UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

https://gist.github.com/2955870

by riordan • 14 years ago

213 119 14 years ago

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protomyth• 14 years ago

Anyone have any sources for what the situation is?

tomasien4• 14 years ago

Just Google it, this is a humongous deal in HooVille. I'll write a brief description above

pinko• 14 years ago

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/u-va-board-a...

billyarzt• 14 years ago

Here's the local Charlottesville paper, usually breaks stories sooner than the national press

http://www2.dailyprogress.com/

tomasien4• 14 years ago

Brief description of what's happening: a bit over 2 years ago, Teressa Sullivan was appointed the first woman president in the history of UVa, a school that was all male until the 70's.

Suddenly, last week she was forced to resign because of a "philosophical difference" with the Board of Visitors, a group that is appointed by the state of oversee University Affairs and top level hirings. It was later revealed this was the result of a coup by a bunch of Darden MBA's because they wanted "radical" change to the future plans of the University, not incremental change.

The students and faculty are outraged because this was done in secret behind closed doors, which is very much contrary to the way things are typically done at UVa (because of Jefferson's vision or whatever, I find a lot of the Jefferson talk to be crap but let's take it for what it is for now).

There have been protests, yada yada yada everybody is pissed and people are starting to quit.

This is a big damn deal that's only getting worse, and although I'm a UVa alum who for some reason doesn't really care, I suggest taking a look at this if you're interested in the bs that can go on at the ivory tower institutions

tomasien4• 14 years ago

I'll add that by all accounts she was beloved and was doing what was widely considered a great job. NOBODY was openly complaining, it was very sudden.

dhimes• 14 years ago

Also alum, and I concur with your view. This is a high caliber guy who is resigning; he is (from his letter) married to a high caliber woman also on the faculty.

This is huge. This will cause a loss of confidence in UVA if they don't take effective action to recover.

electronvolt• 14 years ago

As a current student (undergraduate; CS/Math), and the son of two faculty members (Music/English) I'll agree with this. Every faculty member involved in some sort of administration that I know (both parents, multiple family friends, and people I have had courses for and work for) were in favor of Sullivan's proposed changes: anyone who has spent time around a University can imagine how hard it is to get that level of buy-in from the professors. (Hint: imagine herding irritable, opinionated, and very, very smart cats that are often impossible to fire. Then imagine that some of them have large bullhorns and are willing to write for Slate if they disagree with you, like Siva Vaidhyanathan here: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m... Point being, it is hard to get consensus, and I might be understating that.)

The main objection that I and most people I've talked to have is that the BOV hasn't given a good reason for its actions. It may very well be that Sullivan deserved to be fired. It may very well be that there needed to be more drastic changes than she was willing to make (although for an appropriate idea of how hard drastic, top down change is at a top University, see my description of faculty consensus above). But without releasing any concrete reason, backed up by publicly available data, and by essentially saying "shut up and trust our judgment", they showed a fundamental disconnect between their idea of acceptable governance and the rest of the university's idea of acceptable governance. For the record, I think that if you look at them as the board of a corporation replacing a CEO, their actions are totally reasonable (and I wouldn't be surprised if this was, in part, how they viewed themselves; this doesn't really say much for their case, though, because that still shows a massive cultural disconnect between them and the university body).

_delirium6• 14 years ago

A fundamental problem is that university boards have an increasing disconnect from anything to do with merit, and a close enough connect to donating money (in two ways) that it's pretty close to just buying a seat. They're mostly made up some mixture of: 1) large donors to the university, who're appointed to maintain good relations, encourage future donations, etc.; and 2) for public universities, large political donors, who're appointed by governors, sort of in the way that ambassadorships often go to big political donors.

It's admittedly long been common for particularly large donors to be flattered a bit with some role, but over the past 10-20 years this seems to have gone from being a few members of the board, to being almost all of them, with very few members appointed primarily because of non-donation-related merit, like someone thinking they're actually good candidates for overseeing an academic/research institution. Note the lack of accomplished scientists on the board, for example. In addition, the political appointees seem to have decreased in quality: it was once more common to appoint someone who, while they were from your own party, was a late-career "elder statesman" type figure, e.g. a former governor or Congressman.

