Scarborough's next move...

[LosAngelesZipFan]

Yes, this is exactly why you don't tie a small manageable deficit to funding your pet projects/strategic priorities-- because it has reinforced a very negative narrative about UA so that now any and all things will be tied to that large, completely inaccurate $60 million number. It will take years of good news to erase this impression. Hey, maybe they should make it like Ohio Poly is taking over UA so that it's like a reset. No more UA baggage to deal with because it's a whole new institution!

And to make following easier for those tracking on their game boards at home, the Beacon has added a whole new section and handy graphic:

[Dr Z]

President Scott Scarborough's remarks before Faculty Senate today

See full graphics text and slides here.

Senators,

As always, it is a pleasure to be with you today as we begin a new academic year. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I know we have much to discuss, and I would like to begin by providing some context for our discussion.

Recap of Last Year

When I took the job as president a little over one year ago, it quickly became clear that this institution faced two key challenges:

financial shortcomings;

and persistent enrollment declines.

The financial shortcomings and enrollment declines were immediate, critical problems that needed direct and effective action, and the first step was to make everyone aware of those key challenges.

So for almost the entire year, I explained to every constituency – and reminded them often – of the vital need to address the University’s financial issues. And for about six months, the administration’s financial team worked diligently with key stakeholders on how best to do it. We made the process as transparent as practical. Representatives of key stakeholders participated in regular meetings at which we shared and discussed ideas and progress to date.

On June 10, the University of Akron Board of Trustees approved a proposed budget, which required us to implement a reduction in force and to eliminate and/or significantly change several non-academic programs to improve our overall financial performance.

Fixing Financial Shortcomings

The reduction in force eliminated over 200 non-faculty positions.

About one third of the eliminated positions were professional, managerial or higher posts. We eliminated administrative costs in significant ways—something the faculty has recommended for many years.

All of these reductions were painful, but they were necessary steps that have now placed us in a stronger financial position.

The new budget was designed to address both key problems: financial shortcomings and persistent enrollment declines. The first you can address through cost reductions, but the second requires enrollment growth. And enrollment growth requires investment. In our new budget, we now have the funds to invest in opportunities to make our University stronger and attract more students.

Reversing Enrollment Declines

One of our top priorities now is to invest those funds in ways that advance college strategic plans. This includes hiring new faculty. We also will invest in university initiatives that will attract more students.

We already have accomplished much that will help us to grow our student enrollment in future years.

Nine of our eleven colleges have new strategic plans in place, and we are already seeing positive results. For example, in the School of Law, new student enrollments are up 26% this year--this at a time when law school enrollments across the nation are plummeting. We have expanded our recruitment efforts, and as a result, this fall’s freshman class enrollment is up 5.3%; it is the largest freshman class since 2012; and the number of freshman Honors College students has increased 10% this year.

Last year the University implemented several new initiatives to attract new students and grow enrollment in future years:

A new National Center for Choreography with DanceCleveland.

A proposal for a new Center for Data Science and IT.

A new Center for Experiential Learning, Entrepreneurship and Civic Engagement.

Low-cost general-education courses through Wayne College.

A new success coach program for new students.

A new Corp of Cadets and Leadership Academy.

A new partnership with the LeBron James Family Foundation to help Akron kids and to brand the College of Education in a distinctive way.

And a new branding campaign to strengthen The University of Akron name in the expanded recruitment areas.

We need to recruit aggressively both at home and beyond to attract more and better students if we are to thrive in the changing landscape of higher education today and in the future. In addition to college and university initiatives, on May 15 we announced our intent to embrace the University’s historical strengths as a polytechnic university to enhance our University’s brand in new recruitment areas. I believe many prospective students will identify with this new brand persona—in the sciences, the arts, the humanities, and the professions. Let me show you what I mean by sharing a video with you. It is part of a new branding campaign that we will launch Labor Day weekend. (The video will be distributed to the University community on Friday, Sept. 4.)

