by Joe Sullivan
Ill-timed administrative pay raises to the contrary not withstanding, UT's new president J. Wade Gilley seems bent on cutting the university's administrative overhead.
The raises, especially to a dozen or so top administrators who were already drawing six figure salaries, have probably done more to hurt UT's chances of getting additional state funding in the short run than anything that Gilley has done to date to help them. But after three months on the job, he sounds ever more like the hard-nosed corporate executive brought in to effect a painful restructuring. And in any longer run, his ability to satisfy the state legislature that he's gotten widely perceived "fat" out of the UT system is crucial to raising the state revenues needed for higher education in Tennessee to start making up the ground it's lost to most surrounding states.
Unlike his predecessor, Joe Johnson, who spent a lot of time trying to convince the governor and legislators there wasn't any fat, Gilley is now clear there is. "We spend a higher percentage on administrative structure then any other institution in the state, including Vanderbilt, and we're higher than the national average for research institutions. That means we're spending less on instruction and research, which is where the money should be going," Gilley says. And his criticisms don't stop with generalities.
"We've got a lot of duplication and overlap between the system administration and the campuses," he asserts. Fund raising activities and research grant solicitation are cited in this regard. "Especially as we're facing a funding crunch in the legislature, we've got to have the leanest, most efficient administration we possibly can."
To help him achieve it, Gilley has set up a special committee chaired by Bill Rice, chancellor of UT-Memphis, whose administrative overhead is the lowest of any campus in the UT system. As a harbinger of what might be expected elsewhere, Gilley notes that, "Bill Rice cut the number of vice chancellors in Memphis from eight to four...I've asked him to take a close look at the administrative structure system-wide."
In the course of getting Bill Snyder to step down at year end as chancellor of UT-Knoxville, Gilley effectively cut the number of vice chancellors here. Snyder will be succeeded on an interim basis by John Peters, until now senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, but there are no plans for naming anyone else to Peters' present post.
Coming as it did right on the heals of almost scandalous media portrayals of the UTK pay raises, Snyder's departure announcement looked as if he might be falling (or have been pushed) on his sword. While lamenting the "very poor timing" of the pay raise revelations just in advance of a special session of the legislature on tax reform, Gilley insists there was "no relationship" between them and his accepting the 68-year-old Snyder's earlier offer to retire. Still, it's known that Snyder had contemplated staying on for at least another year. And if the pay raises in particular weren't the impetus for Gilley's asking him to take his leave, then a more generalized lack of satisfaction with Snyder's posture or performance would appear to be a factor. For all the veneration that his colleagues have for the 35-year UT veteran who came up through its academic ranks, Snyder has been subject to criticism in some quarters for having a hard time making difficult decisions and for "a tendency to over commit the university" as one anonymity-seeking critic puts it.
For the most part, however, the pay raises were not a manifestation of any such tendency. When UT's Board of Trustees approved a 15 percent tuition increase in June, most of the money was earmarked for merit raises to selected faculty, and that's where most of the money went. Snyder approved raises for about 25 percent of UTK's personnel that took effect August 1—the very day that Gilley assumed the presidency. But the chancellor was unaware of the way in which a newly-enacted state law required individual approval of each and every one of the raises by the Board of Trustees. Hence, the awkward, retroactive action by the board at its next meeting on October 8 which brought the raises to the media's attention.
That, in turn, provided a feeding frenzy for such mediocrity-minded opponents of additional UT funding as State Sen. Tim Burchett who fired off a press release erroneously claiming that two-thirds of the raises were going to administrative positions.
Looking beyond this temporary tempest, Snyder's departure raises fundamental questions about the longer-term relationship between UT's flagship Knoxville campus and its system hierarchy. Customarily, when a chancellor departs, a search committee is named to pick his successor. Given the "we versus they" syndrome that has long existed between campus academics and what they have considered to be meddlesome system bureaucrats, much importance attaches to a search process that many, including Snyder, hoped would lead to more autonomy for UTK.
But Gilley will not be pinned down as to when, if ever, he intends to set a search in motion. In the meantime, it seems clear that he intends to personally ride herd on the Knoxville campus. Indeed, Gilley refers to Peters as the campus' chief operating officer, which leaves little doubt about whom he considers to be its chief executive. And he bristles at the suggestion that such a role on his part could offend campus sensibilities and further weaken morale that's already low.
"Sensitivities about who reports to whom have to be subordinated to how we can most efficiently run the university," Gilley asserts. "The things that define a high quality institution are faculty salaries, research dollars per faculty member, preservation of our standing as a first-tier research university [which is in jeopardy]. How we play musical chairs is irrelevant."
However this plays in Knoxville, it seems calculated to play well in Nashville where additional state funding is essential lest the name of the game at UT become Stop the Music.
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