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

Links We Mention

Higher Ed Controversy Draft, College Matter from the Chronicle

Chapters

0:00 - Intro

5:12 - March Madness for Higher Ed Controversies

8:53 - Controversies on the Bubble

12:30 - Jetgate

16:17 - The UVA Re-Hire

20:01 - Presidential Compensation

23:49 - The Prominent Role of Athletics in Scandals

28:42 - Who’s Watching Higher Ed?

31:38 - What Scandals Tell Us About Higher Ed Financing

38:38 - The State of the College Presidency

48:59 - Fighting Factions

Transcript

Michael Horn

Jeff, over the years, I know one of our personal favorites at Future U 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.

Jeff Selingo

And today, we're gonna 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 U

Sponsor

This episode of Future U 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 U 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 U 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.

Jeff Selingo

I'm Michael Horn, and I'm Jeff Selingo. 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.

Michael Horn

Yes. I'm I'm tracking You so far, Jeff. Where's it going?

Jeff Selingo

Okay. So, Michael, when one of those reporters, Jack Stripling, who now hosts the Chronicle's 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 25th episode, Jack, along with Sarah Brown, a Sr. 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 Chronicles. So Jack, who's joining us now, maybe I'll blame you for that. But I I'm not gonna 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 gonna go need to listen to that March 25th episode of of College Matters.

Jack Stripling

Yeah. That's true, Jeff. So when I was a reporter at the Opelika-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 kinda 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.

Jeff Selingo

That's an amazing story. I I I love the fact that you had 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.

Jack Stripling

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.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. I'm gonna have to Look at that. Well, besides a long career in journalism, Jack worked at the 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 in getting hired.

Jack Stripling

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.

Jeff Selingo

Well, 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.

March Madness for Higher Ed Controversies 

Jack Stripling

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

Jeff Selingo

So it's great to see you, Jack, and welcome to Future U. 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?

Jack Stripling

I do. I do. And I I'm very nervous because the crowd, I think, is gonna be on your side. But I'm gonna 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.

Michael Horn

I love it. And in 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 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 I'll get to say the starting lineup, if you will, for each of you. Sarah, I I think we could nickname her team the Cinderellas, because as she said, many of hers were very under the radar. But for Hot Mic, she had drown the bunnies. For those who don't remember, that occurred at Mount Saint Mary's University from president there. We'll get more into that. Hey Big Spender. Her 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 gonna get into that one. And then her wildcard 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 a 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 Caslen, at 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 I confess that would have been under Hot Mic for me, but anyway Yeah.

Jack Stripling

A personal favorite nonetheless. You know, category.

Michael Horn

Yeah, a good one. Nothing says I really wanna 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.

Jack Stripling

I was not tased, just to clarify.

Michael Horn

No. You were not tased.  But and then, Jack, your team I I think I think of your team as sort of like the the blue chips. Right?

Jack Stripling

The chalk picks. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Horn

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 wildcard, was Jetgate, from your, one one of your past colleges, Auburn University and Tommy Tuberville there.

Controversies on the Bubble

Jack Stripling

Complicated story to to explain, but a personal favorite.

Michael Horn

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?

Jack Stripling

Well, I mean, look. You can't 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 bestseller. 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 it felt like a criminal act to leave Jerry Falwell Jr. off of this list.

Michael Horn

Agreed.

Jack Stripling

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?

Michael Horn

Think was like 2020. '18 '18.

Jack Stripling

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 Miami. 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 eighties without having a sex scandal. So it's kind of ironic that Jerry Falwell Jr. essentially had his career undone by a sex scandal. 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. 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 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 shot guns with Jerry. at 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 I just couldn't do it.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. We're gonna get back to that, Jack, because, you know, I sometimes think that presidents have become a little boring. Don't you think, Michael?

Michael Horn

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

Jeff Selingo

Well, first of all, I wanna 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 to us?

Jack Stripling

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

Michael Horn

Yeah. Let's put it in the show notes. We'll Yeah.

Jeff Selingo

We'll put it the show notes, but it's a great bingo card so you can follow along, which I

Jetgate

Jack Stripling

Listeners are trying to follow along. They they don't know how to process this information, Jeff. Well, yeah. 

