Soon the University of North Carolina system will have Margaret Spellings as its new president. Her predecessor, Tom Ross, was asked to step down by the Board of Governors about one year ago.
As The Chronicle of Higher Education reported, legislators, UNC system faculty members and students have expressed concerns regarding the secretive actions concerning the search for Ross’ successor. John Fennebresque, former chairman of the UNC Board of Governors, has been in the center of this tumultuous search of candidates. Fennebresque announced his resignation as chairman of the board Monday.
Fennebresque and the board were subjected to harsh criticism, mainly because the board held an emergency meeting Friday to meet with Spellings, who was a finalist for the system’s presidency. Decision of Spellings’ nomination was made shortly following the meeting. The lack of transparency during the recruiting process sparked worry and discussion across the state’s 17 campuses. The Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill that will require the search committee to submit three candidates to the full board before a vote, though that legislation has not yet been signed into law. The deadline for signing the legislation into law is Oct. 30. All these chaotic events truly raised suspicion regarding how much political favoritism was brought to the search process.
Fennebresque’s resignation, whether it came about from pressure from other board members or the legislature, will not correct and moralize the search process. The decision has already been made, and resignation will only free Fennebresque from further criticism after Spellings takes office in March.
The whole process of recruiting, regardless of the new president’s competence, was even less transparent and more rigorous than hiring a CEO of a private company. However, the UNC system is a public institution, not Fennebresque’s private law firm, nor a collection of the Republicans’ favorite private colleges. The nomination of the system’s president, broadly speaking, affects tens of thousands of North Carolinian families, and, as well, their opportunity to receive quality higher education for their children. Every step of the way should have been shared with the public. The legislature is quite irresponsible in terms of lending tremendous power to the Board of Governors, leaving it unchecked when it comes to firing and recruiting leaders of the system.
In January, Fennebresque asked then-President Tom Ross to step down in a closed meeting, without any explicit explanation to the media and public. The legislature and the governor have not launched any action to prevent the abuse of power of the board. Even if there were violations of due process in this search, people should not expect the legislature to hold hearings and testimonies against the possible fouls. All criticisms have been limited to media and casual conversation.
Questions have been raised with respect to Spellings’ competence: Does she have the skills necessary to lead a progressive higher institution like the UNC system? Though she served as secretary of education under the Bush administration, Spellings’ career as a whole has not been in the academic realm. All her previous experiences were related to K-12 schooling and high school education. But it is more complex to handle issues in higher education than K-12 school systems, as higher education intensively involves research and cannot be simply measured by testing. Faculty members of the system have so far withheld comments on Spellings’ competence since they have not been asked to meet her. But if a person did not go through professorship or being a researcher, they might not understand the important value of research to the reputation of a public university.
University is a place where different ideas, thoughts and experiments can thrive, grow and compete. Hopefully, the new leadership will follow the tradition of the UNC system and bring minimal political ideology to campuses.
