UA becoming a company campus

You would think that a new regime that claims strategic academic advances  would have at least considered the adage "Look before you leap".

By now we can conclude that University of Akron President Scott Scarborough and his meek servants on the Board of Trustees didn't.  And so, the school's reputation and credibility  are in free fall.

Scarborough arrived with a spotty resume from the University of Toledo  last year with a merit badge for wanting to get things done quickly.  He had tried to sell his grand plan  to the Toledo faculty and failed.  I remain puzzled  over why the UA Trustees chose to not only hire him but also to grant him an unchallenged and a richly rewarded command post to carry out his scheme to change the university's name (now , he says, abandoned). The price of renovating his home at nearly three times the original estimate was particularly troubling for a school insisting it was flat broke.  And what parent couldn't react sharply to a contractual perk that his daughter could someday attend any school in Ohio at no charge?

There have been other retreats from his initiatives along the way that exposed hasty efforts to "rebrand" UA into a tech center. Today's mail brought to us a flier from the University of Akron,  tagged Ohio's Polytechnic University - not a comforting fit for UA's music school's programs, do you think?

In the past year there have been too many reports of Scarborough's shredding of some of the school's departments  to cut into the school's debt.  Add the odd  administrative mistakes bobbing like apples in the pool of new executives  too highly paid to be making them. There have been too many bulging contracts for questionable  new programs.

On Sunday, a deeply researched report in the Beacon Journal included a startling statement for those of us who have fallen into the trap of linking UA with a $60 million debt.

"UA," reporter Rick Armon wrote, "doesn't have an annual $60 million deficit or shortfall".

That's what UA Chief Financial Officer Nathan Mortimer told him.  The explanation was too complicated for this column.

Still, Scarborough found his  comfort zone in the well-paid executives he brought to the  campus, morphing UA into a company school. That includes a hire who had once functioned in David Brennan's parallel $1 billion  taxpayer funded universe of White Hat Management's  charter schools.

Under Brennan's command,  Todd Rickel, UA's new vice  provost and dean of College of Applied Science and Technology,  made it known that he was an "education futurist" as White Hat's "Chief Learning Officer."  What could go wrong?

 Inasmuch as White Hat's charters are tanking  with  awful grades (as they did under Rickel on Brennan's payroll) you might wonder what he's doing at UA with a  $295,000 salary anyway.

 Brennan has long boastfully considered  himself a "futurist"  and years ago invited me to a private breakfast where the speaker  predicted the total demise of universities.

Folks, this whole rebranding idea is going nowhere as it stumbles over its own flubs.     Right now it's a high-priced game of academic silly putty.  Guess who's picking up the tab.

Shouldn't we stop calling Akron names?

Throughout the long, hot summer of a search for a new name of Whatchmacallit U, little or nothing has been heard from the school's Board of Trustees - an abstract group, , really - that follows Justice Clarence Thomas' discreet path that silence is not only golden but also safer than a remote desert isle.

The board's missing public face has had a curious absence while  the - University of Akron...There!  I've dared resurrect the name! - is in the throes of historic woefully managed policy pains.

It's quite clear that the eight political appointees are not even minor risk-takers in their lofty perches  above the academics.   Skilled as they are in collegial meeting and greeting, they then manage to slip back into their real lives once the campus agenda is approved.

As for President Scott Scarborough, do you get the idea that he may have spent too much time studying the Peanuts strips in which Lucy devilishly pulls the football away from Charlie Brown?  I'm referring, of course, to the times that we learned of another fail-safe initiative to advance the school's prospects, only to learn later  that it had been rescinded, only-rumored, misrepresented  in the media or too nasty for words.

So it has been with Polytechnic, Ohio Tech, Institute or other appendages to Akron (or not) , a name now removed from the marching band uniforms.

In this town with compact loyalties, even the Akron Aeros changed its name to Akron Rubber Ducks and it caused  little public alarm because Akron was retained and it didn't change to, say,  something like the Rubber Ducks  Baseball Institute.

So to Team Scarborough and the trustees, I would humbly say:

C'mon, guys and gals,  Polytechnic - or so we have read, - suggests modern cutting edge insight into a Z-shape future.  You've had a year to figure all of this out. Why not have a naming contest and announce the winner at the Whatchamacallit Zips first winning football game?

That's mean.  I'll take it back.  I can rescind, too.

On mosquitos, Trump and the UA train wreck

Are you enjoying the summer of mosquitos, Donald Trump and chaos on the University of Akron campus?

Thought so.  There  are,  however,  two rays of  hope.  The mosquitos will move out with the season.  And  the public will tire of Trump's hysterical comedy routine.

Unfortunately,  the UA chaos is another matter that could become the face of its new polytechnic brand around the land..

The workout on the school's budget deficit could hardly have been handled  in a more ham-handed manner and raises serious questions about the competence of the school's president (Toledo was the last stop in his checkered career).  And what about the passive engagement  of the Board of Trustees in dealing with budgets and other University matters.

