quoted, thinks that colleges have enough for their current needs and beyond...
...The costs are real and escalating...
...In addition, presidents almost inevitably play a role in the life of the town where their institution is located...
...We're at the takeoff point to become one of the ten best universities in the nation ." Silber talks about education the way many college presidents do: "best," they imply, gets measured in money, not knowledge...
...While Cunningham, whose doctorate was in marketing, had all the seemingly essential exterior graces, he was viewed as no great intellect by the faculty...
...A world of libraries, quadrangles, and faculty clubs...
...better yet, it arrived with a $100,000 donation...
...She knows quite a bit more, however, about fundraising, and she reaches quickly for the book to her right, a thick, thumbed volume: the Smith College alumni directory...
...Today, presidential leadership may seem less monumental, but it can still be strong...
...The shadow for Mary Dunn—and most of today's college presidents—is the constant specter of money...
...It's just one of a number of Julie Rose is a Northampton writer...
Vol. 21 • March 1989 • No. 2
