A tale of two campuses

While a top University of Akron officer was explaining  how the school was desperately trying to reverse its enrollment losses with initiatives short of a national military draft, rival Kent State University boasted  of continued growth.

KSU's latest numbers in the Beacon Journal reported a record high of  3,045 new enrollees for the spring semester, numbers that have grown for seven consecutive years.  Total population for the school's  seven regional campuses in 2015 was 41,005. The school  attributed some  of the good news to an increase in international students.

Meantime, Crain's Cleveland Business carried a less  positive picture  by Lawrence Burns, UA vice president of advancement,  that set out several channels for the school's efforts to recruit students - including having some of them urge their off-campus friends so set foot in a Zippy classroom.  The whole tone of the Burns article seemed to say,  "We're doing the best we can, folks".

Crain's article noted UA's enrollment  was down 600 from March a year ago.

One factor in the decline, Burns said, could be negative media reports from faculty, contributors, alums   and others  while  the campus turmoil  has grown since the arrival on campus of President Scott Scarborough in June 2014.

What Team Scarborough has yet to acknowledge is that  you can't  fix UA's image problems with feel-good public relations, trustee silence, nor students asking their friends to join as if it were a fraternity or sorority.

Team Scarborough's war of attrition

It now seems certain that the Scarborough team at the University of Akron has settled on a war of attrition to outlast its critics.  No matter that  the latest reports from the front reveal a  university  president who has retreated from public dialogue.  We only know that Scott Scarborough has turned over the exposition  of the authorized script to trustee chair Jonathan Pavloff's  less than definitive utterances.

There's an irony here.  Although Scarborough once argued intensely that the school is setting out to acquire a national audience with its rebranding, UA is in fact achieving that goal,  not as a success story but rather as a school locked in it's own worst image in the national social  and academic media.

In a piece I just posted, Ellen Wexler of Inside Higher Education wrote of UA's current chaos with surgical precision. When I asked, she told me that she had attempted to talk to Scarborough but her request came  back with a statement from UA  vizir Larry Burns. No word from the ventriloquist.

I could also mention the board of trustees, a  UA auxiliary unit gifted  in doing what it's  told with full confidence that it  will remain in-sourced as Planet Scarborough reaches out for  further privatization. But don't get me started.

Akron, you have a problem.

Dick Celeste: The true happy warrior

Dick Celeste, the former Ohio governor, breezed into his home state for a few days last week with an itinerary that included endorsing  Democratic Senate  candidate P.G. Sittenfeld.   That bit of political business aside, he called me for a friendly  chat while riding to Cleveland from Columbus.

At 78, he's still engaged in several missions after his nine-year presidency at  Colorado College that ended in 2011. Earlier,  he had been a two-term governor, Peace Corps director, ambassador to India.  (I may have missed six or seven along the way. )

Forever accessible in office as a casual upbeat guy with a broad smile,  wit, and overwhelming formal intelligence, Celeste is now busy in a project to lure the Winter Olympics to Colorado.  "We've raised $50 million of our $80 million goal,"  he says with his always present optimism. With his tireless presence on the team,  I figure they'll reach the goal.

He's also working on  his memoirs that could fill several books  for  his path of successes.  Joe  Hallett, the widely respected Columbus Dispatch political columnist, now retired,  once wrote of Celeste that the Cleveland-born, Yale-educated Rhodes scholar  was "one of the most-accomplished and consequential Ohioans of the past half century".  As one whose job was sustained coverage of Celeste, often like catching a whirlwind, I can easily agree.

Our brief conversation a few days ago, no more than several minutes long, reminded me of how the  state let a person of enormous ability get away. As the University of Akron's troubles continue to grow, I can only speculate how it might have had a happier narrative if the school's managers had somehow convinced him to take the job  back when presidencies  lasted a lot longer than they do now.   He had been a finalist for the president's office at Case Western Reserve in 2002, but the story at the time was that a person with designs on the  job in the Oval Office might just stay a few years before returning  to the political arena.

So he's back in Colorado Springs.   Meantime,  any other highly qualified academic whiz who might have a taste for the top job of a public university as  a Democrat would have a tough time getting past the boards burdened across the state with Republicans.

The University of Akron is no exception.  It's been rebranded with a new name, so to speak, with a president safely sheltered in the mix.  But with so many sparks flying on the  downtown campus today, wouldn't it have been more appropriate  to label UA as "Ohio's Pyrotechnic University" instead of the current techie one?