Jeff Selingo

I'm probably the oldster here, so I would have loved to crash that Chronicle draft. I'm a little disappointed you didn't invite me. And, you know, you said the show was about a quarter of century, a quarter century of scandal. So I wanted to go back a bit further, Michael, all the way back to 2003. Okay. 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 Jetgate Jetgate, 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 the 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 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 la a lot of other presidents in your draft who got done in by, you know, expensive tastes. But, you know, Jack, probably what the one that surprised me the most on your team, and and that's Teresa Sullivan, because it's really not a name that probably would be would be remembered today if not for the efforts to oust her over, you know, not moving fast enough at the University of Virginia to adopt online education. And this was particularly in the moment when MOOCs, you know, massive online open courses, were coming on to 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 kinda curious about why you included that. Part of me makes an inch you know, part of what makes an interesting in today's 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?

The UVA Re-Hire

Jack Stripling

I'm still stuck on the fact that you said I admitted that it wouldn't break through today. Yeah. That that I made this concession, but 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 on to something about what the faculty response 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 Teresa 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 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 we're probably gonna have a bunch of committees, you know, which is faculty's love language, we're gonna potentially have some committees. And so something remarkable happens. Right? The board folds. They they reinstate Teresa 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 opinion. 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?

Jeff Selingo

No. I 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.

Jack Stripling

And, you know I guess we did see 

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. Saw that at Penn. And and or and I'm also kinda fascinated. Sarah mentions this photo that you have in the conference room at the Chronicle of the faculty kinda surrounding Teresa Sullivan. She she described it on the on the show.

Jack Stripling

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

Jeff Selingo

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?

Presidential Compensation

Michael Horn

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 you were having the conversation, and it was like just rampant lack of remembrance, or 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 University. I'd I'd I did not know that. The Bluefield story, which is an incredible one. The Olive Jar on Andy's team. And, Jack, you're gonna be mortified by this given your your role in the story, not being tased, but being present for the tasing. I I guess I must have been under a rock, or I was writing my first book at the time with no salary, but but I have zero recollection, of the don't tase me, bro story.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah,  Michael, don't feel bad. I I didn't remember two of them, Jack. Okay. The Bluefield State, where the president published the Substack newsletter bashing his own faculty for months. Also, the $550 olive jar for the renovation of the president's house at the University of of Akron. And and also this angry olive game that, I guess, was created from it, which I just laughed when when I heard about that. And and and I guess, you know, 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 99 used to just generate a lot more controversy, I think, than it does now. And and I kinda wonder why. Jack, I'd be kinda 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 use 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 kinda surprising to me. You know, and add to that, you know, the million dollar press 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.

Jack Stripling

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

Jeff Selingo

I mean, there's so many other things to raise hackles about

Jack Stripling

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love  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 costs to fire the football coach. I was looking at a story. USA Today did an analysis, I guess, last year that showed that major college athletics departments were gonna spend $200,000,000 collectively in the hiring and firing of football coaches and staff. So if you wanna get ticked off about something, it's probably gonna be athletic spending. The the other thing I'd say about this, Jeff, and I'm 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 is part of that story. If you think about the financial crisis of two thousand eight 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, you know, 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.

Michael Horn

It's funny when you put those numbers. In contrast with each other. The olive jar doesn't sound that that bad. But

The Prominent Role of Athletics in Scandals

Jack Stripling

They got a steep deal on the olive jar. Yeah. They're

Michael Horn

Right? Like, he sort of got off a little little harsh. But okay. So what I really wanna ask, though, is, we're 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 and you you just sort of hit on it, Jack, which is that athletics is a part of the zeitgeist right now in a lot of ways around sort of outrage in different ways around higher ed, and 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 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 is really a big undercurrent of these scandals, in higher ed?

Jack Stripling

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

Michael Horn

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

Jack Stripling

Yeah. Something that I I I'm drawn to as a reporter. It usually bridges the interest and passions of the university community and the public at large. And there's no better 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

Michael Horn

That was a good drop. Was a good of of

Jeff Selingo

Yale. Yeah. I appreciate that.

Jack Stripling

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 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, you know, power five 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 Plato. They're thought 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 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 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. Maybe more important.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. Maybe more important.