Last year, we consulted and involved a wide spectrum of faculty and community leaders to determine how best to strengthen our University. Not everyone could participate directly, but hundreds of people did, and every constituency was represented in the process: students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members. These constituencies were represented by good people who did their best to make good decisions on behalf of everyone. As a result, we made and initiated plans for financial re-engineering. We also made and initiated plans to reverse the enrollment decline and return to a position of growth and strength.

Last year, we accomplished much because we attempted much, and as a result, we also made mistakes. We understood that mistakes are likely, perhaps even unavoidable, when you tackle big, complex problems under strict time constraints. So we resolved to identify our missteps, fix them, learn from them, and continue on. We tell our students to be innovators--to take calculated risks. We tell our students not to fear failure because setbacks and dead-ends are an inevitable part of the innovation process. We tell them to research available information, consult others, shrug off self-doubt and then move forward when they face great challenges that must be solved. We could do no less. I have not been shy in admitting that mistakes are a normal part of life (Click here for more on learning from mistakes)—that the key is to fix them when identified, learn from them, and then move on. And that’s exactly what we are doing.

Preview of This Year

The progress we have made in the last several months far exceeds the downside of the mistakes we are fixing.

We are now a stronger university.

We can move forward with confidence.

Our plans are good.

Our plans now have financial resources behind them.

Our future is bright if we implement our plans well.

Our fall enrollment numbers indicate we are headed in the right direction. They also indicate we have much more work to do.

For example, we have great diversity at our University. We have grown diversity in the Honors College. Graduation rates among minority students are rising. And we are increasing diversity in key leadership positions with new heads of the College of Health Professions, the Honors College, Information Technology, and our proposed Center for Data Science and IT.

There is still more work to do, but we are headed in the right direction.

We are also moving forward in other key areas.

Soon, we will announce new faculty positions that will add to our scholarly ranks.

Soon, we will announce a new strategy for the Honors College that will attract more students to this vital part of our University.

Soon, we will announce new partnerships that will improve our University by enabling us to enhance teaching, research, and service to our region and the world.

I see our University growing larger and more impactful; emerging as a national and international leader in the evolving world of higher education; and becoming the Great Public University our region and nation needs us to be.

[Dave in Green]

I thought the following did a good job of explaining why UA couldn't fix things by just cutting or freezing investment:

"The new budget was designed to address both key problems: financial shortcomings and persistent enrollment declines. The first you can address through cost reductions, but the second requires enrollment growth. And enrollment growth requires investment. In our new budget, we now have the funds to invest in opportunities to make our University stronger and attract more students."

[ZippyRulz]

Rick Armon going for the Pulitzer Prize:

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/university-of-akron-squeezed-by-building-boom-falling-enrollment-and-flat-state-revenue-1.625551

[Dave in Green]

A well-researched story that presents facts and opinions representing various points of view. There's something in here for everyone. It tries to explain the pros and cons of the actions and reasoning behind those actions of both the previous and current UA administrations to deal with the changing economic landscapes they faced. This is good journalism.

[a-zip]

Rick Armon going for the Pulitzer Prize:

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/university-of-akron-squeezed-by-building-boom-falling-enrollment-and-flat-state-revenue-1.625551

Wow. Finally some intelligent reporting with meaningful information and insight.....not the "National Enquirer" articles they have been writing.

[Sportsjunkie330]

I bet LaBron is happy about this one...

[Zip_ME87]

I bet LaBron is happy about this one...

Really? How does that happen in Akron!

[morris buttermaker]

Only at Ohio's Polytechnic University

[Dave in Green]

Same way it happened with the Cavs -- simple typo by a careless assistant.

[Balsy]

I bet LaBron is happy about this one...

Scarborough must have fired the proofreaders. But seriously...why does our alma mater gotta be a joke ALL THE TIME!

