University of Illinois Spent Six-Figures Before Suspending Search for a New Provost

Using records obtained by the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, the Daily Illini reports the University of Illinois spent $147,500 before suspending its search for a provost. The university paid search firm Greenwood/Asher & Associates Inc. $43,083.34 for professional services finding and conducting background research on potential candidates, and the university spent $104,416.66 on airfare and accommodations for 15 first-round candidate interviews.

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How do you define 'interview'?

The University of Nebraska released the records of all candidates interviewed for the university's presidency after a ruling by the attorney general, the Nebraska City News-Press reported. The university had released information on its four finalists but not other candidates who weren't selected as finalists but did participate in informal "interviews." Information on applicants who agree to be interviewed for public jobs is public record. However, the university didn't consider the informal "interviews" to fall under this law.

The University of Nebraska must make public the records of job applicants who are screened in face-to-face meetings, the state's attorney general said in an 2004 opinion.

Attorney General Jon Bruning ordered the University of Nebraska, a public university, to disclose the names of eight candidates it interviewed for the school's presidency. Within hours, university officials complied with the order, which had been requested by the Omaha World-Herald , the Lincoln Journal Star and The Associated Press.

The university had previously made public the records of its four finalists for the presidency, but refused to release information pertaining to four other candidates who were interviewed by its search committee but not officially named "finalists" for the job.

More here.

West Virginia U. Takes the Secrecy Route...

West Virginia University’s Board of Governors held two meetings this week. On Tuesday, the board selected a new interim president and approved his terms of employment as well as an agreement with current WVU president, Mike Garrison. Then, on Wednesday, the board held an emergency meeting and approved a settlement between WVU and former football coach Rich Rodriguez. But none of the actions taken by the board were listed on the meetings’ agendas. Also, the agreements approved were not available for the public to see.

More here.

Secret University Presidential Searches: A Bit More Context

The Fayetteville, North Carolina Observer weighs in on secret university searches, conducting a nice national tally of who does what...

North Carolina is the only state in the nation that selects the top leaders of all its public universities in secret.

In 49 other states, the names of the finalists for university president or chancellor positions are made public, a Fayetteville Observer study shows. Six states release the names of all applicants.

A few states have no single governing policy, according to the survey of 118 university systems or individual schools. Some universities in those states close the process, but at least one school or university system in every state, except North Carolina, selects leaders in public.

The story continues to report that Amanda Martin, a lawyer for the North Carolina Press Association, said she would endorse moving to a system in which the names of job finalists are made public. That’s what roughly 85 percent of public universities do across the country, according to the Observer survey.

In North Carolina, each university has a search process to choose three candidates for its chancellor position. Those candidates are submitted to university system President Erskine Bowles, who recommends one to the UNC board of governors. Only then — when it’s time to vote on the one candidate recommended by Bowles — is the secrecy lifted. And only the name of the person recommended is released.

I especially enjoy THIS section, in which the newspaper tests one of the major assumptions of the closed search crowd: that it scares off would-be applicants...

A check of news reports shows that several educators — including the recently installed N.C. Central University chancellor, Dr. Charlie Nelms, and two current finalists for Fayetteville State University’s chancellor position — have been candidates in public searches without losing their jobs.

Nelms, prior to being hired at NCCU in 2007, competed and became a finalist for presidential or chancellor posts at four other universities in a four-year period, including Fayetteville State in 2003, Florida A&M in 2004 and Tennessee State in 2005.

During each search, Nelms was identified as a candidate. Meanwhile, he kept his job as vice president at Indiana University.

Two finalists in the current search for FSU’s chancellor — Dr. James A. Anderson, a professor at Albany University, and Dr. Albert L. Walker, president of Bluefield State College — have been finalists in other presidential searches during the last three years, the Observer has learned.

Anderson was a 2007 finalist for the presidency of California State University-Dominguez Hills. Walker was a 2005 finalist for the presidency of Langston University in Oklahoma and was eliminated in an early round of a 2006 Florida A&M University presidential search.

Both Anderson and Walker are still at their schools.

What We're Up Against...

The outgoing president of the University of North Dakota -- who I am quite sure is a swell guy and I mean him no disrespect at all -- represents the state-of-the-art in thinking about university presidential searches: the more secrecy the better the process....


I'll give you a few of the highlights and then you can go read the whole editorial here, but:

That said, I believe our open records and meetings laws served to curtail the number of candidates. These laws in no small way were responsible for the fact that only one candidate was presented to the State Board of Higher Education and were thus responsible for some of the negative “stuff” that went on at the conclusion of the search.

Now, this is an interesting point, and one that could tested by an academic, but to simply assume that one candidate came forward because of openness? I can't say it did not any more than this chap can say it did. It's what we academics call a "testable hypothesis," but it sure isn't fact. Trusim, perhaps....

First of all, any would-be candidate who happened to be a sitting president would have been loathe to submit his or her name and endure the inevitable criticism “back home” with what should and could have been a 1 in 100 chance of ultimately being selected. Most presidents would find these odds not worth it. The result was no sitting presidents in the pool and relatively few provosts.

Ah, the Gold Standard: the other kids won't play because of the openness. This, of course, is belied by the fact that there are dozens of presidential searches, year after year, held in complete openness, and guess what? People apply for them. They fight for them. Why? They pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year...

Given the downsides, is there really a significant public interest in knowing all of the candidates early in a search when there may be 80 to 100 candidates? I don’t think so. North Dakota is one of a small number of states in which university officials are required to disclose all names and documents as soon as applications are filed. Likewise, North Dakota is among a small minority of states that do not permit at least some closed search committee meetings early in the search process.

Why yes, there are several great reasons. Cronyism, nepotism, the old-boy network...the fact is, the more open these searches are, the less the likelihood of such large decisions being made exclusively by small groups of extremely powerful people.

If a group of good people are selected to serve on a search committee and they have to operate in plain sight of one another, this is enough to make sure the search will be conducted in accordance with fairness and the law.

In other words, trust us. Nah....history is replete with examples where that burned the public.