It's sadly not a partisan issue, either: if you look at, say, the University of California Board of Regents, you have a nice bipartisan mixture of big Democratic donors (appointed by Democratic governors) and big Republican donors (appointed by Republican governors). Their expertise is... not too relevant seeming, including such credentials as "former CEO of Paramount Pictures" and "husband of Dianne Feinstein".

kmfrk4• 14 years ago

   It was later revealed this was the result of a coup by a
   bunch of Darden MBA's because they wanted "radical" change
   to the future plans of the University, not incremental
   change.

Which, as I recall, was revealed in some seriously mustache-twirling e-mails that the main orchestrator had used the Reply All feature for or something to that extent. I can't remember which article I read this in, but this has all the elements of the most interesting and scandalous affair in academia this year.

_delirium6• 14 years ago

I'm not sure if it's the original source, but the reply-all mishap from the hedge-fund guy, re: "confidential project", is mentioned in this article: http://www.readthehook.com/104250/important-alums-did-they-t...

aptwebapps• 14 years ago

Perhaps this one?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m...

ktizo• 14 years ago

Sounds like an american version of the novel Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porterhouse_Blue

pragmatic• 14 years ago

UVA = U.VA. = U. of VA. = the University of Virgina.

tomasien4• 14 years ago

Um, thanks? They say UVa actually, but yeah I can see how not everyone would see UVA and know what it was.

hugopeixoto• 14 years ago

I've always associated "uva" with the university of valladolid, spain (www.uva.es). It wasn't until I read this that the letter being in english finally made sense.

wglb• 14 years ago

William Wulf is a seriously big deal in my book.

kickingvegas• 14 years ago

"More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason — including blind stupidity." — W.A. Wulf

As an alumnus of the University of Virginia in Computer Engineering, kudos Professor Wulf.

dredmorbius4• 14 years ago

Thank you.

You've just given me my #1 salvo against systemd :)

chrismealy• 14 years ago

The lack of "strategic dynamism" part is hilarious:

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-co...

gpvos2• 14 years ago

While the writer dismisses the term "strategic dynamism", he acknowledges the actual problem that the Board of Visitors tries to address: the imposed large budget cuts make it necessary that entire subjects/departments have to go, instead of small budget cuts across the board. Something that Sullivan apparently in the end wasn't able, or prepared, to do.

(Note: I know nothing about the case, really; I am just pointing out that I think you misunderstood the point of the article you linked.)

scott_s7• 14 years ago

I thought that part was interesting as well, and it's a seriously hard problem. I am aware of one institution making that hard choice, though: the College of William and Mary. Sometime before I arrived there in 2003 for grad school, they had eliminated graduate departments that the school felt could not become top-ranked in their area.

tryitnow• 14 years ago

This article is the most unbiased I've read. As a UVA alum I tend to side with the BOV in this case. Virginia is a notoriously stingy state and it's inevitable that big changes have to be made to keep UVA competitive.

The current leader of any organization is rarely the best choice for making big changes. Unfortunately, it seems Sullivan was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. My guess is the BOV wanted to bring in a hatchet man to make some big cuts of entire departments as opposed to taking a shared sacrifice approach.

I can tell you from my experience in the corporate world "shared sacrifice" rarely works for big organizations facing significant budget cuts. It's usually best to ruthlessly triage the weak parts and leave the strong parts intact instead of trying to cut the strong and weak equally.

However, the BOV handled it poorly.

ahi• 14 years ago

UVA is not the corporate world. If UVA wants to maintain its stature it can't be missing entire departments (of thought). You end up with a university that is less than the sum of its parts.

eitally• 14 years ago

My (CLAS '99 graduate) problem with this is that UVA is known as a strong liberal arts research institution, and even if areas like German & Classics are money sinks, cutting them causes comprehensive reputation damage spanning the liberal arts. I attended engineering graduate school at NC State, which is 100% known for engineering & agriculture/textiles, and not at all for liberal arts. That isn't to say there may not be niches of expertise, but when marketing to prospective undergraduates who judge with a broad stroke and lots of ignorance (most have no idea what course of study they'll actually end up pursuing), it does mean they can stagnate and whither.

thwest• 14 years ago

Reads more like a resume than reasons for leaving.

kmfrk4• 14 years ago

Well, it's both, I guess. He uses the extreme body of work to explain that he's got the experience and then some to tell them that this is a managerial and academic failure of nearly unprecedented proportions.