Nothing demonstrates this dismal lack of awareness than the original plan to tack on $50 per credit hour for higher-end courses.  The idea raised a helluva stink on the campus as a disguised tuition increase and was withdrawn with the word from the administration that it had discovered a $4 millon increase in its money from the state.  Did it take weeks to "discover" it? Or had the  administration merely found a convenient way to calm the outrage?   If so, more competent budgetary watchdogs are desperately needed.

As for the $60 million debt. The red ink didn't start flowing yesterday.  Former Akron Mayor Roy Ray recalls that as UA's vice president of finance (2002-2007) he  made a thorough examination of the debt and raised red flags to the administration.

 He advised then-President Luis Proenza that the situation was worrisome  and should be given priority  before building a new football stadium.   (He was later eased out of his job) .

"They didn't want to hear it ," Ray says today.  He says today's reported debt could be on the conservative side and may be as high as $80 million. 

But as the dust settles,  isn't it fair to ask about the Board's involvement in heading off - disaster?  Trustees are political appointees, often  with no more than incidental academic acumen, who are periodically on the campus in joyful  tail-wagging silence. They prefer the title  without the attention to their academic obligation.  Faculty and students are  abstract business metrics.

Much of the power resides in the president that the trustees hire, who then go back to their day jobs. Of the many boards that I've witnessed over the years, the current one is one of the weakest, avoiding the slightest discontent with the CEO. If it were not, the school wouldn't be in such a mess.

 As former Judge  and UA board member Jane Bond told me, Proenza fed the board with feel-good stuff -  a form of "soma", the Brave New World's happy pill - and simply went along with it.  But look how that has taken  down the institution and integral part of the community after it ratified the destruction of the soul of E.J. Thomas Hall for the Performing Arts.  Will the name be changed to E.J. Thomas Hall for the Performing Techies?  Another field house for the football team?  I tried to get some trustee feedback, but my calls weren't returned.  

Pop Quiz: When did university presidents, for better or worse, become Gods?  

Second question:    When will  the Beacon Journal's editorial writers finally acknowledge that a gravely mishandled situation is unfolding on a stretch of land within walking distance of the paper's offices?

Is Jim Tressel's academic career on the goal line?

   Former OSU football coach Jim Tressel moved deeply into the red zone last week when the University of Akron board of trustees awarded  him a new title:  executive vice president. It is his third title since his arrival in 2011 as vice president of strategic engagement and later as the veep for student success.

The board's action spurred further speculation that his next title will  put him in the end zone:  president.

Not all of the speculation has met with  bravissimos in some faculty quarters,  where there are untidy questions about his lack of the doctorate so prized in academe for any  rise to the top administrative chair. 

Such talk among faculty and the school's boosters has been the subtext of his whirlwind career path since the school's president,  Luis Proenza, announced he was heading out in June from the position he's held for 15 years to engage in a  one-year sabbatical.  That would be followed by his return to the campus as a full time professor and president emeritus.

Since settling on the downtown campus, Tressel has been treated as a celebrity while busily engaged in motivational work with students as well as poetry reading to a UA creative-writing session and speaking at a Program Learn fund-raiser where attendees could get an autographed copy of his book,  The Winner's Manual.  

He's also considered to be an excellent fund-raiser at a time when the school is trying to find a way out of deep debt and a declining graduation rate.  With those elements in the equation, it might be reasonably asked how much is  a doctorate really worth in today's academic marketplace?   

Meantime, everyone directly involved in Tressel's future has been  quite guarded about his next move.  They have politely spun around media questions about his future,  particularly now that the formal search for Proenza's successor has begun.   But several sources  close to the scene have told me:  "It's a done deal."

Following this week's board meeting, the Beacon Journal noted that  Tressel "sidestepped" a question about his interest in the job.  Reporter Carol Biliczky quoted him as saying, "I think in fairness I'm interested in whatever role it is that our leadership wants of me".

Beyond that, the play calling remains in the brass'  huddle.  But when you are this close to the goal line it would certainly sound foolish to call for a Hail Mary.

(Re-posted from Plunderbund)

UA students are taxed, but it's called a fee

THAT SHOPPING LIST of new student fees added by the University of Akron Board of Trustees would most likely cause angst in a cadaver. Poking around to satisfy the school's budgetary needs, the Board added fees (taxes, really) to several opportune areas ranging from transportation to tuition to meals to housing to student misbehavior.

If these fail, I'm here to suggest some others that could be a fertile source of revenue as we continue to price a college education beyond the reach of so many young people :

• With full apologies to the airlines, classroom seats would be charged according to comfortable access to the front of the room, with first class seats the most expensive, window seats overlooking the campus having an add-on fee, etc. etc. etc. To enter the room, students would be charged per textbook, iPad and cell phone in the backpack.
• Install pay toilets in every dormitory room, study hall and laboratory.
• Charge a minimum fee for use of elevators to be prorated on the number of floors sought by the student.
• Charge trustees a minimum fee for the wear-and-tear on their meeting rooms.
• Have all cell phone calls and text messages channeled through the University's main switchboard, limiting each student to 10 free minutes per semester.
• Charge parents and students admission fees for attending commencement.
• Provide additional parking for University officers in Barberton and charge them added fees for the convenience to see how they like it.

And you think I'm kidding, I'm sure!