[Alumni-chat] 3 questions

[Scott Warren]

I know it's been a week since this post by Bob, but this is a story that
really needs to get out to the world!!  It outlines the whole sordid tale
of our engineered demise.  This is worthy of a bad movie about corporate
corruption (university) bringing down a noble enterprise (college).

Scott


Alumni Chat List <alumni-chat at w3.antioch.edu> on Thursday, June 21, 2007
at 1:44 PM  wrote:


>Alumni Chat List <alumni-chat at w3.antioch.edu> on Thursday, June 21, 2007
>at 12:34 PM -0500 wrote:
> 
>>
>>2)  When did Antioch College loose its independent governance and get
>>subsumed into the larger University structure? I'm thinking it is from
>>Al Guskin days.  What was the rationale?
>
>Bonnie,
>
>My recollection is that Antioch College became Antioch University during
>the Birenbaum presidency, with a President in New York and a Provost (or
>Chancellor?) leading the campus.  When Alan Guskin arrived in 1985, he was
>persauded to consolidate the two positions (President of Antioch
>University and head of the College campus).  From that position he was
>able to implement a system of subsidies for the College, in effect making
>it the duty of the adult campuses to subsidize the College.  In 1994, at
>Guskin's recommendation, the Board separated the two positions once again,
>with Guskin becoming the Chancellor of the University, and the Board
>searching and hiring a President.  In that separation process, the
>University administration was "pulled out of" the College, and another
>piece of continuing subsidy to the College involved the University
>compensating the College for the Presidential and Development functions
>they had taken away of the College.  The College retained autonomy within
>the federal model of the University, and the President reported to the
>Board.  The total of subsidies (overhead from the adult campuses,
>non-compete percentage of McGregor's revenues, funds in support of
>replacing what College administration had been removed in the separation,
>and over-award of FWSP funds to the College) amounted to roughly $1
>million annually.  The subsidies were to continue until such time as the
>College's growth in enrollment and/or growth in endowment had achieved
>levels necessary for self-sufficiency.  The federal model, with autonomous
>decision-making, University subsidies, and direct reporting to the Board,
>was to the advantage of the College, and persisted until Alan Guskin
>retired.  His successor, with the support of Vice Chancellor Glenn Watts,
>was more interested in a command-and-control model, and uncomfortable with
>the autonomy and governance of the College.  More than once in the
>University Leadership Council, I was told that I was crazy to believe that
>the College ought to be bound by decisions made responsibly by
>Administrative Council.  Glenn was the architect of the Board's distrust
>of the College, and pushed forward with initiatives (a) to transfer
>depreciation expense to the College (which it could ill afford to cover)
>while retaining the offsetting endowment growth (revenue on paper) in the
>University budget, (b) to diminish and eliminate the University and
>adult-campus subsidies (which eventually became "allowable deficits", and
>(c) to take control of College finances at the University level (the
>College's Vice President of Finance and Administration was eliminated, and
>those functions were taken over by the University).  After I stepped out
>of the President's role, the reporting relationship changed, with the
>President of the College reporting to the Chancellor, rather than to the
>Board.
>
>More than you wanted to know....
>
>Bob
>>
> 
>
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