He's not some tenured professor sequestered in the bubble of academia.

Retric• 14 years ago

At a school that large they need to defend why their leaving matters.

WalterSear• 14 years ago

It's an open letter: he want's others reading it to know who he is, and why his opinion should matter.

SpikeDad• 14 years ago

I guess being a women in Virgina is an endangered species. Seems all they're good for is government forced medical examinations.

Guess you get what you vote for in a guy like McDonald.

jmduke3• 14 years ago

The Rector of the Board of Visitors, Helen Dragas, is also a female.

Gender had nothing to do with this.

Nate75Sanders• 14 years ago

To be clear, this isn't some random professor:

My wife (Anita Jones) and I are in Computer Science and we both hold the title University Professor — the highest rank at UVa. Of the 3300 faculty at UVa, roughly 13 hold that title.

mturmon2• 14 years ago

And, not just a cranky emeritus:

"I was President of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for 11 years."

rayiner11• 14 years ago

He may be impressive, but he also sounds like an entitled baby boomer who thinks he should get more and more tuition dollars from young people in the name of "academic freedom." His resignation letter is devoid of even a sop to the budget crisis that has forced the Board to cut departments in lieu of raising tuition beyond the 275% the University has raised it in the last decade.

brown9-2• 14 years ago

He may be impressive, but he also sounds like an entitled baby boomer who thinks he should get more and more tuition dollars from young people in the name of "academic freedom."

Source?

Sounds like his entire complaint is about the BOV. I don't see anything in the letter that would give you a different impression about the professor's complaint.

jlarocco• 14 years ago

Anybody else completely lost on this?

There's really no explanation in the link.

I read the whole thing and have no idea why he's resigning, or even who he is or why I should care.

"Being President was a full time job in DC..." made me chuckle, though.

dredmorbius4• 14 years ago

Additional backstory for those not gleaning sufficient context from either the HN title or Bill Wulf's resignation letter (echoing another comment: more a resume than a list of wrongs).

From the Slate article below: On Thursday night, a hedge fund billionaire, self-styled intellectual, “radical moderate,” philanthropist, former Goldman Sachs partner, and general bon vivant named Peter Kiernan resigned abruptly from the foundation board of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. He had embarrassed himself by writing an email claiming to have engineered the dismissal of the university president, Teresa Sullivan, ousted by a surprise vote a few days earlier.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m...

chernevik2• 14 years ago

"Sullivan is an esteemed sociologist who specialized in class dynamics and the role of debt"

Actually kind of a revealing sentence.

dredmorbius4• 14 years ago

Indeed. I may have to look her up.

The most interesting things I've seen written about debt in the past 20 years comes from an anthropologist, David Graeber. Debt, the first 5000 years. Insights I've never seen from an economist.

I'm curious as to what a sociologist has come up with.

wcarey• 14 years ago

Beyond the politics (which the Board of Visitors appears to have handled distressingly badly), there's an interesting analogy to software design lurking in the story.

It seems like the philosophical conflict that drove Sullivan't dismissal maps cleanly to the two styles of programming that pg described in "Programming Bottom-Up":

"It's worth emphasizing that bottom-up design doesn't mean just writing the same program in a different order. When you work bottom-up, you usually end up with a different program. Instead of a single, monolithic program, you will get a larger language with more abstract operators, and a smaller program written in it. Instead of a lintel, you'll get an arch."

My reading of Dragas's and Sullivan's statements to the Board of Visitors is that Dragas wants the University designed as a lintel, and Sullivan as an arch.

Dragas argues that "the Board is the one entity that has a unique vantage point that enables us to oversee the big picture of those interactions, and how the leadership shapes the strategic trajectory of the University." [1] The changes Dragas seems to support (though it's hard to find a clear statement of them anywhere?) would be akin to a major rewrite from scratch. University design by lintel.

