PWC isn’t the only place with secrets and stench. On Sunday, the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia blindsided the entire University community with the announcement that they had asked President Teresa Sullivan to resign, after only 2 years. Sullivan is the first woman president at U.VASullivan was popular and innovative and the faculty and stuff is outraged. Dr. Sullivan knew nothing of her job being in jeopardy and the Board of Visitors has been very secretive about her ouster. According to the Hook.com:
Just four days after University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan was ousted in what many are calling a coup by a small faction of the University’s Board of Visitors and a cadre of Wall Street-oriented alumni, the state’s flagship school has been thrown into chaos, and a key figure in what’s become a national headline-grabbing fiasco has resigned his position as chair of the Darden School Foundation Board.
After days of backpedaling over an email in which he painted himself as a key architect of firing the president or at least leading the “strategic dynamism” effort, Peter Kiernan, a venture capitalist who had been scheduled to speak that night at a UVA alumni club in New York City, instead focused his attention on letting his resignation get announced Thursday afternoon the 14th of June at a hastily arranged town hall meeting in Charlottesville for Darden faculty and staff.
With the chairs of 34 academic departments demanding answers in a public letter and a Faculty Senate resolution condemning the firing, the Board of Visitors has called an emergency meeting for Monday afternoon. Meanwhile, Sullivan’s two most prominent deputies seem to have quickly accepted the Board’s “resolute and authoritative” decision to oust the woman who hired them.
“The BoV will take the next steps on Monday to put an interim President in place and will follow with the establishment of a deliberate, principled, and thoughtful search process for our next President,” UVA C.O.O. Michael Strine and Provost John Simon write in an email to University faculty posted on the school’s home page, urging the professors to “focus constructively forward in preparing the institution for its next stage of leadership and our shared commitment to quality and excellence in teaching, discovery, and patient care.”
Basically, the B of V said SCREW YOU to the entire University and to the state. Governor McDonnell is taking a hands off approach which is probably not a very good idea. The chairman of the Darden School Foundation Board has resigned that position. 34 Department chairs have demanded an explanation and the Faculty Senate has condemned her firing.
The B of V must be drinking the same water as the PWC BOCS. Secretive and arrogant seems to rule the day. All Virginians should demand an answer to why this woman was fired. Those who serve as visitors often have no real affiliation to the University and more often as not never attended the school. It seems to be to be a self-serving position rather than one of service to the institution of higher education. Ever since Governor Wilder appointed Mrs. Billionaire Kluge to the Board of Visitors after one of his midnight helicopter runs [wink wink nudge nudge] I have had a very jaundiced eye for anyone appointed to UVA’s board of visitors. I don’t think the lady ever attended college, much less UVA.
If someone in President Teresa Sullivan’s position is fired, that person should know well ahead of time that there is a problem and be given a chance to improve. At the very least, the president should not have been blind-sided and the faculty should be given some reason for losing their leader and colleague. I have seen enough power corruption this week to last a life time.
I read something about this but don’t know the details either. I did read that much of the problem centers around so-called new education technologies and what some allege is UVA’s slow adoption of things like online degrees. However, online degrees and new education technologies are not necessarily such good things. The for-profit schools like University of Phoenix and DeVry have led the way in creating online degree (undergraduate and graduate) programs and are making huge amounts of money with them. They have also fine-tuned the process of recruiting students and funding their educations with student loans. The for-profits are thus guaranteed payment whether the students succeed or not. The students are left with mountains of debt whether they complete their degrees or not. Moreover, even when they complete these online degrees, the degrees are nowhere as credible as real college or graduate school degrees. Employers generally don’t take an online degree as seriously as one that required the student actually to go to a classroom, interact with professors and other students, take proctored exams, and submit verified work of their own.
Schools like NOVA are far more credible than the for-profits, even though they have integrated some of the technologies into their programs. Our tax dollars would be much better spent by expanding funding for and programs offered by community colleges so students could obtain affordable educations without accumulating the debt.
The problem for real schools such as UVA is that they are losing market share to the for-profits fast (read that as funding as opposed to people who want to attend). The online programs also reduce costs dramatically because no brick-and-mortar classroom is needed and you can cram far more students into a virtual classroom. Paying an instructors to teach online classes as contractors as needed is also far cheaper than hiring real faculty. Some top-level universities have even started introducing online and other sorts of such programs. This is a divisive debate at real universities and colleges (as opposed to the for-profits). Some people do honestly believe that these new technologies are a good thing, but most of the debate is whether or not to adopt the for-profits’ methods to compete in higher education marketplace.
Regarding UVA, I don’t know which side stands where – whether the Board or the retiring president took the side of online and other such programs. As you wrote, they have been secretive and I don’t know much more than you do.
I think that might be at the heart of the problem also. I think …operative word, THINK that she is opposed to incorporating any of the tele-ed into UVA. That’s ok too. Distance learning is distance learning. Some things are fine….others not so fine. There is also the idea of the free universtity that I have been reading about.
Who knows….they are being sneaky, deceptive, and like the bocs. that is not a good thing and we should be demanding answers from them.
My problem with any B of V is …..how much they really understand the community of the college or university they are an overlord for.