[Dave in Green]

I found vague references to this last year when I was researching Dr. Scarborough's background, but couldn't find any solid verification and therefore didn't bring it up as a potential concern:

University of Akron president faces scrutiny over anti-gay comments made 30 years ago --Akron Beacon Journal

[Spin]

Scar made the morning news, with a story about students planning a protest.

[Blue & Gold]

Meh, at least we're finally getting press. Lol.

[ctmjbowes@sbcglobal.net]

I read the slides from his presentation and the PD story about same. In short, I don't trust Scarborough and he strikes me as much more of a salesman/politician than a solid institutional leader. He is pinning everything on increasing enrollment, which will drive capital funding, and he plans to increase enrollment with the same race-to-the-bottom garbage that I see in private online university commercials these days. Online mega classes, "national presence", branding, growth, outsourcing, these are the plans of a guy who just wants to sell. I hear precious too little about serving the community and region, providing high quality education at reasonable cost, increasing the ability of the university to provide financial support to students, etc.

He has of course surrounded himself with like-minded yes men and women, several from his very unpopular stint at UT. The board appears to be filled with non-entities who provide no effective oversight and are more than happy to allow UA to become something akin to College of the Grand Canyon.

Say what you will, but UA for decades filled a much-needed niche as a local/regional university where anyone could attend, classes were available to adults in the workforce, and the quality of the education received for the price paid was very high. It was never a "name" school, but I have always been proud to tell people I graduated from Akron, and more importantly I have always felt thankful that the university was a solid school near home where I knew that I could attain a quality degree at a reasonable price. I have never been comfortable with the drive to grow the student population at all costs, the proliferation of private (and expensive) dorms in and near downtown, the notion that somehow, a UA with 30K+ students would be better than the old UA with 20K commuter students. I appreciated the core infrastructure improvements made under Proenza, but they could have scaled the goals to be more appropriate for the community, which would have meant closing the streets that cut the campus into bits, new and improved core buildings, dorms immediately adjacent to the core campus, even Infocision, albeit smaller and less expensive. Much of what I see along Exchange and downtown was too much, too soon.

We now find ourselves in a situation where a once thriving local/regional school must allow itself to be taken over by a snake oil salesman to "drive growth" simply to be able to keep the whole thing going. It stinks, all of it, and I can't shake the strong sense that the city, region and university will all be worse for it when Scarborough and his ilk are finished here. I'm just waiting for Scar to try to sell the city on the idea of a monorail...

[Balsy]

Isn't Scarborough's goal to have UA focus on bringing in more students from all over the country and focus less on the local area; at odds with UA's partnership with LeBron James to bring local Akron kids to UA for a free college education?

[Balsy]

I have never been comfortable with the drive to grow the student population at all costs, the proliferation of private (and expensive) dorms in and near downtown, the notion that somehow, a UA with 30K+ students would be better than the old UA with 20K commuter students.

Totally agree with this. Though I will say that it's somewhat Ironic; I remember back in 2012 we had near record enrollment at UA, about 28k students which was more than The University of Tennessee (27k). The decision to increase the standards by which to get into UA had a huge impact; both financially and in student growth. UA has been hovering around 24k ever since. It's almost as if they're abandoning what was working, barely working, for a drastic strategy that has no gurantee of being successful.

Edited October 22, 2015 by Balsy

[Valpo Zip]

[ Online mega classes, "national presence", branding, growth, outsourcing, these are the plans of a guy who just wants to sell]

SeeTee: I will give you the online mega classes and the outsourcing. These are two controversial issues that may or may not be the right thing to do in Akron. But do you really have a problem with branding and national presence? is there any organization in the world who will have a problem with branding and having a national presence? or are we just going to criticize whatever the guy says simply because he said it?

[i hear precious too little about serving the community and region, providing high quality education at reasonable cost, increasing the ability of the university to provide financial support to students]

This is what community colleges and charity organizations do. UA is not a community college and it is not the salvation army. If we want to compete with other big name schools in rankings and attracting funding and quality faculty, we must have a balanced budget and competitive salaries and benefits.