Sullivan conversely argues that, "[c]orporate-style, top-down leadership does not work in a great university." She seems to be arguing for incremental changes more akin to aggressive refactoring.

[1] http://cvillenews.com/2012/06/18/dragas-sullivan-statements/

gantz• 14 years ago

I know this letter was written for a UVA audience but there is almost no actual rhetoric about why he believes the administration to be wrong. I understand the power of losing every title and honor on your own,..but why not put more Ome into drafting a concise and powerful argument?

ChristianMarks2• 14 years ago

For background and context, please see http://leiterreports.typepad.com/

NEWSFLASH: the Vice-Rector has resigned. Let's hope that Rector Dragass [sic] resigns too.

Camillo• 14 years ago

That's too much and not enough at the same time. We really need a decent summary.

ChristianMarks2• 14 years ago

You could start with this: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/06/coup-detat-at-...

rayiner11• 14 years ago

Additional backstory: the revolt of the faculty is due to the Board wanting to close marginal academic departments at the University.

Further backstory: the expenditures of the academic division at UVA have increased about 80% since 2001. Enrollment has only increased 9%. In-state tuition has increased about 275%.

I'm not a UVA alum, but I grew up in Virginia, so I care about what happens at UVA. UVA's faculty can wax philosophical all they want about academic freedom and the like, but at the end of the day the explosion in university expenses cannot be ignored. Expenditures on faculty salaries have risen 4-5% per year over the last decade even though enrollment has only grown 0.7% per year and salaries in other sectors have been stagnant.

It's insane that there are 3,300 faculty for a school that has only 21,000 FTE students. I'm a strong supporter of public education and public research, but facilitating this faculty growth at the expense of students is absolutely ridiculous and it's high-time the Board made some cuts.

jmduke3• 14 years ago

What about the change in money brought in due to research done (aka the main revenue generator for academic institutions)?

Also, do you have a source for the 80% growth?

rayiner11• 14 years ago

UVA 2000-2001 budget: http://www.virginia.edu/budget/Docs/Budget%20Summaries/summa... (p. 4)

UVA 2011-2012 budget: http://www.virginia.edu/budget/Docs/Budget%20Summaries/2011-... (p. 1, 15)

Note that the 2000-2001 budget lists only the UVA academic division, while p. 1 of the 2011-2012 budget includes the UVA medical center. The academic division is broken down on p. 15 of that budget. Thus the pie charts on p. 1 of the first pdf correspond to the pie charts on p. 15 of the second.

At UVA, sponsored programs (i.e. research grants) make up only a quarter of the budget. Tuition and fees and state appropriations make up almost half. From 2001 to 2012, sponsored program revenues are up 60%, but not nearly enough to cover the 80% increase in expenditures. The other revenue sources haven't kept pace with spending growth either. Of the $590m in additional spending, $276m (or about half) has been supported by tuition increases.

Another way to look at it is that if spending had kept pace with inflation (2.5%) and enrollment growth (0.7%), tuition could have been easily held at 2001 levels. Or, alternatively, had tuition revenues increased to track inflation and enrollment growth, university expenditures could have increased a more modest 50% given the growth in other sources of funding, rather than 80% which was achieved by almost tripling tuition.

amcintyre• 14 years ago

>In-state tuition has increased about 275%.

I was thinking about going to graduate school there in 2008, but somehow it was cheaper to take 3 classes remotely at out-of-state rates (at a higher-ranked school, mind you) than to drive 15 miles into town and take 1 class at UVa as an in-state student, so I decided against it.

Edited to add: I later moved to start a PhD program at the other school, stayed here and got a job, so UVa's high tuition indirectly removed me from the pool of people that would work and pay taxes in VA.

herdrick2• 14 years ago

OK, what departments did she want to cut?

Honestly, I've never hard a harder time trying to figure out what an HN story was all about.

rayiner11• 14 years ago

Certain programs in the classics and germanic studies.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

The board, apparently spurred by professor Wulf, wanted deep cuts in spending. Sullivan, the president, was moving slowly to implement cuts so she was pushed out by the board. Now Wulf has quit as well, seemingly due to some sort of internal drama within the board due to widespread public condemnation of the ouster of Sullivan.

scott_s7• 14 years ago

I don't think that's an entirely accurate backstory.