Jack Stripling

And and again, this was a I 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 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.

Who’s Watching Higher Ed?

Jeff Selingo

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 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, Jack, 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, whereas was following local reporters like you. And and we've seen so that that's another change. I I have a feeling over the last ten 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.

Jack Stripling

Well, student newspapers are doing a good job.

Jeff Selingo

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

Jack Stripling

Well, I do think that you've pointed something out that's important, Jeff, which is that we we don't have journalists minding the story 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 gonna 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.

What Scandals Tell Us About Higher Ed Financing 

Michael Horn

So, Jack, the next thing that sort of came out loud and clear to me in the stories that you all chose is what it says about the shaky finances of higher ed in different regards. So you 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 the 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 the 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 Saint Mary's story, the president, you know, the drown the bunnies has this element of 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 gonna be a plug for you, of who gets in and why and and whether they should. And then Bluefield State has this element of of cleaning up the finances of a school that's really struggling in 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 the $6,000,000, 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 a reporter there was, when Gee decided to leave Brown after just two years, for the greener, more posh pastures at Vanderbilt, where his salary would be a 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

Jack Stripling

And the story ended after that. Nothing else

Michael Horn

So I'll jump ahead. One of the things that's interesting, I think, is every single time Gee jumped to the next story sorry, presidency, he said it would be his last Uh-huh. Interestingly enough. He promised every single one. So some of these stories obviously are from pre-2008 and and the financial crisis that really broke open higher ed's business model in my view. But I I guess I'm curious to hear your take about, you know, the what these stories say about the state of higher ed financing.

Jack Stripling

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

Michael Horn

I'm trying to be serious for a moment.

Jack Stripling

Yeah, yeah. Damn it. Alright. Okay. We should explain Drown the Bunnies, though. That was a He was the president Simon Newman was the president of Mount Saint Mary's. Is that right? Yep. Yep. Yep.

Jeff Selingo

The Mount, as they call

Michael Horn

Yeah. And Where I went to summer camp for  for me. Morgan Wooten used to be the coach there, So I for the summer. Yeah.

Jack Stripling

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 as cuddly bunny as cuddly bunnies, and you have to drown the bunnies. I think they wanted them to leave before a certain deadline so they wouldn't be counted as

Michael Horn

Before the first semester. Right? So they wouldn't count in in in I mean, I think it was probably The

Jeff Selingo

retention. It was about retention rates. Right. Yeah.

Michael Horn

We right. If you got them out before October, they wouldn't even count as enrolled students or something like that in IPEDS.

Jack Stripling

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. I mean, Wellesley College just made news for doing what everyone knew would eventually happen, putting its sick sticker price above a hundred thousand dollars 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 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. Mhmm. 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 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.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. Well, okay. So we're gonna take  back on the other side with Jack, we're gonna talk about the professionalization of the presidency and tensions, more about these tensions between different factions on campus. That's ahead on Future U.

Michael Horn

This episode of Future U 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.

The State of the College Presidency

Jeff Selingo

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 at USprogram.gatesfoundation.org. So welcome back to Future U. And 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 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.

Jack Stripling

Yeah. Probably

Jeff Selingo

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 Fain, 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.

Michael Horn

You think the 808 area code gave the way?

Jeff Selingo

I know. It's like I mean, of course, left unsaid in all of this was why Dobell 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 and 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.

Jack Stripling

That was the beginning of the end.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. I guess it is. I 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 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.

Michael Horn

Keep rolling, Jeff. Keep rolling. Who else? Yeah.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. So we also have Robin, Capart at Bluefield, Simon Newman, of course, we've talked about it at Saint Mary's, Robert Casselin at the University of South Carolina, 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 and, Jack, you know, a few of these people I listed were known for their scandals, to be honest with you, not much else. I don't think they were really terribly successful presidents. 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 who are actually doing necessarily the good work.

Jack Stripling

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.

Michael Horn

This is like receiving the tablets right now. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah.