Sorry, the Celeste Effect is that after a few moments on the phone with him, we are left with regressing into what might been.


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Time for Scarborough to break the silence

Memo to President Scott  Scarborough, University of Akron:

You are the CEO of a public university.  Or at least it was the last time I checked.   That being the case,  your salary plus other overhead items are paid by the public.

Aren't you obligated to respond  directly to the taxpayers about your plans during this period of  great campus stress instead of turning everything over to the head of the Board of Trustees? A lot of people around town are talking, particularly since the daily newspaper has now called for your "transition".  Shouldn't  you be talking, too?

I'm told your faculty critics will publish an unanswered letter to the board to break the silence.

Your turn.

What does arrival of advisory group say about Scarborough's ability?

If you have felt some heavy winds in the weather around the University of Akron campus  in recent days, they may very well have been produced by the rush of the city's business community to offer its services to the troubled school.

In short order, a full page Beacon Journal ad called for a detente between the opposing forces to allow  more time for the UA leadership's poorly  executed  rebranding and debt reduction plans to work. Under the headline COME TOGETHER, the ad bore the names of seven heavyweight CEOs.  That was quickly followed up with a UA annnouncement that another ad hoc group of businessmen had formed a "University of Akron  Business Executive Advisory Council"  to work  - on call - with President Scott Scarborough and the reclusive board of trustees to resolve issues that have swept the campus.

Interesting.  As one who has been trying to piece together the  palpable fallout in the wake of the new administration that arrived a year and half ago on the downtown campus, I can only conclude that with so many business leaders now on tap, there is  real panic motivating the guardians of the school's. reputation.   One source mentioned to me  that it looked more like a receivership in the works.

Some history:

For starters, it might be helpful if Scarborough was a little less stuffy about his management skills and widened his vision to include the surrounding off-campus territory.  When Team Scarborough settled in with a ringing fanfare,  the school was already deeply in debt, an untidy situation left by his predecessor,  Luis Proenza and  a napping board of trustees who dared not question  the red ink that was flowing from a multimillion-dollar building plan that included a a new $60 million football stadium.

Unfortunately, Scarborough, a  man with no lack of self-confidence, simply took a bad situation and made it institutionally worse as he surrounded himself with a bunch of highly paid executives for his unchallenged command-and-control  changes to the school's name (Ohio's Polytechnic  University) and other initiatives to reach out farther for enrollment.   Keep in mind that among the target models was Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, which showed a 5.34 pct.decline  in enrollment this year.

Among the UA victims was the downsizing of E.J. Thomas Hall, the  iconic performing arts fountain that has extended UA's reputation far and wide. Various disciplines were raided.  Faculty found other campuses.  On the other hand, Scarborough's obsession with personal behavior led to the creation of a student cadet corps with the same mission as the ROTC already active on campus.

But now it is fair to ask: Why does a guy hired by the trustees and paid around a half-million dollars with princely perks in return for his touted management ability now need a squad of businessmen to bail him out? And where have the reclusive trustees been idling for so long as the royal debt piled up?

The business force will find there is much to do, starting at the top.  Frankly, I don't have a clue where this will end up.  I do know that one of the businessmen mantioned in the ad  isn't shy  about talking about it.  That's Joe Kanfer the CEO  of GOJO Industries ,  who was honored this year as the recipient of  the  Akron Community Foundation Bert A. Polsky Humanitarian Award. He is a former outspoken UA trustee who isn't cut out to let anything be swept under the textbooks.

Kanfer gave me a brief preview of his mission to return UA to a peaceful and honorable existence.  But he doesn't want anybody to think he's just coming along for the ride.

"The university of Akron is an important part of the area.," he says in his usual hurried voice.  '"And I want it to come together again."

He also  offered a word of caution to everyone involved:  "I won't be a rubber stamp."

I've seen Kanfer in action before and can assure you that he's far from being a rubber stamp. I believe you will be hearing more from Joe before this epic tale of woe ends.

UA leadership facing a critical test of confidence.

They're turning the page at the University of Akron for the next chapter in the somber tale of the rebranded House of Scarborough.  In a rare process that  could take several months, the Faculty Senate may be asked to deliver a no-confidence vote against the school's president, Scott Scarborough.

