July 16, 2016
Temple University President Neil Theobald's fate is all but sealed. After the discovery of a $22 million over-allocation of merit scholarships for the 2016-2017 academic year, the dismissal of provost Hai-Lung Dai preceded a vote of "No Confidence" in Theobald by the school's Board of Trustees.
Pointing the finger at Theobald, the board claims he was aware of a $9 million deficit in June 2015, but did not bring the issue to the attention of the board until this past year. A vote to terminate Theobald is scheduled for July 21.
The reason for Theobald's impending firing is particularly perplexing considering his background, as the Washington Post noted Friday. Theobald, education expert and Post contributor Jeffrey J. Selingo pointed out, didn't come from the traditional university president pipeline — instead, he came from the business side of higher education. Per the Post:
Unlike many of his counterparts at major universities who arrived at their jobs immediately after stints as provosts or deans, Theobald had been the chief financial officer at Indiana University.
Theobald represented a new type of president from the business side of the operation at a time when universities were facing economic headwinds and needed leaders with financial acumen.
Temple faculty welcomed Theobald's money smarts when he was appointed four years ago, and his university biography champions his ability to control a budget while he was at Indiana University. But the job of university president has become more complex in recent years, leading to several recent high-profile resignations and firings at institutions like the University of Missouri and Ithaca College, according to the Post.
Many of those presidents who've recently stepped down or been forced out didn't hold their positions for very long. As noted Friday, Theobald will be the shortest-tenured president in Temple's history, assuming he is in fact voted out.
The phenomenon isn't entirely new. A 2012 Associated Press article cited a then-recent survey that found the average president's tenure had dropped by a year and a half from 2006, going from 8 1/2 years to seven.
Why? As one former president told the AP at the time, the constituencies of many universities are becoming more difficult to handle, and there are often less resources to please them all. Per AP:
Molly Corbett Broad, a former University of North Carolina system president who now leads the American Council on Education, said university governing boards "have become much more politicized." She said they're wrapped up in power struggles with campus presidents who can't -- or won't -- always mollify the competing interests of board members while also remaining attentive to students, parents, donors, professors and politicians forced to cut public spending on higher education as many states struggle to emerge from the recession.
"A president really cannot succeed in leading unless she has a working majority of those constituencies," she said. "And their interests are not typically aligned."
Complicating the matter is as more presidents leave earlier than usual, the "traditional" pipelines to fill the position — from which Theobald did not come — are drying up. Per the Post:
Just 30 percent of sitting provosts want to become presidents, according to the American Council on Education. And this finding comes just when many presidents are expected to retire. The average age of college presidents is 61 (compared with 56 for the typical corporate CEO). Nearly six in 10 presidents are 61 or older, a proportion that has grown in recent years.
For now, Temple's Board of Trustees again plans on appointing University Chancellor Richard Englert as acting president, a role he served before Theobald's appointment in 2012.
Where the board will go for a long-term solution is uncertain, but if national trends are any indication, it won't be an easy search.