The facutly are in revolt because the Board fired the President without warning or stated cause. Eventually, the Board said the cause was that the President, who is in the process of making cuts, was not acting fast enough.

For the other stuff, to add to the budgetary woes, the amount of state money that the public universities in Virginia receive (not just UVA) has dropped significantly.

rayiner11• 14 years ago

The state money argument is a bit of a canard. State funding has dropped $26 million since 2001. All of that since 2007 (i.e. the Great Recession). Expenses have increased $590m since 2001. As the rest of the economy was belt-tightening the last five years, expenditures on faculty salaries kept growing.

trevelyan• 14 years ago

I do not know the details, but it does seem incompetent to identify German (language of the most important economy in Europe) and the classics as marginal departments which must be eliminated in the name of economic efficiency.

A vendetta against the humanities perhaps, but economic efficiency? Neither are departments likely to have soaring costs: all you need is a classroom and professor. Lecturers in the classics will probably not even break 50k, while language classes are even cheaper since they're often offloaded to graduate students teaching from standard texts. As long as there are students opting to take those courses, they should be printing money for the university.

So unless there has been gross mismanagement of these departments for decades (aggressive hiring and declining enrollment), it is hard to believe that costs could get out of line. And closing down popular and should-be-profitable classes in order to funnel students to other departments in the name of economic efficiency is a very strange move.

rmc• 14 years ago

Lots of people in Germany speak English.

jleader2• 14 years ago

"the expenditures of the academic division at UVA have increased about 80% since 2001...In-state tuition has increased about 275%."

This says to me that some other source of funding (state subsidy?) has just about disappeared, is that right?

aphyr2• 14 years ago

Academics is only part of university budgets. Other principal costs include housing, tuition assistance, administration, buildings, grounds, support services, and athletics. Not exactly sure how UVA divvies things up.

rayiner11• 14 years ago

The idea that tuition increases are just to make up for deep cuts in state funding is mostly a myth. State funding was cut during the Great Recession, yes, but even if state subsidies had kept pace with enrollment growth and inflation, tuition would still have had to double.

The problem is that expenditure growth is outstripping all non-tuition sources of revenue. E.g. research grants, which account for 1/4 of the budget, have increased only 60%. Endowment income, of course, has not kept pace either given the state of the markets. The University has grown expenditures far faster than its growth in revenues, and has made up for the difference by tripling tuitions.

excuse-me3• 14 years ago

It's usually the return on endowment investments. Every time the market dips - universities go on a manic cost cutting exercise.

jordo372• 14 years ago

A different opinion from a UVA alum: The "revolt" of the faculty is partially due to the Board wanting to close marginal academic departments because they can't pay for themselves, like Classics (which studies Greek and Latin texts from the founding of Western Civ.) I was not a Classics major and in fact never took a Classics class but many of my friends who are lawyers today were and universities want students like this. Everyone understands that cuts need to be made, but the board seems to fail to understand that making cuts at a university is different than cost-saving measures at a corporation.

Beyond this one issue, the faculty is also responding like this because the Board is acting silently, secretively and hastily in making decisions for the university with little to no participation from faculty or administrators, or even information being provided. At this point, after a week of intense scrutiny and questioning, still no one outside the Board knows exactly why President Sullivan was let go.

In 2003 UVA passed a milestone in that more money came from private donors than public funds. Today UVA's budget includes only 8% being covered by the state. The cuts from the state are very real and very keenly felt. UVA is on a tricky path to become a true hybrid private/public school and the questions facing the faculty and the Board are not whether this should happen, but how.