Small wonder.  Reaction to Scarborough has been growing for months on the downtown Akron campus among critics of his plan to eliminate a $40 million debt - a  plan that has creaked with notable errors, tactical reversals and questionable remedies. If  the University had been Rome, the Coliseum's beasts would have shattered it in their path.

It will be no simple task for the critics who want to resolve a long list of faculty grievances against Team Scarborough.  The situation worsened this week after  UA's Vice President of Advancement Lawrence Burns, who should have known better,  suggested that the faculty initiative may only be a bargaining  club  during current union negotiations.  His cold response was regarded as just one more example of how the school's top managers were indifferent to the general decline of UA's delivery system to student and faculty since the Scarborough team arrived on cmpus in June 2015.

"Not true! '" said Daniel Coffey, the  associate political science professor who inspired the direct-action idea of a head-on clash with the school's leadership, told me.  He noted  that the no-confidence measure was a reaction against  a number of academic problems caused by faculty and staff cutbacks and other shifts that are making life miserable for everyone affected.

Folks, this is not simply a question of the comfy paychecks that Scarborough and his imported cabinet  are receiving these days in their bizarre attack on UA debt.  Instead it's the kind of harsh stuff that seldom surfaces for the public that is paying the bills. Coffey has the list:

Class schedules on short notice that cramp a working student's efforts to safely take an outside job;   the replacement  of faculty openings with adjuncts (only  18 of 55 new hires are tenure- track level, says Coffey); unavailability of classes required of students even though their tuition is rising;  the departure of qualified professors who find the environment no longer acceptable; the replacement of ongoing faculty instruction with outside companies;  the absence of shared governance with the administration.

"We're not at all happy with this situation," Coffey says, now firmly daring the lion's den. It's easy to see why.

As for the steps that would lead to a Faculty Senate vote,  Senate president Bill Rich said it might not occur until February.

The Senate meets monthly, but none is scheduled for December because of the holidays. Next, it will have to consider a no-confidence proposal from an ad hoc senate committee.  Coffey is confident the measure will have the votes for approval by the entire senate.  Polling by the Akron AAUP indicated strong disfavor with the administration.

At that point, a powerful message could be sent to Scarborough and the fox-holed
Board of  Trustees that changes greater than debt-cutting are immediately necessary to create a healthier university that is now in disarray.

Presidents have been known to resign.  Right,  Missouri?

A letter from Louise Harvey, friend of University of Akron

You are receiving this message because I think you may be concerned

about the direction of The University of Akron.

Under President Scott Scarborough and the Board of Trustees, 
questionable decisions have been made regarding hiring, job 
eliminations, contracts, budget and program changes, to name a few. A 
faculty survey showed 71% of the faculty lacked confidence in the 
President's ability to lead and participate in shared governance. Alumni 
and friends have begun withholding financial support.  The future of 
E.J. Thomas Hall is at risk.  The very identity of the university is 
threatened with renaming it "Ohio Polytechnic University."  The 
administration and Board of Trustees react to all concerns by denying 
they are problematic asserting that the questions "will go away."

If you share my opposition to what is happening, please take action.  
For more information go to the website of the AAUP and learn in depth 
what has been done: akronaaup.org/blog.  Talk with your friends and family.

Send an email to the Board of Trustees boardoftrustees@uakron.edu.
to President Scott Scarborough sscarborough@uakron.edu
to Vice President Larry Burns                   lburns@uakron.edu
to the Alumni Office alumni@uakron.edu
to the Development Office development@uakron.edu

Or write to the Board of Trustees mailing address:  Board of Trustees, 
The University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325-4705. 

Or write a letter to the editor of either the Akron Beacon Journal or the Plain Dealer.

Let your voice be heard.

Finally, forward this email to others you think care about The 
University of Akron.  It has been built into a great research and 
teaching institution, and it is now at risk.

Friend of The University of Akron, 

Louise Harvey

(Louise Harvey is president of the University of Akron Women's Committee)

UA's speechless merry-go-round

I have once again found that there are precincts  of the University of Akron that are on lockdown.  As in the case of the Multicultural Center, once believed to have been a victim of  the Scarborough administration's summer housecleaning. Sort of.

My curiosity was aroused by a private  top-level meeting the past Friday at City Hall between Mayor Jeff Fusco and UA President  Scott Scarborough, each flanked by his  own confederates.