Jack Stripling

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. You know, other advice that I have heard from other people, and I I suspect you guys have heard this too, is 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 I really I really hate the narrative that the college presidency is an impossible job that even a four star general can't do. I I I kinda find that hard to believe. I 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. Right. We don't write a lot about the planes that land safely. And so I'm I'm not. 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 kinda 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 $400,000,000 in funding to the university, And the university accedes to these federal demands related to antisemitism that many had thought would be total nonstarters 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 your institutional autonomy, and the other is toward $400,000,000, which is another existential amount of money for you, what is your North Star? You know, 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, 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 gonna 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.

Michael Horn

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

Jeff Selingo

mean, I I I think it's impossible at some institutions where they don't really know their core values that they Michael, I know we're gonna be talking about culture on the show, coming up, at, on a future, episode. But, you know, going back to Jack's point on Columbia, the other thing is there, they had an interim president during this issue with the with with Trump. And and so that president, a, who knows if they were gonna 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 didn't you know, they weren't fully in the role. They weren't in the role for very long. They didn't really know if they were gonna have the job forever. I mean, that's not exactly a position of strength, even within, you know, the Columbia system where faculty tend to have a a a ton of power. I also think it's interesting now, Jack, that you're you're facing a faculty you know, we tend to think of the faculty as a monolith. And what's interesting to me is that, you know, at a place like Columbia, for example, we see all these stories 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 and suddenly now you have faculty on faculty. Yep. 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 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 Azziz sold us. It takes courage. Like and and that 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.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Yeah.

Jack Stripling

Well, it's amazing too, Jeff. I Mean, I'm sorry, Mike. Just one last thing on this. I 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 wanna 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. 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, you know, is kind of what happens here. And and I think we see this cycle a lot, and I don't think it's a coincidence. So, anyway, I'm sorry to cut you off.

Fighting Factions

Michael Horn

No. I I I was gonna say  is becoming sort of the the 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 and that's the other thing that jumped out to me that I'd I'd love to end the conversation on, which is the fighting factions, if you will, on campus and the struggle to make decisions. And and I wanna read this part of your podcast, Jack. You're 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 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? This is 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 its shares. So this is the president of Bluefield State writing this. And then I've gotta be honest with you, maybe the line of the podcast, Andy jumps in and says, fact check, true. And so I just wanted to know, like, what does this say about higher education 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 at on on our campuses?

Jack Stripling

Well, I don't know who looks worse in that story, Michael. The faculty member or the president who Or the perhaps. Who wrote a blog about this. I I'm not sure. I haven't revisited How to Win Friends and Influence People lately, but I I don't know that starting a blog about how much you hate them is is necessarily consistent with what the Harvard Business Review would tell.

Michael Horn

No. No. I mean, it probably puts him in the lost soul category as well, but

Jack Stripling

Yeah. I do think that it's an example, though, of you know, I mean, we've seen this with 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 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 tenant 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. 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, that they they are always complaining, but then you invite them to the meeting, and they either don't come or they're unprepared.

Michael Horn

One faculty member to another, so to speak.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. They kinda sound like journalists, by the way, Jack.

Jack Stripling

Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yes. Always  No solutions. I did give a solution earlier to the presidency. Right? Find your values and stick to them.

Michael Horn

You did. You stood you stand apart.

Jack Stripling

Yes. Yes. But but but any case, I 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 any time I've been covering it. And I guess, I would say good night and good luck to to the people who are trying to navigate all this.

Jeff Selingo

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

Jack Stripling

I obviously won, Jeff. That was definitive. No. We you know, part of this game, if people didn't understand it, was to build essentially a a fantasy football team of college scandals. And I noticed from this that everybody's personality was sort of reflected in this. Our our producer referred to Sarah Brown's picks as, quote, the record store picks. These were the under the radar, you know, indie bands of higher ed controversies that 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.

Michael Horn

That's why Jeff and I have a

Jeff Selingo

That's why we have a podcast. Right.

Jack Stripling

You guys built a whole industry to promote a book. Exactly.

Jeff Selingo

And and I just wanna know when is the one shining moment, you know, video going to come out of your of your time together? That's that's where we We're working on the highlight reel as we speak.

Jack Stripling

Good. Good. Well, Jack Stripling, this has  I I think that's the best word for this, the 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 for the Chronicle of Higher Education, a good friend, a great reporter. Thank you so much for being on Future U today. I had so much fun. Thank You, guys.

Jeff Selingo

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 U.