Furthermore, to rebut some of your points a) It's not insane to have 3300 faculty when many of those are working directly on research or employed at the medical center. (I believe this to be the case given that on average about 1000 faculty are employed through the medical center http://www.web.virginia.edu/iaas/data_catalog/institutional/...) b) The expenditures have increased in an attempt at keeping close with peer institutions for salary and other options. Realistically, despite these attempts the faculty at UVA could easily head to competitive private or public schools and make more money, and will probably be doing so in massive numbers over the next few years following this fiasco. c) I am not sure where you are basing your correlation that this faculty growth has happened at the expense of students. If it has been driven by the growth of costs at the Medical Center that is a source of income as well. If it's been driven by academic faculty then its either been funding research to increase the number of accolades achieved by our faculty (thereby increasing the ranking of the school) or it has been hiring more professors or paying teaching faculty more to keep them from leaving, which would seem to directly benefit students.

rfrey• 14 years ago

Apologies in advance for the off-topic comment. But in looking for more information on this story, I read http://hamptonroads.com/2012/06/amid-uproar-uva-moves-replac... the Virginian Pilot. Which is not the item.

The item is: I have never in my life read such civilized and respectful comments from blog or newspaper readers who clearly disagree with each other on an important issue. My goodness! Is this a regular feature of Southern U.S. life?

chrisrhoden6• 14 years ago

Edit: Sorry, getting frustrated by the other comments about the south. It's nothing to do with your comment.

jmduke3• 14 years ago

Virginia -- particularly Charlottesville and Richmond -- is not some Southern stereotype.

That being said, I think the people most interested in this news are those with vested interests in Virginia higher education -- alums, donors, etc. -- and that tends to raise the average level of discourse.

chrisrhoden6• 14 years ago

Most of the south isn't a southern stereotype. The DC metro is more like a new england city than either of the two you mentioned. This paper is based out of southeastern VA, in the VA Beach and Norfolk area.

darkmethod• 14 years ago

The comments found in that post you linked to is indeed a "breath of fresh air" to read through in the sense that differentiating opinions can still hold respect one for another.

Thanks for sharing this. I found it very encouraging.

atacrawl• 14 years ago

I grew up in Virginia Beach -- you won't find much in the way of overheated rhetoric in the public discourse.

wildtype2• 14 years ago

It it ethical to publish someone resignal letter?

gte910h• 14 years ago

It's an open letter.

tmo9d• 14 years ago

The article in the Washington Post mentioned that the Board was unhappy that the ousted President wouldn't cut "obscure" programs like German and classics.

Guess who majored in that obscure field of study? Tim O'Reilly, and he talks about how studying Classics helped him decode trends in technology.

I'm an alum of the Engineering school, but I wouldn't have attended UVA were it not for the strength of some of these obscure programs. Monied interests are ruining this institution in the name of profit.

iGarbo• 14 years ago

Bill Wulf who? I spent 5 years at UVA, graduating with honors and an MCS in 2005, but never had a single interaction with him. Ironically I did meet interim pres Carl Z at a breakfast for corporate recruiters last year and was impressed by his welcoming honesty. My anecdotes only reinforce what is obvious: Bill is a peripheral academic overdue for retirement, Carl Z was rightfully recognized, and UVA is in safe hands.

mahmud• 14 years ago

this is Bill Wulf, compiler hacker extraordinaire, designer of Bliss programming language and optimization pioneer.

One of my personal heroes.

redwood• 14 years ago

Very sad to see. We need to save public higher education in this country, especially at the most elite institutions that actually have a chance to compete with the privates.

mathattack• 14 years ago

I don't know the professor, but seems like he's sticking the school with a problem in the fall with his sudden resignation.

bconway• 14 years ago

By this email I am submitting my resignation, effective immediately. I do not wish to be associated with an institution being as badly run as the current UVa. A BOV that so poorly understands UVa, and academic culture more generally, is going to make a lot more dumb decisions, so the University is headed for disaster, and I don’t want to be any part of that. And, frankly, I think you should be ashamed to be party to this debacle!

Is this real? That's barely proper English, and certainly not something I would submit to an (interim) university President.

repoman• 14 years ago

I don't like the letter. He spent too much time talking about his "experience". Oh come on. It's like "dude I am a Nobel prize winner, and none of you have that title so I am right." I hate people giving that kind of resignation, regardless of their intentions.

joezhou• 14 years ago

THAT IS HOW YOU DO IT LIKE A BOSS!

UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

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