Fusco had arranged the session in what at first  seemed to me to be a way of leveling the playing field on Scarborough's strictly controlled game plan for the  downtown campus.  The mayor was joined by City Planning Director  Marco Sommerville and two black ministers; in Scarborough's corner were Board of Trustees chairman and the CEO's first responder, Jonathan Pavloff,  as well as African-American trustees Olivia Demas  and Warren Woolford.

Something else apparently on the table:  the topsy-turvy  reports from last July that the Multicultural Center, which is serving minorities  and international students, was headed in a different direction that has yet to be defined by the front office.  From all that we could determine, the minority ministers had wanted a clearer focus on where that was ending up. Alas, in the end, Sommerville  told  me,  the session  didn't accomplish very much.

In July, word that the Center would be closed (its three staff members were dispatched)   was officially denied by the leadership. Or as spokesman Wayne Hill put it at the time,  "the programming and services will be supported in different ways."

The situation remains fluid in November to the concern of the students.

I tried to shake out an update on Tuesday on whether the Center was still functioning.   John Alvarez Turner, an associate director, said he wasn't authorized to talk to me.  He said that only the  Center's director, Lee Gill,was authorized to talk to a reporter. And Gill is now a cabinet member  on the Scarborough team.

I innocently asked Turner whether his office had been moved to new quarters but he responded by telling me to call Gill. I did , left a message, and didn't get a reply.

The situation, a disgraceful lockdown directed by Scarborough's desk, leaves many of us  to fill in the blanks.   And  in the face of so much criticism, the new UA Polytechnic fantasy is trying to play by its own fail-safe rules.  That's  false royalty for you.

Oh, I did hear from Wayne Hill, who e-mailed  an authorized response by late afternoon, which is as far I've gotten so far:

"Yes, the Multicultural Center is still functioning.  We are finalizing comprehensive plans to increase the impact of UA's inclusive excellence commitment and better coordinate the provision of services in a more convenient manner.  As previously reported, The Office of Inclusion &  Equity/Chief Diversity office, headed by Lee Gill, now reports directly to the President of the University.  The more comprehensive  plans will be communicated in in the days and weeks ahead."

Or not. Sounds more like a statement put together by a committee.


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Scarborough file adds new critical voice

We can now add the Beacon Journal's  editorial page editor Mike Douglas to critics of  UA President Scott Scarborough's bleak performance since his sceptered arrival from Toledo University.  For many months, Douglas offered his readers a virtual politically correct touch-and go job rating.

Not this time.  From the tone of the Douglas piece, the prez  has fallen more deeply into the mire of a badly scripted promise to  ease the school's $60 million debt.

Moreover, for the first time, the question appeared from a top row of the ivory
tower of whether Scarborough is professionally fit to manage the school.  Douglas wrote, in what can ony be a desperate shot across the bow:

''Is Scarborough, for all the promising ambition for the university, the right person to get the school there?   Jonathan Pavloff, the chairman of the university board of trustees,  describes the  president as possessing the 'precise talents' for the job.  Actually that isn't clear..."

Since the new Maestro took over the university with the sound of silence from the cowering trustees, it's been one thing after another as he  ignored critics and insisted that only those who don't understand his format for change  are now complaining.  He  was the model of the right way, some of it even shaped by his deeply religious Texas background that has referenced church people as the ones who stooped to pick up trash.

His campus culture was to be one of discipline, discipline,  discipline - an "organization engaged in disciplined thought and action."  He even initiated a new uniformed Corps of Cadets as a campus role model.  Meantime, he became embroiled in a badly executed name change for the school, which soured more people than he cared to acknowledge.

Throughout the upheaveal on the campus, he seemed to be conducting the thunderous Ride of the Valkyries as a lilting Strauss waltz.

Things are finally catching up.  From Douglas to mega-philanthropist Eileen Burg to the UA Women's Committee to the AAUP and to those of us who questioned his muddled game plan, the clock is ticking faster. At least we  are having more reason to hope .

I once worked for an editor who defended an unpopular decision by shrugging that if you want to make an omelet, you have to break an egg..  In the editor's case, his own egg was finally broken as he headed out the door.

UA fund-raising takes major hit

A dagger to the heart of the University of Akron's donor  operations?  .

How else would you describe Eileen Burg's angry letter to the editor of the BJ declaring the family of the late H. Peter Burg's estate would suspend further grants to the school "until  the current  issues are resolved."

