The One College Presidency I Would Accept

You could not pay me enough to be a college president. A college ex-president, however...

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Longtime readers of Drezner’s World are fully aware that you could not pay me enough to be a college president. As I explained back in December:

Yeah, higher education administrators are paid pretty well, but there is no amount of money in the world that could get me to say “yes” to one of these positions….

Why are these horrible, no-win positions? Because the primary job of any college dean or university president is to deal with the most spoiled, entitled, pig-headed interest groups imaginable….

[Another] primary job of any dean or president is fundraising, and some folks might be surprised at how hard it is to perform that task with any dignity or grace. The key thing to understand is that if you think speaking truth to power is hard, try speaking truth to money. It’s harder. Donors are rarely if ever contradicted when they posit and pontificate about the best way to run a university. They do not make suggestions — they impart wisdom from on high, and if they do not see an institutional response they will ask to speak with the manager….

I never want to be a university president. That’s okay — I would be a horrible one. The problem, however, is there are not a lot of folks who are able to do these jobs well. They require a unique blend of scholarly gravitas, organizational competence, political skill, and fundraising abilities. What worries me about the fallout from Magill’s resignation is that, the longer it continues, the number of folks willing and able to do these jobs will shrink into nothingness.

The desirability of a college presidency managed to decline even further in 2024. The abrupt departure of Columbia University president Nemat Shafik in mid-August was merely the latest cautionary tale. Beleaguered on all sides due to her piss-poor handling of protests regarding the war in Gaza, she decamped rather awkwardly to a non-paying gig back in the United Kingdom.

The New York Times write-up shows how badly Shafik wanted to leave a job she had accepted less than a year earlier:

The part-time role in London was unpaid, temporary and only advisory, but to Nemat Shafik, it offered a way out of her beleaguered presidency at Columbia University.

She had arrived in New York only last year for one of academia’s plum jobs: running an Ivy League university with enormous riches and diversity, extraordinary prestige and a heritage that predated American independence. To the university’s leaders, Dr. Shafik was a peerless pick, a globally minded economist with a remarkable personal story, and the first woman to lead Columbia.

These last 10 months, though, since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, had been miserable for Columbia and its president. The university, which Dr. Shafik had championed as a haven for the world’s best minds who could help solve society’s intractable problems, disintegrated into factions. And as Dr. Shafik’s response proved swerving and uneven, she found herself with few allies and facing a campus where she was perceived as insular and rarely seen.

By the time summer break arrived, she had been vilified on campus and in Congress as an ally of antisemites, a turncoat to academic freedom and free speech, and an enfeebled leader who had both allowed pro-Palestinian protests to plunge into lawlessness and been too willing to call in the police. Her home seemed as much a fortress as a residence. And even as summer brought a respite from encampments and protests, university officials so feared the possibility of future trouble that they began weighing police powers for campus security officers.

People who had spoken to Dr. Shafik in recent months came to believe that she was deeply unhappy, and she had told faculty members that she thought there was little trust in her administration.

Not an inspiring story! Shafik’s experience will make it even harder for universities to hire qualified replacements. Furthermore, as temporary presidents persist at many elite institutions, the pipeline to train better college presidents of the future seems to be rusting over.

I am part of the problem here. I’m a distinguished professor now, which means the next logical step would be to become a full-time administrator. I possess enough self-interest, however, to actively avoid the transition.

Until now.

I think I might be prepared to throw my hat into the ring for a college presidency. Because Ben Sasse, the not-so-bright-former-senator-turned-University-of-Florida-president, has shown me and my colleagues the way.

Sasse lasted 17 months as president of the University of Florida. During that time, he leaned hard on his friends from McKinsey in an effort to figure out reforms. As the Independent Florida Alligator’s Garret Shanley revealed, however, Sasse relied even more heavily on his cronies from his Senate staff:

In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.

Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.

A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials….

