A Win for Mount St. Mary's

Simon Newman, the president of Mount St. Mary's University, just resigned his post, effective immediately.   This is a big win for Mount St. Mary's.   

It's also a win for people fighting the corporatization of the modern university.

For the non-DMV folks, a wee bit of background.  The Mount, as its students, teachers, and alumni call it, is a small, Catholic, liberal arts institution in rural Maryland.  Like many liberal arts colleges, the Mount is suffering from multiple pressures affecting higher ed--declining enrollments, rising costs, increased competition, calls to modernize the curriculum, etc.

In 2015 the Board hired Mr. Newman, a former CEO of a private equity firm, to 'turn around' the institution.  The idea that the Mount needed to turn around suggests that it was somehow failing at its core mission rather than facing pressures affecting higher ed more widely.  But, even if we accept the premise, it's still unclear why a Catholic institution of higher learning would hire someone from the corporate world to engineer a 'turn around.'  But, that's what they did.

And in short order, Mr. Newman brought his corporate values to the university:

1. He cut professors' pensions
2. He hatched a plan to game the university's retention rate data by getting rid of struggling students before the benchmark count begins (usually in October).  
3. He told professors who opposed the plan to stop treating struggling students like "cuddly bunnies...You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”  
4. He fired 2 tenured professors who spoke against the plan to the student newspaper.
5. He helped engineer a student petition of support that required students to sign using their student ID numbers. 
6. He called people who disagreed him disloyal to the university and suggested they were living in the past. 

These moves work in corporate America.  In fact, squashing dissent, cutting costs, gaming stats, and throwing people under the bus will often lead to a promotion in the corporate world, and sometimes a rise in the company's stock price.

Unfortunately, lots of people think these moves will work in academia too.  Just ask George Will or others of his ilk who are convinced that the modern academy is run by bra-burning, pitchfork wielding, science-loving communists who can only be reigned in by a Daddy Warbucks figure.

These folks are wrong.  Dead wrong. 

Of course universities need to operate in the black, but increasing the bottom line is not their ultimate goal, nor should it be.  The goal of Higher Ed is to produce students who know how to write, engage in problem solving in their chosen field, and think outside of the box. It's hard to 'produce' these students when your goal is driven by the bottom line and lacks even basic empathy for the students themselves.

Just ask the brilliant students with depression how he would feel being labeled a bunny in need of drowning.  That student may get better and graduate, but the lack of respect and support means he's not likely to donate money to the college once he graduates, nor is he likely to send his kids there in the future.

Or, you could take a stroll into a classroom staffed by an adjunct who teaches 4 classes at 4 different universities and ask her how much time she has to update her lectures, write letters of recommendation, or otherwise sell the university off-campus.  She's got very little time for any of that, even on good days.  

The big question for Mount St. Mary's is what comes next.  After scandals like this it's common to hear people talk about 'healing.'  The interim president has already used this language and so have members of the board.

Unfortunately, healing won't happen just because the rot at the top is gone.  Healing can only happen after some amends-making occurs.  And here, I'm thinking about the college's board.  They vigorously defended Mr. Newman up until he resigned and used similar language as Mr. Newman did to describe his detractors.  They also appear to have been behind the student petition to help save Newman.  It is, therefore, hard to imagine this board being in charge of the healing, let alone the next steps the university makes.  None of that can happen before they first make amends.  And, for some of them, that might mean stepping down just as their hired henchman did.