The issues, of course, are the badly managed rollout of debt-cutting efforts by the
Scarborough Regime that have created such chaos on the campus. (Crain's Cleveland Business  took up the matter of President Scott Scarborough's credentials by describing him as a "rookie president" .)

Pete Burg was the iconic philanthropist who  had been president and CEO of FirstEnergy in Akron .  The Burg name is well estsblished at the University of Akron with an endowed scholarship as well as other donor venues, including  the honoring of LeBron James with the annual H. Peter Burg Akron Chamber  Leadership Award for the superb athlete's  own generosity.

Scarborough & Co. has been trying to ignore the resistance movement with Lawrence Burns, vice president of advancement, attributing the decline  in contributions as no more than a matter of "timing".

Thank you,  Mr. Burns,  you couldn't have put it in a more offending way for  a widely respected titan in the ranks of the contributors. For a salary of $285,000 shouldn't we expect a bit more from management?

Eileen Burg's open dissent has been shared in other quarters with ties to the school.  It has  left UA with a besieged president with few defenders except for the trustees and the BJ's editorial page, which, oddly enough,  referred to some of the complaints as "petty".

But Scarborough may have finally decided to listen. I've been told by two sources that he has tried to meet with Eileen Burg, who literally told him not to bother.

He also  is having a sitdown Friday morning in a session sought by Akron Mayor Jeff Fusco at City Hall.  Fusco will be joined by city planning director Marco Sommerville and a few others on his staff while Scarborough will be joined by three UA trustees.

The mayor's chief of staff, Ellen Lander Nischt,  said Fusco is trying to  get everybody together on the  issues.

We can hope.

Were you able to follow the State of the University address?

That was quite a performance by UA President Scott Scarborough on his long state of the university address to counter his critics who have cast him as the bull in the China shop. It went on for nearly 90 minutes with a dizzying barrage of PowerPoint figures, a new video of a supportive LeBron James, historical readings (!), warm  greetings to politicians among the swollen audience of hundreds in E. J. Thomas Hall, cherry-picked quotes from projections by experts on the fate of universities, and a requisite introduction of his wife. E.J. Thomas Hall, for Heaven's sake, an oddly  reborn edfice that had  fallen from Team Scarborough's grace.

He even went so far as to tell the protesting scholars in the audience that when people don't understand something they resist it - a careless  putdown of the confused college graduates who are not on his side. An extraordinairily self-confiident preachy man at 52 with a slight Texan tilt in his voice, he has managed to remain standing  through four universities, sort of.  In mission and tone, think of Dr. Phil.

His mighty verbal sword  failed to cut away his repetitious narrative, and  he went on with  his rebranding plan to make the University of Akron "great" with an outreach to students to God knows where. The rebranding would include such  New Age identity as "polytechnic" that would even remove the "A" (for Akron) from the band uniforms and cripple some of the school's departments to bruise a  $60 million debt.

What he didn't say is that a debt-ridden school can't afford, as others have complained, to   create a Corps of Cadets  and more student coaches. But these things are his way of assuring  everyone  that he's a man of  the moment  in higher education.

And he didn't mention that his predecessor , Luis Proenza, drove up the debt  as the trustees stepped aside without demanding accountability. As we've  written before, if they aren't the gatekeepers, what good are they? (The trustees sat in their normal sphynx-like posture  in a row near the stage and it's doubtful whether they or anybody else fully grasped what all of those fleeting charts were all about.)

Scarborough spoke on the day that a new print voice, the Devil Strip (local bimonthly),  had published some troubling benchmarks on his   days as a young politician in Texas.  He was  the  Travis County, Tx.,  Republican chairman and even ran for state rep  - and lost  the primary.  Still his trademark was stamped clearly:  politically and religiously  conservative,  damning homosexuality and other social "evils".  The Austin  newspaper  noted:
 
      "Travis County GOP Chairman Scott Scarborough , whose term is expiring , told delgates they should "lift up King Jesus through their work as Republican activists."  

So how did he make it from his days in Texas to the stage of E.J.Thomas Hall, which had been on his hit list?

Well, you may wonder how the trustees let so much bad ink pass. You my also know that the Republicans hold a 6-2 majority on the board with two Democrats merely along for the ride. That's not all. Trustees chairman Jonathan Pavloff had been chairman of the Summit county Republican executive committee.

