With state funding shrinking and calls for more accountability on college campuses growing louder, university boards are turning to more structured, systematic evaluations to grade their top leaders
Portrait of Richard McCormick, president of Rutgers University, in his office at Rutgers University in New Brunswick in November 2008.NEW BRUNSWICK — Every summer for the last eight years, Rutgers University President Richard McCormick and the school’s board of governors have met behind closed doors in New Brunswick for a job review.
The president produces a 20-page self-assessment on how he thinks he did meeting his goals for the year. Then, the board members weigh in with their opinions.
Every year, the group has emerged from the private meeting agreeing McCormick should keep his $550,000-a-year job for another 12 months.
But is that the best way to evaluate the head of the state’s largest university?
Rutgers is joining a growing number of colleges and universities taking a closer look at how they assess their presidents. With state funding shrinking and calls for more accountability on college campuses growing louder, university boards are turning to more structured, systematic evaluations to grade their top leaders.
Under the new plan set to debut this summer, Rutgers will measure how its graduation rates, research grants, incoming freshman class and other areas compare to similar public universities. Then, the Rutgers board — headed by Ralph Izzo, CEO of PSE&G’s parent company — will use the data to help decide if McCormick is doing a good enough job helping the school rise in the rankings.
McCormick said he welcomes the new job review system.
"Ralph has brought a more business-like and ultimately more quantitative approach to this," McCormick said. "We will estimate what we have to do to close the gaps to excellence."
The number of public colleges and universities doing annual reviews of their presidents jumped from 66 percent to 92 percent over the last decade, according to a 2008 survey by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.
"The practice of presidential assessment has definitely gotten to be a more routine act of the board," said Merrill Schwartz, director of research at the Washington, D.C.,-based association.
Nearly 53 percent of public colleges say they are also doing more in-depth, comprehensive assessments of their presidents every three to five years, according to the survey. Some colleges are calling in pricey outside consultants to put their presidents under the microscope in reviews that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Rutgers’ new assessment system will be among the most detailed in New Jersey, where presidential reviews vary from college to college and are usually done in private.
At the College of New Jersey, President R. Barbara Gitenstein has a five-year contract for her $300,000-a-year job. She meets once a year with her board to discuss whether she met her goals, a campus spokeswoman said. Kean University President Dawood Farahi goes through a similar process for his $293,500-a-year post.
At Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, veteran President George Pruitt still undergoes a detailed annual review after nearly 30 years in the job. Pruitt, who earns $281,000 a year, is judged in specific categories, including the performance of the college and his personal ethics, a spokesman said.
Reviews don’t always go smoothly. Last month, Rowan University’s board announced President Donald Farish would step down from his $300,000-a-year job in June, a year before the end of his contract. Neither Farish nor the board would discuss the reason for his early departure, but some faculty leaders said the president and board had been clashing over his performance for years.
At Rutgers, McCormick will face his next review this summer. The president and the board are still negotiating what categories he will be judged on under the new system. McCormick, who said he has a good relationship with the board, is ready to jointly set new goals for the school.
Last year, McCormick gave himself good marks in his self-assessment. In an 18-page report to the board, the president said he met almost all of his nearly 50 goals for the year, including boosting Rutgers’ enrollment and increasing research grants.
McCormick gave himself only two failing marks: Rutgers didn’t reach its goal of raising $130 million in new donations and the New Brunswick campus failed to launch a project to beautify College Avenue. McCormick blamed the poor economy for both failures.
This year, Rutgers officials have begun documenting how the university is doing in several measurable areas, including student performance and developing new sources of revenue. The school will compare itself to a list of nine schools it selected as role models, including the University of Michigan, University of North Carolina, the University of Washington and the University of California at Berkeley.
Rutgers trails most of its role models in key categories, including out-of-state enrollment, attracting donations and winning research grants. Keeping closer track of how Rutgers is doing compared to its peers is part of a university-wide project to set clearer goals for the school, said Izzo, head of the Rutgers board.
But, McCormick will not be judged solely on whether the university’s statistics rise under his watch.
"The role of the president is much more than hitting a number," Izzo said.
Other than one $25,000 raise — to $550,000 a year — in 2008, McCormick’s salary has been largely unchanged since he was hired in 2002. He received a $500,000 retention bonus in 2007. The following year, he agreed to donate a $100,000 performance bonus back to the school.
Since then, McCormick and the board have agreed to forgo his $100,000 performance bonus each year due to the university’s budget troubles. Eventually, the new yearly presidential assessment system could be used to decide the president’s compensation, campus officials said.
"We haven’t taken that step just given the financial situation we’re in right now," Izzo said.