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Scarborough's next move...


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Why would anyone give that even ten seconds of their time? Why would the Beacon Journal even mention it?

Because just about every student, staff member, faculty member and alumni (save some here) I've talked to has said they dislike Scarborough. UA has a massive PR nightmare on their hands, and it is the direct result of not being honest and transparent.

But I really don't get why everyone is so surprised. 1). It's open season on UA. 2). The news reports on STUPID stuff all the time. Have you ever watched a TV news broadcast in the past 30 years? Or read a News paper? They're both littered with nonsense. I'd be willing to bet negative stories (whatever they may be) are getting more "clicks" than any of the good ones (in the world where clicks dictate content).

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Did Proenza cook the books until he could get out the door, and they're letting him off the hook because they don't want the legal battles and pr hit as well as it would directly call the trustees oversight into question? Not saying he did, but I wouldn't mind seeing some outside financial analysts brought in to dig up exactly WTF happened.

We now have the answer to this question-- no. The actual budget 'hole' is $20 million over the next 3 years, or less than 2% per year on a $480 million+ annual budget.

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/08/university_of_akron_president_scott_scarborough_knew_addressing_60_million_problem_would_be_hard_but_necessary.html

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Re-posting from the now close thread for context on this one:

One of the things that has really bothered me over the last 5 months of sturm und drang/Scarphoon has been the amount of the budget hole that needed to be filled. The U kept talking about a $60 million deficit that needed to be closed, which is significant. Often the scale of the issue was connected to "over-building by Proenza" specifically "that stadium". As I posted earlier, UA's debt is on the high side compared to overall budget (about 1:1), but this isn't unprecedented in Ohio at the moment (UC's debt is roughly 110% of its annual budget from the numbers I could find; Miami is over 90%; Can't about 80%).

What has gnawed at me is that a deficit of that size doesn't just appear unless there is some sudden change in circumstance. The U doesn't just do annual budgets-- it has a team looking at the budget over many years and would have to do so for credit services, the state, etc. It's not possible that the budget would suddenly leak $60 million.

I finally found the answer in the PD article today:

"Scarborough met Wednesday with the Northeast Ohio Media Group's editorial board to talk about how he had anticipated that the moves would be controversial yet why it was necessary to quickly launch a three-year plan to eliminate a $20 million budget shortfall while providing $10 million for new initiatives and $30 million for capital repairs and improvements.
"We didn't have the luxury of time," he said. "We knew we had to make deep changes..."
Ahhhh...it's not an immediate $60 million shortfall. It's a $20 million over 3 years shortfall, about $8 million per year, against an annual budget of $484 million. Closing that gap requires an annual cut of 1.6% to that budget, certainly nothing eye-brow raising.

I totally understand that presidents want to make their mark by implementing their strategy. A big part of their job is to have a vision and then push the institution in that direction. The budget is the mechanism to do this. In this case, it appears that what should have been a budget process was elevated into a crisis and a PR disaster for UA. (Great quote from a new honors student the other day: “It’s good to see Akron’s not dead,” said Kerry Holmes, 18, of Akron, who will study computer science. “It’s just having a little turmoil.”).

The way it appears to me is that Scarborough wanted to have $40 million available to support his vision and conflated that with a (real but manageable) budget deficit of $20 million. "Never let a good crisis go to waste" comes to mind. And if there isn't a crisis near at hand, manufacture one. Ideally, a new college president would marinate a bit on things like this and then go find incremental funding to support his strategic initiatives.

The last 9 months have been a PR disaster creating an impression of a university flailing at its mission and on the edge of failing all together. From the naming dust up through to eliminating the baseball team because it's field as inconveniently situated, it's been one poorly handled, ill-considered, ham-fisted thing after another. I hope he can right the ship and this rocky start leads to a 20 tenure of growth for UA, a golden age when all the potential gets fully realized. But I am dubious, beyond so, that this will be the path.

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The last 9 months have been a PR disaster creating an impression of a university flailing at its mission and on the edge of failing all together. From the naming dust up through to eliminating the baseball team because it's field as inconveniently situated, it's been one poorly handled, ill-considered, ham-fisted thing after another. I hope he can right the ship and this rocky start leads to a 20 tenure of growth for UA, a golden age when all the potential gets fully realized. But I am dubious, beyond so, that this will be the path.

That's a nice summation. :bow:

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My point in this is that a university making a 2% cut in its budget to close a budget hole isn't a story, It's just the normal course of business.

A new president looking for ways to find savings in one area to re-direct into another area isn't really a big story, certainly not a "the place is coming unglued" story. In fact, it's a "implementing a strategy" story.

But when you put the 2 together (conflate them), it becomes a "this is a crisis" story. Not good. It results in honors college freshman saying things like “It’s good to see Akron’s not dead,” said Kerry Holmes, 18, of Akron, who will study computer science. “It’s just having a little turmoil.”

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The good news is that PR messes usually do not result in longterm structural damage and can be recovered from with the right moves. A typical good case is when all the bad news is compressed into a short time frame, resulting in a series of negative stories that may create an impression that the sky is falling and the earth is going to end. It's important at this point to cap the flow of bad news and start trickling out good news at a steady cadence while there's still media and public attention focused on the distressed entity.

It appears now that we're in the process of entering the second phase. We know how UA handled phase A and now we get to watch and see how they handle phase B, aka recovery. The public loves underdog stories of almost anything fighting back from adversity, and often ends up with a more favorable overall opinion than if the bad news had never happened. UA is now on the clock with this opportunity.

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My point in this is that a university making a 2% cut in its budget to close a budget hole isn't a story, It's just the normal course of business.

A new president looking for ways to find savings in one area to re-direct into another area isn't really a big story, certainly not a "the place is coming unglued" story. In fact, it's a "implementing a strategy" story.

But when you put the 2 together (conflate them), it becomes a "this is a crisis" story. Not good. It results in honors college freshman saying things like “It’s good to see Akron’s not dead,” said Kerry Holmes, 18, of Akron, who will study computer science. “It’s just having a little turmoil.”

I thought the current model is unsustainable ;)

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Clever Ohio Polytech Marketing.

So we are now highlighting our own Student Athlete of the Week as - "Presented By The University of Akron, Ohio's Polytechnic University"?

Who else would present a Zips Athlete of the Week? Prairie View A & M?

That's the most retarded thing I've seen to date. And that's saying a lot.

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Well, at least one Cleveland TV news station might be jumping on the "anything to slam the University of Akron" bandwagon.

Early this morning, one of them reported about us paying stipends to athletes when we are millions in the hole, and cutting jobs.

They waited until the VERY END of the report to state very briefly that other schools are also paying the stipends.

Yes....go figure...maybe they should have dug a little further and found out that most or ALL of the big schools will be paying a stipend this year?

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Yes....go figure...maybe they should have dug a little further and found out that most or ALL of the big schools will be paying a stipend this year?

Yeah...but basically ALL of the big schools didn't just cut $60 million worth of staff and programs. The criticism is warranted. And if UA doesn't want the criticism, it needs to get ahead of the criticism by being open and transparent...not hinding behind the BS wall of "proprietary secrets".

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