Richard Herman, chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has resigned in the wake of an admissions scandal in which well-connected applicants were put on a “clout list” and given preferential treatment, the Chicago Tribune reported on Tuesday. Mr. Herman, who made a remorseful apology to the faculty after a state panel found he was the “ultimate decision maker” for clout-listed applicants, will join the university’s faculty. His resignation follows those of the university president last month and several trustees.
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Finally!
Tragic! It is too bad that a strong campus leader like Chancellor Herman felt he had to resign at a time when there is an interim provost, an interim system president, and a (mostly) new set of appointed trustees. The scandal is NOT that there were preferential admissions, but that campus governance is so polluted by the political hacks in Springfield. The campus will rebound from the admissions issues in a year. It will take a decade to re-establish strong leadership on campus. Would you want to step in as the campus CEO or provost, given the political climate in the State?
rgren — you don’t have your facts straight. Herman was up to his eyebrows in the muck of the scandal. He was copied on emails and mentioned in many others. The tragedy is that good Trustees, who had absolutely no part in the scandal, resigned on good faith when requested to by Gov. Quinn (except two) with Quinn’s word that he would review each on a separate basis for reappointment. Quinn did reappoint one, but not two others who would have added great stability and continuity to the Board of Trustees.Herman, however, hung on long after he should have resigned.
The beat goes on. Is all the garbage out now?
Aside from the administrative misdeeds at UIUC (and Herman was responsible for people reporting to him, whether or not he had a direct hand in it), I am appalled to read that he would have received a 300K retention bonus if he had stayed through June 2010. Why is a publicly-funded institution handing out large bonuses on top of already generous administrative salaries? And they have the nerve to poor mouth to their students and alumni, not to mention the taxpayers of Illinois. I am sure the people teaching freshman English or Biology 101 are not being paid bonuses. Anyone on the board who was involved in granting such contracts should be removed. I have three degrees from UIUC, but it will be a cold day in hell that I give them a nickel.
Why have the politicians who pushed these unqualified students upon the university administration been forced to resign for malfeasance? Corruption is a two way street, and if the offense was serious enough to require the chancellor to leave, then it should also have been serious enough to force the legislator to resign. The university depends upon state support, and when a legislator calls the chancellor or a dean to push the candidacy of a student who was already denied, the administrator will feel that a quid pro quo is in play. “Don’t admit my friend’s child, and I won’t vote for your appropriation,” is very likely the pressure that the university administrator is feeling. When do the taxpayers get rid of those who initiated the corruption: the elected officials?
“Why have those politicians NOT been forced to resign?” is what my first sentence should have read.