Undeterred by their lack of knowledge about the facts leading up to the firing of two faculty members at Mount St. Mary’s University of Maryland, more than 7,000 scholars have signed a statement demanding the faculty members’ reinstatement. Claiming that the “manner and circumstance of their dismissal raise serious questions about the respect given to moral conscience and intellectual freedom” at Mount St. Mary’s, the signatories are demanding that the administration be “held accountable for this violation.”
While none of us know the full story of what led to the removal of the two professors (one of the professors has since been told that his termination has been changed to a suspension), it is clear that much of the faculty furor has focused on the university’s president, Simon P. Newman, a former private-equity and strategic-consulting leader from Los Angeles, who was hired last year to lead the highly ranked yet financially struggling Catholic university. Newman recently found himself at the center of a faculty-fed firestorm over some intemperate remarks he made on retention strategies. According to campus newspaper reports, Newman was talking privately with some faculty members about retention strategies when he said: “This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t, you just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”
Newman admitted to a reporter at The Washington Post that although he does not remember the exact words he used in that informal faculty meeting, he sometimes uses harsh language: “Some of these conversations you may need to have with people are hard.”
Those conversations needed to happen at Mount St. Mary’s. Newman seems to understand that unless he is able to get his faculty to focus on core strategies — including retention rates — the institution will fail. While Mount St. Mary’s is ranked highly among regional colleges by U.S. News & World Report, the institution has struggled financially. In 2013, Forbes ranked it one of the least “financially fit schools in America,” assigning it a D grade on “financial fitness.” Mount St. Mary’s was one of 107 to receive the D grade — ranking 888th out of 927 in terms of the balance sheets and operational strength.
Mount St. Mary’s made a strategic choice in bringing in a successful businessman like Simon Newman, but the campus culture may take a while to adjust.
The “bunny” story broke because faculty members forwarded confidential emails to the campus newspaper. It is not a coincidence that the student newspaper’s faculty adviser was one of the two faculty members who were fired. And according to a statement from John E. Coyne, the chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees, there is “incontrovertible evidence of the existence of an organized, small group of faculty and recent alums working to undermine and ultimately cause the exit of President Newman. This group’s issues are born out of a real resistance to positive change at Mount St. Mary’s.” The statement goes on to say that the ultimate goal of the group is to undermine the president by “circulating mischaracterized accounts and flat-out falsehoods.”
Although Newman’s language was immoderate, he most likely thought he was talking with a faculty member who shared his goal of fiscal responsibility and viability. The reality is that many faculty members simply do not understand how to reach that goal, and unlike many college presidents who continue to defer to faculty who are reluctant to consider cost-cutting innovations, Newman appears to understand that a Forbes D rating is unsustainable.
Mount St. Mary’s is not alone in its precarious financial predicament. Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a professor of law at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, has written that “America is facing a higher-education bubble. Like the housing bubble, it is the product of cheap credit coupled with popular expectations of ever-increasing returns on investment, and as with housing prices, the cheap credit has caused college tuitions to vastly outpace inflation and family income. Now this bubble is bursting.” A report from Moody’s Investors Service forecasts that closures of small colleges and universities could triple by 2017.
To meet this new challenge, increasing numbers of colleges and universities are turning to business leaders to run their institutions. According to a study by the American Council on Education, 20 percent of U.S. college presidents in 2012 came from fields outside academe, up from 13 percent six years earlier. An Atlantic article points out that supporters of such leaders from the worlds of business or government or law say they are needed to innovate, control costs, and manage a complex organization like a college institution. “They have proven skills in fund raising and important connections in their professional networks.” But the article also acknowledges critics of “corporatization,” who charge that these nontraditional college presidents do not understand the culture and traditions of academe that value debate and shared governance.
Those kinds of critics at Mount St. Mary’s have problems with Simon Newman that go beyond retention strategies. Last fall the president announced major changes to the retiree health-insurance plan, engendering tremendous hostility. Three retired professors published a letter to the editor in the campus newspaper charging the new president with “dumping the retirees after decades of service,” and arguing that “other cost cutting measures should have been implemented.” “This,” they say, “is not the Mount we knew for decades.”
Indeed, it is not the Mount these professors knew for decades. That Mount was on firmer financial ground. Newman is a transformational leader who can help Mount St. Mary’s flourish. But he will have to be able to trust his faculty — drawing upon their input. And they will have to trust their president because, in order to survive, this university probably faces more hard choices.
