Ben Sasse next UF president?

I kinda feel bad for Amanda - the faculty senate chair. She’s been great in all my interactions on a lot of different committees before she ever became chair and I feel bad she has to manage this clusterfrick.

 

Both anti-climactic and sad: The State of Florida, promoting incompetency and ignorance at every turn.

 

All that work, decades worth, to get us to top 5 likely just got pissed away over more moronic Florida politics.

 

It might not be popular, but I think he’ll do great.

 

I mean this with legitimate sincerity, what is the benefit to UF graduates in UF being a Top 5 public university versus 6-15?

 

The value of the degree increases with the rankings. Large firms hire people in part by how they are perceived by the company’s clients/customers. If the employee has a degree from a top school, it has better optics.

Ask yourself, would you rather hire someone for the same money with a degree from MIT or Nebraska?

 

It’s not a specific number, though top 5 sounds nice.
Like I said, it’s about decades of work to legitimize UF as a top tier academic institution that is going to be severely tested with this. That matters to those of us out of state in particular. I work in an environment where your degree matters.
But it will matter to UF in terms of grant funding, donations from those who didn’t like the hire, the faculty senate already gave a no confidence vote so we will likely lose some quality professors…all of that is corollary to rankings and directly impacts students and alums.
But to each their own.

 

If Sasse or any future president makes decisions that drop us out of the top 20, I 100% agree. It represents real risk from lost funding, faculty, etc.

But if we drop from Number 5 to Number 11 or 12, though, that by itself won't impact much, IMO. If it happens in one year, sure, it could create some serious negative press and publicity in the wrong circles for a time. But I doubt we lose any prestige anywhere that actually matters if we drop from Top 5 to Top 10, provided we remain Top 10 and don't start a steady decline downward.

Sasse's Op Ed in The Atlantic intrigued me. I absolutely think he's asking some of the right questions on how can higher education provide a better product to its students. I'd personally love to see something like collaboration with industries for a more modular "rank up" type credentialing system that creates something less binary than "ungraduated and therefore unqualified" followed by "graduated and fully qualified" with no real difference beyond the passage of Graduation Day.

That doesn't mean that I think he'll be a success. But I also don't think his political career or opinions guarantee our Top Public University status was, to paraphrase, "likely just pissed away."

He's undoubtedly a risk, and one I struggle to believe was necessary for a university of our size, stature and means. But I see about as much upside as downside to his hire, if I'm being objective and honest.

 

I’m kind of where you are. Mixed feelings. One the one hand rankings are perception, a perception that feeds itself in terms of quality academia, and if it is perceived, justified or not, Sasse is on Team Desantis, it will probably hurt the image, and that’s a shame.

If that doesn’t happen, perhaps it is good to have somebody with some new “fresh” ideas, assuming he is open minded.

 

100% agree with everything you said but the last sentence. Just my opinion, but I think that's a correlation without the directional causation you're claiming, as well as some selection bias.

Those with little [perceived] experience that wind up being successes are not uncommon, but they are recast at a later date as having different strengths than what was considered necessary at the time. We just hear more frequently about the failures (for the reasons you aptly stated) because they're such obvious flameouts that it makes for a good spectacle.

The first opportunity Sasse takes to grandstand or soapbox, I'll change my tune, but as of today, I think he may be a sneaky good selection.

And I'll use the secondhand info from posters I respect regarding the caliber of people on the search committee to assume that the committee must have been smart enough to see the headwinds this selection would cause, but thought that Sasse was worth it and is up the the task of navigating the steeper climb he'll have because of his public past.

 

when I said “pissed away”, this is what I meant.
I read a great op Ed in the JTU a month or two ago that basically said “yeah he’s got some great out of the box ideas, but why should UF need or want to risk out of the box when their ascension has been so steady and is finally taking hold?” (UF was the first school other than those currently in the top 5 to have that designation in consecutive years).
It’s an unforced risk that has very little upside and a ton of downside. If he is great, then what? Maybe we move up a spot in perception to match UVA? We have all but maxed our rise short or medium term. If he is bad, there is massive downside risk. PSU was 8 in the USNews rankings not that many years ago, they are currently 31. So it can happen.
Bottom line, we had 4 AAU presidents apply for this job (plus heaven knows who else), and we picked a someone with limited admin experience and polarizing beyond that. After our last three were from UCLA, Cornell and John’s Hopkins.
Politics are the only logical reason for the choice, whether folks want to admit that or not.

 

Yeah, but he won an election in a small mid-west state that was Republican. Hence he's qualified.

 

It’s definitely a risk. My only hope is that he doesn’t stay around long and doesn’t do much damage in the interim.

 

So I listened to public comment today - which was scathing at the BOT meeting, and much of it was very on point. I then listened To Chairman Hosseini's unhinged rant on how AMAZING the UF BOT has been under his watch, and how AMAZING UF is BECAUSE of the BOT, and how we've done such a good job, and that they've done this great job despite so many people giving them so much grief, and that basically we should all STFU and trust them to do what is best. The guy is so out of touch.

And in my mind, no one has yet to defend how Sasse was selected over 12 over university presidents from major universities. Even Amanda has yet to offer in my mind, a cogent argument as to how Sasse is going to be better for UF than an experienced president from another higher ed institution OTHER than the fact that he SHOULD be better at politics. And maybe fundraising. MAYBE.

What's really sad, is what most of the people are complaining about is the lack of transparency in the process - and people have been pretty united on that. In an unprecedented move on such a contentious topic, the UF student senate voted UNANIMOUSLY in a vote of no confidence in the process - yet Lauren LeMasters - their president, and the one student voice on the BOT, ignored that and voted with the rest of the board to support Sasse. Part of their justification is that the hiring committee was unanimous in their selection - but again, not a lot of good reasons as to why that is.

What's sad about all of this, is it's obvious from hearing Sasse talk that he has almost no idea at all what he is walking in to. The way he talks about UF is like it is some big agile company, uniquely positioned to lead massive change in higher education. The guy has no idea how difficult that kind of massive change is in higher education, least of all in a massive institution like this. The kind of change he has been vaguely talking about would require him to take a scorched earth policy at UF. So you can say goodbye to the top 5 ranking if he does that. Which I doubt he will anyways.

Anyways - the UF BOT - once again, is just totally out of touch with the constituents that they serve at this point, and are ruling as kings on a throne and ignoring the screaming peasants down below. Watching Mori's face during public comment tells the story. He is disgusted with the rank and file bugs beneath his feet, and seems offended that we aren't just clapping and cheering as the BOT does whatever the hell they want.

 

The faculty senate president came right out in a committee meeting and said his ability to navigate politics was one of the reasons he was selected.

 

Depends on the job. I have hired engineers from MIT. Some were fantastic, many were emotionally and socially challenged making them inferior engineers.

This is a very silly premise.

 

Chairman Mao got the job because he gave money to the Governor and kissed his butt. It's no surprise he's completely out of his depth and completely unaware of it.