[He has of course surrounded himself with like-minded yes men and women, several from his very unpopular stint at UT.]

He might have been unpopular at UT but he left them in a great financial situation. I will take that at UA.

[say what you will, but UA for decades filled a much-needed niche as a local/regional university where anyone could attend, classes were available to adults in the workforce, and the quality of the education received for the price paid was very high. It was never a "name" school, but I have always been proud to tell people I graduated from Akron, and more importantly I have always felt thankful that the university was a solid school near home where I knew that I could attain a quality degree at a reasonable price. ]

Scarborough did not initiate the plans for growth. Proenza did. And I am personally for that approach and I hate UA to be perceived as the local, cheap, commuter school. The quality of work that is done in there is top notch and it should attract the top students and I don't see the need to limit it to only the locals. You never hear about OSU serving columbus or Purdue serving lafayette. Why do we insist on being small time?

[We now find ourselves in a situation where a once thriving local/regional school must allow itself to be taken over by a snake oil salesman to "drive growth" simply to be able to keep the whole thing going.]

You know that Scarborough did not inherit a thriving school, right? The guy had to start his job by cutting programs and expenses. Proenza built a campus for 30k students and Scarborough is brought now to fill it. So he has no choice but to grow the enrollment. Since the population in the area is not particularly increasing, he has to recruit at the national stage. I am not sure how does that make him a snake.

[skip-zip]

I'm wondering who is going to answer for the staggering drop in donations this summer, as reported in the ABJ late last week.

Did anyone else see that?

[ctmjbowes@sbcglobal.net]

I suspect that donors are mostly all within the region, alumni who still retain some sense of connection with the university. I will accept the arguments that Scar was made responsible for a situation involving declines in enrollment and that the university was potentially overextended with infrastructural committments. However, his solutions and initiatives fail to convince me in any way. His mannerisms, poor communication style and failure to connect with the community are off-putting. Anyone paying attention should be able to see why donations would be declining.

I would love to see the university return to open enrollment and a focus on local and regional students. The people who appreciate UA and need it are not anywhere else but there. Don't try to sell a kid from another region, that's an incredible uphill battle. Within that context, focus on the faculty you put in front of students and emphasize education for working adults. Be a vital part of the local and regional scene. Weave the university into the daily fabric of life there. It's about the people, the city and the region. You could spend many millions of dollars advertising the university nationally but I believe those dollars would be wasted.

Lastly, when I lived there from 2005-2011 I greatly appreciated that Proenza was spending on capital improvements but wondered aloud about the $$ spent on Infocision and didn't really understand the massive private dorms on Exchange and downtown. They're ugly and I don't see how they do anything but line the pockets of developers. Still though, the soul of the school seemed what I remembered and I happily bought tickets and donated money to UA on multiple occasions. At this point and with the direction of this administration I am very hesitant to support the university.

[ZippyRulz]

That's a great recipe for declining enrollment and stagnant academics.

[ctmjbowes@sbcglobal.net]

That's a great recipe for declining enrollment and stagnant academics.

That's the recipe that served the university, the community and the region successfully for decades.

[ZachTheZip]

That's the recipe that served the university, the community and the region successfully for decades.

That's the recipe that gave the university the nickname "hilltop high". It looks like public higher education will soon go tuition-free, and when that happens, admission standards become an absolute necessity, combined with a strong remedial education program partnership with local community colleges acting as feeders.

[LZIp]

That's the recipe that gave the university the nickname "hilltop high". It looks like public higher education will soon go tuition-free, and when that happens, admission standards become an absolute necessity, combined with a strong remedial education program partnership with local community colleges acting as feeders.

No chance in hell that is going to happen, even if the lib candidates want to promise that.

[g-mann17]

No chance in hell that is going to happen, even if the lib candidates want to promise that.

It can at the very least go back to what it was in the 70's and earlier where college education cost was supported through a 70-30 (state/student) cost split unlike the 15-85 that it is now.