Hypothetical ‘Shark Tank’ Session Sets Off Real Worries at U. of Baltimore

About a week before deans at the University of Baltimore were set to meet with top administrators for two days to evaluate their program offerings, they received a new email about the meeting: Part of it would be modeled after the ABC show Shark Tank.

The meeting had been billed as a discussion of recommendations made by a faculty committee earlier in the semester about the university’s program offerings. The surprise was that a portion of it would be inspired by the reality-TV show, in which entrepreneurs pitch their businesses and products to a panel of celebrity investors.

“When we first were told about the program-prioritization retreat, we thought we were following program-prioritization protocol and, you know, we played the game,” said Deborah Kohl, associate dean of the college of arts and sciences. “It wasn’t until very close to the retreat that the brilliant idea of ‘let’s play Shark Tank’ was presented.”

For nonwatchers: In the Emmy-award-winning show about capitalism, entrepreneurs from across the country pitch their business ideas to a panel of investment titans, the sharks, who pepper the contestants with financial questions about their products and businesses. Sometimes investment negotiations take place after the pitch.

Deans and associate deans were instructed to take on the role of “CEO of your school,” and to assume they would be given a hypothetical $1 million to invest in their college’s academic program. They would give committee members a summary of their analysis of programs and how they would distribute “investment funds,” according to the email about the meeting, which was obtained by The Chronicle.

“The allocation should reflect where you believe your school will receive the greatest return on investment based on your analysis and presentation of achievable program outcomes (cost savings and/or enrollment and revenue growth),” read the memo.

The committee, comprising four top administrators plus the deans and associate deans who were not in the hot seat, would become the “Investment Committee” and ask presenters questions or provide more information, according to the memo.

And just like in Shark Tank, there would be clear losers. “Remember that some programs should receive zero investment dollars because they have been targeted for divestment,” read the memo.

The meeting — and the juxtaposition of academic management with a glitzy show about cutthroat capitalism — created a small frenzy among faculty members about whether drastic cuts were heading their way. Their worries were somewhat justified. Top administrators have recently discussed, for instance, dissolving the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences.

Darlene Brannigan Smith, the university’s provost and executive vice president, said the Shark Tank framing wasn’t designed to pit deans against one another other but to have them think differently about their academic programs. And Smith said she likes the show.

Getting Leadership to Think

“There is a tendency to want to maintain the status quo and protect all programs,” Smith said. “So how do you get the academic leadership, to encourage them to think, well, not all programs were created equal. And if you were in a forced decision, how would you allocate extremely limited resources?”

The $1 million in proposed investment was fake, but the university’s budget challenges are real. And the institution is on the hook to trim “a couple million dollars” from its operating budget by April 1, Smith said.

“The Shark Tank mentality was to sit there and say, ‘OK, now is the rest of the leadership team, do they agree that we as an institution should be investing here?” Smith said.

Kohl said she and her dean had to look up episodes of Shark Tank before the retreat because they had never seen it. And she didn’t like what she saw. “We were magnificently insulted that we were being asked to approach such a serious set of issues in that particular reality-TV way,” Kohl said.

Stephanie Gibson, a communications professor and president of the arts-and-sciences faculty senate, said she was concerned when she heard about the reality-TV theme for the meeting, even though she wasn’t there. “That metaphor doesn’t leave a lot of room for collegial activity,” Gibson said.

News of the exercise spread beyond the university’s deans even before it took place. Deans and associate deans asked department chairs to help before the meeting. One interim department chair said her predecessor had worked with program directors to help them write one-page descriptions of the value their programs brought to the university.

Smith said the Shark Tank idea was abandoned in the middle of the meeting when administrators felt the prompt wasn’t helping their ultimate goal.

“This doesn’t seem to be as relevant as the rich discussions we’re having about where to enhance, and how would we eliminate this program, enroll in another program that would have greater approach and broader reach,” she said.

The Shark Tank exercise was cut off early, but not before it yielded some hypothetical results. Among them: The college of arts and sciences would discontinue its history and philosophy degree programs, Kohl said. While the English and environmental-science degree programs wouldn’t be cut, the programs would have to be reconfigured for the college to continue its investment, she said.

And in the real world, although no changes are set in stone, administrators have discussed dissolving the college of arts and sciences in budget plans, Smith said. Enrollment at the university has been flat over the past 10 years, but in 2008 the institution had only three academic divisions, not the four there are today. So cutting the financial overhead of a college is natural to consider, she said.

Gibson, an advocate for the college of arts and sciences, said she doesn’t think the meeting will be a decision-driver for the budget process, but it will inform some administrators’ decision making.

“You can’t solve a budget deficit by reprioritizing your programs, but it’s not unrelated,” Gibson said. “All those things need to be considered together, and I think that a lot of people sort of felt like program prioritization was being used to help solve a deficit.”

Smith said that the university had not made any final decision about any colleges or about the budget deficit. And the exercise itself gave her pause.

“The idea of a Shark Tank, in retrospect, knowing that people were going to try to make it something that it wasn’t,” Smith said. “If you could have do-overs, I would easily eliminate it.”

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a breaking-news reporter. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.