Under Sasse’s administration, two of his former Senate staffers — Raymond Sass and James Wegmann — were among the highest-ranking and highest-paid officials at UF. Both worked remotely from the D.C. area, roughly 800 miles from UF’s main campus in Gainesville.

Sass, Sasse’s former Senate chief of staff, was UF’s vice president for innovation and partnerships — a position which didn’t exist under previous administrations. His starting salary at UF was $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made on Capitol Hill. 

Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, is UF’s vice president of communications, a position he works remotely from his $725,000 home in Washington, D.C. 

Salaried at $432,000, Wegmann replaced Steve Orlando, who made $270,000 a year in the position and had nearly 30 years of experience in media relations at UF before he was demoted to be Wegmann’s deputy….

An additional four who followed Sasse from the Senate to the Swamp have gone unnoticed by the press. 

Sasse appointed his former Senate press secretary, Taylor Sliva, as UF’s Assistant Vice President of Presidential Communications and Public Affairs, a new position. Sliva’s $232,000 salary made him the second-highest-paid employee in UF’s Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing, trailing only Wegmann. 

The remaining three ex-Senate staffers — Raven Shirley, Kari Ridder and Kelicia Rice — served as presidential advisers to Sasse, though their specific duties remain unclear. Rice, Sasse’s Senate scheduler, is listed as a presidential adviser in UF’s salary directory but in practice remained as Sasse’s scheduler, according to her LinkedIn profile.

There’s way more in Shanley’s story, so do be sure to read the whole thing. It was embarrassing enough for Florida governor Ron DeSantis to call for an investigation into Sasse’s spending.

Four days after Shanley’s story ran, Sasse penned a long response on Twitter that did not dispute the basic facts. Indeed, he acknowledged, “did we hire some new staff? Yep. And did all of them move immediately to Gainesville full-time? Nope. And did some top-tier consulting firms compete to advise on important initiatives like those itemized above? Of course…. One of my preconditions in agreeing to accept this calling was being able to bring big-cause, trusted people from my last few teams along to help build a stronger, more dynamic UF.”

Sasse might have stepped down as UF president, but that does not mean he is fading away. The Tampa Bay Times’ Divya Kumar reports that, “Ben Sasse stands to receive more than $1 million per year through at least 2028, according to a contract addendum released Monday.”

That seems like a pretty sweet deal for an ex-college president who could not last a year and a half at the job! Sasse’s compensation package might offer comparisons to Bobby Bonilla, but to the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World, it offers the one plausible way I would agree to become a college president.

So here is my offer, Governor DeSantis! If you still need a president for the University of Florida, I will throw my hat into the ring. I have the academic bona fides, some modest administrative experience, and have even penned a quasi-relevant book!

Here are my terms:

1. My base salary must be $2 million. Sasse got more than $1 million and my citation count is exponentially higher than his. A modest doubling of the salary seems reasonable!

2. If for some mysterious reason things don’t work out, you must pay my base salary for the next five years while I serve as president emeritus. After all, what’s fair for Sasse is extra-fair for me!

3. My presidential budget must be $20 million or higher. I too know many big-cause, trusted people — and you’re gonna need to pay them truckloads to entice them to Gainesville.

4. Here’s a sweetener — I don’t need any money for management consultants! I’m al too familiar with their work product.

5. Every month I want an all-expenses-paid visit to a Florida restaurant of my choosing. It could be the Bubble Room, Joe’s Stonecrabs, Cafe Versailles, Los Ranchos — the point is I need to acculturate to Florida.

6. Every year I get to organize a weeklong conference in Captiva. In February.

7. A gold-plated golf cart to get around campus emblazoned with the words “THAT’S MR. PRESIDENT TO YOU” on the side.

In return, I promise I will last at least one month longer than Sasse. Then I will exercise my free speech rights like you would not believe. When month 18 arrives, I’ll just say something like, “teaching is overrated,” step down, and collect my seven-figure payments for a few years.

You could not pay me enough to be a college president. Ben Sasse and the state of Florida, however, have opened my eyes to the allure of being an ex-college president.