Sid Williams, champion of chiropractic education, tries to broaden the university he founded
It’s hard to tell where Sidney E. Williams ends and Life University begins.
Throughout the campus of converted warehouses in this fast-growing suburb of Atlanta, Mr. Williams can be seen grinning down from life-sized portraits. He preaches on the university’s primary mission -- educating chiropractors -- from closed-circuit television monitors in almost every hallway. A bronze bust of him gazes out at the foyer of the main administrative offices.
With his gravelly Georgia accent; intense, deep-set eyes; and natty suits, he cuts a vivid figure.
Sid Williams is the most famous chiropractor in Georgia, if not everywhere else. He stars in commercials for the university that air during Atlanta Braves games and on late-night television. There are now 3,500 students enrolled at Life, which he says he started in 1974 with 18 students and $40,000.
Under “Dr. Sid,” as he is known around here, Life has grown into an institution that is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools as well as the Council on Chiropractic Education, and had annual expenditures of $51.8-million in 1997-98, according to its Internal Revenue Service filings. Life even has a satellite campus offering chiropractic courses in the San Francisco Bay area.
The university’s academic ambitions have grown, too. Besides the doctor-of-chiropractic degree offered by the country’s 13 other chiropractic colleges, Life also offers a master’s degree in “sport health science” for coaches, and, for the first time, this fall, bachelor’s degrees in 32 areas, mostly related to biological sciences or the management of chiropractic careers.
And that, Mr. Williams says, is only the beginning. He plans to expand the curriculum to include more non-chiropractic fields for undergraduate and graduate students. He also plans to support global research projects on the effectiveness of chiropractic “adjustments” in treating a multitude of ailments.
Not all chiropractors appreciate Mr. Williams’s flamboyant style, however, nor do many of them approve of the way he has chosen to run the not-for-profit university. Among their complaints is that he is neglecting the university’s basic mission -- educating chiropractors -- by offering other degrees and majors.
Such criticisms don’t deter Mr. Williams. His ambitious plans, along with Life’s current multimillion-dollar advertising campaign and a title-winning intercollegiate athletics program, he reasons, can lead chiropractors into the promised land: the mainstream of health-care professionals.
“We’re going to be talking about 50 degrees,” he rasps. “We’re going to be talking about 5,000 students. We might be talking about a law school, nurses’ training, and wellness practitioners.
“I’m going to have something of substance to show people.”
The story of Life University spills out of a rambling conversation with Mr. Williams that takes most of an afternoon in his well-appointed office -- which includes, among other things, the tombstone of the first-ever chiropractic patient, who received an adjustment in 1895 -- and on an impromptu tour of two of the university’s clinics, in suburban Atlanta.
As preached by Mr. Williams and Life professors, the fundamental theory of chiropractic is that almost every ailment -- lower-back pain, headaches, allergies -- results from subluxations, or blockages of nerve energy, which can be relieved by frequent “adjustments” of the vertebrae. But the existence of subluxations has never been proved, and chiropractors have been dismissed as quacks by the medical establishment for much of this century. On occasion, they were even jailed for practicing medicine without a license.
In recent decades, however, along with other forms of alternative medicine, such as acupuncture and osteopathy, chiropractic has become more popular. According to the American Chiropractic Association, 3.6 per cent of Americans reported being treated by chiropractors in 1980; a 1993 survey found that 7 per cent of the population had seen chiropractors for treatment. Most health plans now reimburse patients for chiropractic treatment, according to the group. And, as of 1992, the American Medical Association’s guidelines state that physicians may refer patients to chiropractors for therapeutic or diagnostic services.
When he is tired, Mr. Williams limps slightly from a knee injury he sustained during his college-football days in the early 1950s, at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His high-school and college football careers are recorded in an elaborate display that stretches around three walls in the administration building’s foyer.
A chiropractor worked on his knee after college, and, thus inspired, Mr. Williams headed straight for Palmer College of Chiropractic, in Davenport, Iowa. He and his wife, Nell K. Williams, earned degrees at Palmer in 1956 -- both of which are also dutifully recorded on the wall -- and returned to Georgia to practice.
Some 20 years later, Mr. Williams says, he cobbled together $40,000 from fellow chiropractors, assumed the payments on an old warehouse, and started teaching. “We had 18 students, one classroom, and a few books in the library,” he recalls.
The college sank $550,000 into debt in its second year and attracted only five new students, he adds. Since then, however, Life has grown steadily. The building that Mr. Williams took over in 1974 now is one of five converted warehouses that contain the university’s classrooms, laboratories, and offices.
He boasts that he has been able to finance the university’s expansion almost entirely on his own, with contributions from fellow chiropractors. Life’s donor lists are still dominated by chiropractors, including quite a number of university employees. Of the 91 individuals who have given the university at least $10,000 during their lifetimes, including Mr. and Ms. Williams, 22 have positions there.
The City of Marietta has helped out, too, with a $36.4-million tax-exempt bond issue in 1995 that went toward construction costs for Life’s athletics center and other facilities.
Mr. Williams has not done poorly by Life’s success, either, according to I.R.S. filings. In 1997-98, his salary and benefits totaled $900,923, making him one of the highest-paid university presidents in the country. (In a 1996-97 survey of private college presidents, The Chronicle found that the highest-paid at a research university was Torsten N. Wiesel, of Rockefeller University, whose total compensation was $546,966.)
Mr. Williams’s wife, who is vice-president for student affairs, had salary and benefits of $468,500. Her sister, Mildred Kimbrough, is an assistant vice-president, with total compensation of $323,271. A childhood friend of Mr. Williams, Durie D. Humber, is a vice-president, with total compensation of $625,870, according to campus records. The Williams’s daughter Kim is a chiropractor who works for the university.