You won't need  PowerPoint to follow this:  The six Republicans, including Pavloff,  owe their seats to Summit County GOP party chairman Alex Arshinkoff. who,  we're sure,  was quite impressed to know that Scarborough was a bird of the feather. Everything else fell neatly into place.

Thank you, Alex. You  should have been there Tuesday to take a bow.  .

P.S.  When Scarborough , borrowing from Donald Trump,says he wants to make UA great, it extends the overused adjective which has little meaning because of its abuse.  It is regularly applied beyond precise meaning to everything from hamburgers and dandelion killers to depressions and wars. Great Scott! Just being good is good enough for most of us.




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UA has its very own Dr. Pangloss

When University of Akron President Scott Scarborough announced his plan in July to  trim the school's debt while  cutting 213 jobs, he wanted the cast-aside people that he was not a mean-spirited man.  He said the cuts were "painful"  but he did want to   thank   the severed victims while promising them counseling "to show them the respect and courtesy they deserve." Cool.

He also explained the mid-summer move to the Beacon Journal by saying that he wanted to put the "painful"   upheaval  behind the school before the fall semester. Cool, again.

As shown  in other wobbly steps taken by Scarborough, it revealed his knack for miscalculation in the  moves that have so troubled the campus ever since. Like burning post-shingles itch, they're not going away. (Trust me on this one!)

Nothing that occurred in July and later was "put behind".

 Two scheduled campus protests are on the calendar - the first at the UA Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday, from 9 to noon, in the Student Union.  The Akron Chapter of the American Association of University Professors reported  that a "coalition of groups representing students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the community"  will be face to face with the dormant trustees who have  been conspicuously silent  (except on occasion by the chairman) throughout the nightmare.  Isn't it fair to ask whether UA really needs a board?

The second protest, courtesy of the Akron AAUP,  will attend Scarborough's State of the University address  on Oct 20 in, of all places, E.J. Thomas Hall, the site of  Team Scarborough's wrecking crew. (Time: 1:30)

For this one, I can only imagine that Scarborough's recitation of the goodness of his administration will be inspired by Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, who found good in everything, no matter what.

Is Scarborough opting for martyrdom?

Does it seem to you that University of Akron President Scott Scarborough is rebranding himself into a martyr?

As he's responded to bad news in the past, he reacted to the campus survey that his approval rating is awful by shrugging that  change is "difficult".   In other words, a guy who is paid upward of $600,000 and royal perks to resolve the school's debt and cast it as  a polytechnic enterprise is faced with a daunting task.

But did the rollout have to be so amateurishly clumsy?  And if there is such a role as "sub-martyr",   we might include the Board of Trustees, a feckless group that offered no sign of being moving parts in the slide.

President Scarborough will learn that martyrdom  doesn't include a fat paycheck and personal prestige, which seems to be what this nightmare is all about.  

P.S.  Scarborough left the University of Toledo with poor grades from the faculty, too.

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.

Two more columnists check out UA's debacle

News is  breaking out.  About the University of Akron's new regime.  And so, dear reader, I lead you to two sources, the Akron Legal News and the West Side Leader, for further guidance on the messy state of academic affairs.

 In the ALN there's a column by Scott Piepho, a lawyer and former UA teacher, who writes that President Scott Scarborough  is "enamored of faddish, think tanky ideas about reforming higher education along conservative lines".  No  argument from me on that assessment.

And in the WSL, columnist Craig Marks takes up a satirical pen regarding the shutdown of the school's baseball team under  the provocative headline:  "Who needs grand slams if  you have a grand entrance?"   That, of course, refers to Scarborough's grandiose proposal to build an eye-catching entrance arch (with curb appeal!)  on a new path leading to the ringmaster's offices.

Read on!

For Best and Scarborough, the two who tangoed

 Randy Best is a mega-rich entrepreneur who has become the big man on the University of Akron campus, if only in the offices of President Scott Scarborough and his servile board of trustees.   Best was just awarded a lucrative contract for an online nursing program in which  his Texas-based company, Academic Partnerships, will receive half of the tuition from students who sign on. Half?  Nice work if you can get it.   And Best knows how to get a lot of it.

But the subplot to Best's huge success story, insofar as he embraces UA, is that he and Scarborough have had intersecting careers for years  in which the latter  has had Best's business model coursing through his grand plan  to rebrand UA, relieve some of the school's debt and apply whatever other strategies that leave academia in the distant past. That not only includes Scarborough's passion for online courses but also his promotion of hired off-campus "coaches" for students.

