Is higher education just about money? This probably sounds like a very naive question in this day and age. Whereas once the duty of a communal leader (and I’m including university presidents in that category) was to lead a community — seems obvious, right? — nowadays, leadership means the ability to acquire funding. Brandeis University’s Frederick Lawrence apparently failed at that. He was, however, beloved by students.
On the flip side, his predecessor Jehuda Reinharz, was good at getting the big bucks, but — at least when I was a student at Brandeis — certainly would not have been described as beloved.
It’s an unsolvable conundrum.
In contemporary academia, top fundraising skills is the primary criterion, not scholarship, when it comes to being a successful university president. Yet, university students — especially at a liberal arts college like Brandeis — typically don’t have much time for money-driven calculi or individuals.
So what’s developed is that the very populace that the president is governing has no respect for his primary task.
The result is that in the cases of successful university presidents, such as Reinharz, the student body is derisive.
Yet it’s not that simple.
Because Lawrence, this president beloved by the students, was earning well over $800K annually. This past autumn his salary topped The Forward’s 2014 Salary Survey at $878,572.
Here’s a thought: Between the hundreds of thousands paid to Lawrence and — this is the best part — the hundreds of thousands (millions even!) Brandeis controversially continued paying Reinharz even after he stepped down and even after Lawrence was installed, maybe Brandeis should have siphoned off a bit from salaries and started a presidential endowment?
All I know is, between the compensation received by presidents and the tuition fees required by students, and throwing in the millions fundraised, one thing is crystal clear: In contemporary academia, it’s all about the dollars.