Experts on non-profit organizations say such institutions can run into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service by giving high salaries to many people with direct ties to the president. One expert, who was briefed on Life’s tax records, and who asked not to be named, said those are the kinds of figures that attract I.R.S. attention.
Life officials did not respond to inquiries about compensation for Mr. Williams and the other employees.
The university’s fledgling program for non-chiropractic students is starting to grow, with 200 freshmen expected for the fall quarter. The undergraduate curriculum and the new degrees grew out of a few classes offered to students as prerequisites for the chiropractic program, says Keith Asplin, vice-president for academic affairs.
The Council on Chiropractic Education requires 90 hours of undergraduate course work for the doctor-of-chiropractic degree, and Life officials decided to begin offering those classes, in areas such as chemistry, physics, and psychology, in the early 1980s. Life also offers courses in fields that might be useful to chiropractors, such as nutrition and business. Courses in those fields have been assembled as majors for bachelor-of-science and bachelor-of-business-administration degrees, Mr. Asplin says.
In 1997-98, the university reported $46-million in tuition revenues, which represented 87 per cent of its total reported revenues. Enrollment more than doubled from 1989 to 1995, reaching 4,232. It has fallen off since then, to 3,851 last fall, because of increased competition from state colleges for undergraduate students, college officials say.
The university’s growth in the early 1990s coincided with the availability of Health Education Assistance Loans, administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Students at chiropractic colleges defaulted on HEAL loans at very high rates compared to other professionals; while only about 5 per cent of HEAL borrowers are in default nationally, 191 graduates of Life University are in default -- nearly 14 per cent of all defaulters.
Life stopped offering HEAL loans in 1993, and in a recent survey of default rates in the Federal Family Education Loan Program, the university’s rate of 3.8 per cent was among the lowest in Georgia.
Increasing enrollment may be attractive, but research seems to be where Mr. Williams’s heart is. His eyes gleam when he talks about projects for chiropractic research in Costa Rica and Kenya, and he speaks hopefully of studies to be conducted under the auspices of the World Health Organization.
However, little grant money is available for chiropractic research, says Bruce Pfleger, Life’s director of research. As a result, all of the financing for Life’s research comes from the university. For example, Mr. Williams has authorized $55,000 for a pilot study on the effects of chiropractic treatments on people suffering from jet lag.
“Fund raising is a university function, but we have a number of contributors -- we get equipment donated from the chiropractic community and from manufacturers,” Mr. Pfleger says.
Now, Mr. Williams says, he plans to ask private corporations for research grants. A larger study on jet lag is the first project he plans to pitch. “We’re going to offer [the opportunity to provide] funding to the airlines, the truck lines, anybody who needs to know about jet lag.”
Companies will have the chance to donate $50,000 to $150,000 each to sponsor the study, budgeted at close to $500,000, which is to include research on the effects of chiropractic adjustments on jet-lagged athletes at the 2000 Olympic Games. Contributors will be listed as “gold,” “silver,” or “bronze” sponsors.
“We’re going to be respected in research,” Mr. Williams says, leaning forward in his chair and whacking his visitor on the knee by way of emphasis.
What’s more, Mr. Williams has gotten Life University plenty of notice on the sports pages. Running Eagles teams in men’s basketball, cross country, and track won National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics titles last year.
Mr. Williams takes credit for those accomplishments, noting that he has provided scholarships and budgets to make the athletics programs competitive. Life offers twice the number of scholarships given by other N.A.I.A. programs in Georgia, he says.
Mr. Williams’s manner has not earned him universal praise. He has fought not just with physicians, but also with fellow chiropractors, over both personal issues and state regulation of chiropractic. These days, chiropractors not affiliated with Life express suspicion about the university’s new focus on non-chiropractic studies.
“It’s kind of like, in your practice, the more you water down what you’re doing, you lose emphasis on what you should be doing,” says Hewett M. Alden, a chiropractor in Clarkston, Ga., and a former member of the Georgia State Board of Chiropractic Examiners. He is a board member of Palmer College.
Some observers also ask whether Life can attract enough non-chiropractic students willing to pay $6,000 per year, when many public colleges in the Atlanta area offer similar courses at much lower costs.
Life’s advantage over nearby colleges, responds Mr. Asplin, the academic vice-president, is that it can offer more full-time faculty members to students, with a greater degree of one-on-one interaction. The rush of television ads has already started to attract more attention to the non-chiropractic programs, he says. Life spent $2.1-million on advertising in 1997-98, nearly as much as the $2.6-million it spent on scholarships and fellowships.
“I’m doing a lotta damn talking,” Mr. Williams says, suddenly realizing that hours have passed. He escorts his visitor to the front of the administration building, where Ms. Williams has just driven up in a gleaming Cadillac.
Before getting in, he tells one last story, about a trip he took to Oral Roberts University, in Tulsa, Okla., site of a 60-foot-tall sculpture of a pair of praying hands.
Life is constructing its own sculpture of hands, of similar size, Mr. Williams says. They will mime one of chiropractic’s symbols: one hand outstretched, and the other grasping the wrist of the first hand, like a chiropractor giving an adjustment.
They will be modeled on Mr. Williams’s hands -- with his Georgia Tech football rings -- preserved for as long as the university stands. “That’s where I’m going to put them,” he says, pointing out a spot by the university’s bell tower, which is dedicated to the memory of chiropractors who were jailed for practicing their craft.
With the larger-than-life hands, it will be even harder to tell where Mr. Williams ends and the university starts.
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Page: A49