 As Forbes magazine  once described Best's  M.O. to profit from a university's  treasury, his  three R's are  "recruitment, retention and revenue".  It quoted his bottom line judgment on academic matters: : "The Stanfords, the Harvards, of my gosh, those schools are remarkable.  But they're irrelevant to the market."

A think-alike Texan yoked with Scarborough, Best  is also active in national politics, having raised millions of dollars for former President George W. Bush. And Jeb Bush is an investor in Best' s enterprises.

Scarborough, of course, will deny the linkage defined in a growing number of media reports.  He prefers to call it nothing more than just another day at the office in his heroic effort to cut UA's debt.   But don't believe it.  He's already cashed in  his credibility as the CEO on the reeling downtown campus even though he's admitted his mistakes in ramping up his grand designs on the ailments of  higher education. The paper trail is simply too persuasive .

Some tell-tale evidence:  As the chief financial officer at DePaul University in  Chicago,  Scarborough recommended the sale of Barat College, a tiny  Catholic school, to Best's company in 2005 and that would include accreditation, land and buildings.  You can only believe that the transaction would have had a lengthy get-acquainted period as the details fell into place.

Eureka!  As part of the deal,  Scarborough  landed a  seat on the new owner's  board.
There he remained, the Plain Dealer reported, until  2007, when he became chief financial officer at the University of Toledo, giving up his board seat on Higher Ed Holdings, the company's new name.

He became Best's go-between to the  provost in which Best offered an online master's degree in an education program for  teachers.  Sorry, the College of Education said,  and turned it down. Undaunted, Best came back with  an online nursing program with Scarborough serving as his greeter.  Again he was rejected.

Academic Partnerships then scored with Ohio University in 2008 for the nursing program.  But OU has since cancelled it.  Randy Leite, dean of the College of Health Sciences,  told the PD:  "We found over time that the quality and level our students expected was not being met." Meantime, Best had collected 50 pct.  of the tuition.

And so the ship has now come in at the UA, with Scarborough saying he only  had been contacted  by Academic Partnerships and turned over its proposals to the trustees for them to decide.   He said he was surprised that it was accepted by a "consensus".  Really?  With this board?

You may have noticed that  Scarborough has met the critics by saying that rather than  enhancing  his friend Randy Best's business opportunities, he simply  made a few introductions.

And at the University of Akron, based on their  feathery track record how could the trustees  possibly resist?  By the looks of things, Team Scarborough ain't done yet.








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From Kasich, to Comunale, to UA

From the Weekly Reader:
Gov. Kasich turned up on the Fox News Hannity show for a reunion  among relatives who are still talking to  each other.  It was so family-ish as Kasich and Hannity engaged in chatty cordiality. .

From Kasich we learned that he was gleefully running for president only because he loves America. Spare me.  Guv,  you've been running for something for decades because your over-active ego won't let you do otherwise.

But Kasich is different this time as a born-again with a road map from God while pretending that he is a moderate.  Really.  A hawkish boots-on-the-ground moderate who spent years working for a Wall Street company that tanked, and for Fox News with a show called "Heartland with John Kasich."

Didn't know that Fox made space for moderates. So much for the new Sunny Kasich with standard photos of outstretched arms and an expression of ecstasy ready at every turn to help the less fortunate.  It is getting tiresome to hear the governor, a millionaire many times over, begin so many  responses to so many questions with the fact that his father was a mailman

But as Oscar Wilde once told us:  No man is rich enough to buy back his past.  

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When Frank Comunale summarily pulled out of the Akron Mayor's race with a resounding endorsement of Dan Horrigan, his action vibrated among the political class, including his own people who worked on his campaign the day before.    It was an  element of surprise - maybe even to him - with Comunale pleading campaign poverty and physical exhaustion.  Good grief.   The October surprise in August? Whatever.

* * * * *

Speaking of surprise, the aftershock of the incomprehensible misfirings at the University of Akron has driven off a potential new athletics  director.  Brian Wickstrom, the athletics director at the University of Louisiana at Monroe  reportedly declined an invitation  to accept the job, saying uncertainty from the sweeping changes underway at UA discouraged him from coming to the Akron campus. Grapevine news travels fast.

The vacancy is being filled by Nathan Mortimer, the school's top finance man,  following the resignation of  Tim Wistrcill.

Is this any way to rebrand the value of  a university?  

President house rebranded into catbird seat

About that house: The University of Akron's obsession to rebrand itself  leads me   to rename the president's home as the Catbird Seat. It is a dream of wish fulfillment accorded more and more to university presidents these days.   With so much money - nearly a million dollars -  spent on  renovating the UA property,   you'd think the president of the United States  was moving in with his family.  UA President Scott Scarborough walked away from his job interview with a colossal deal, from spiffy quarters for his inlaws to a  $556.40 olive jar while the UA leaders were pleading poverty.

Along with other questionable payouts, the school's spending spree exposed the servile Board  of Trustees not only as rubbery stamps but also as a a useless cancelled  postage stamp, serving at the will of a president that it somehow decided to hire, despite a rickety track record .


Some faculty people say it was either Scarborough or Jim  Tressel,  so there really wasn't an option   But it does raise another question as to how a campus that was so free to offer a new president  $450,000 and endless perks failed to draw a standing- room-only  crowd of applicants from academia.  Was it because UA ranked so low  on the collegiate scale that folks simply wanted to enhance  their careers elsewhere?

So Scarborough got what he wanted, even if the generous trustees  with a  top-heavy Republican majority blindly acted as if their school's destiny lay solely in his hands.

You don't hear that very much  from the brain trusts on the Beacon Journal's editorial page  It has become an apologist for the new regime and its latest editorial to that effect appeared under a  pleading headline:  UA has a good plan.  It really does.    The "really does" part weakly suggested that it needed a bracing modifier to support the "good plan".

Although some articles in the paper, along with Bob Dyer's column, have pointed out   the gaps in the regime's armor back at the catbird seat, the ed page  advises the readers that there are good things going to happen now that Team Scarborough is on the scene with a plan  for the "university moving forward in a credible and promising way."

It's unkind and nitpicking, I know, but I keep thinking of that olive vase adorning the House of Scarborough.  Good luck on that, campus.  But first you must behave yourself.

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Plusquellic's back, and good for that!

"I'm back!" the animated man in a loose-fitting patterned shirt and jaunty hat exclaimed with a broad smile.   As I  approached him on the sidewalk outside the  Uncorked Wine Bar downtown,  he repeated:  "I"m back in my city."

Well, yes.  Deeply tanned, apparently well-rested  from his tortured exit  and no longer in his dark mayoral suit, Don Plusquellic  was mingling with others ,  one of whom asked him to take off his hat.  When he did, it revealed a brush cut that had replaced his carefully groomed white hair that was a trademark of his Hollywood persona at City Hall. It was then that you came to realize that now out of the office he had occupied for 28 years, he was indeed tailoring hmself for a new life in the city.

Inside the noisy bar, a large crowd had  come to the reception for Pete Nischt, the   rising young Democratic party executive director who announced his candidacy for the Akron school board. The event was hosted by County Executive Russ Pry, who sat unobtrusively at the rear of the long narrow room to observe the  festivities..

Nischt will need all of the support that he can muster in a three-way race involving Debbie Walsh, Alex Arshinkoff's executive director at county Republican headquarters and Ernie Tarle, Plusquellic's nemesis. Need I say more?

Although the former mayor said he might take some time to work for Hillary Clinton in Iowa,  his political presence doubtless will be felt in his hometown as well as the University of Akron campus.  More than one person remarked that  Team Scarborough might have had second thoughts about an amateurish rollout of  job cuts  that  downsized the school's academic credibility  had Plusquellic, a feisty soul, been in its face.

No fault of interim Mayor Jeff Fusco, nor interim Democratic chairman  Sandra Kurt, both temporary caretakers of city or party business, the dominoes fell quickly in the post-Plusquellic scramble.  So  the party will need an infusion of kinetic energy for the forthcoming mayoral primary race pitting Dan Horrigan against Mike Williams and Frank Comunale.  I'm told Williams, an African American and perennial candidate, is already trying to fashion the contest into a racially acute  contest. If he persists, it will create two ugly camps that will divide a city with a progressive reputation in race relations.

The voters need to know the stakes as Akron approaches a critical decision for its future. So welcome back, Mr. Plusquellic.  Is there anything you can do about the city that you have long voiced with pride?