Politicians, on both sides of the aisle, are eager to see this happen and more universities follow suit, so they can pad their pensions with heavy presidential salaries.
High Ed in Florida is in a very bad state and you see it with political insiders pushing for this move.
The subtext is clear....higher politicians, make them richer, or you won't see money from the budget process.
At FSU, Sen. John Thrasher a strong pick for president
"Florida Sen. John Thrasher is a personable, powerful and highly partisan politician. He chairs Gov. Rick Scott's re-election campaign. He's a recent chair of the Republican Party of Florida. He also chairs the Senate Rules Committee, which can make or break a bill's chances of success.
But none of this explains why about 15 years ago, when Thrasher was speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, he pushed to dismantle the Florida Board of Regents, which governed the state university system.
No, Thrasher got rid of the Board of Regents because it stood in the way of Florida State University getting a medical school, and he knew a medical school was critical to his alma mater becoming a top-flight research university like its rival, the state's flagship University of Florida.
Because of Thrasher's influence, the state board was gutted, local university boards gained power and FSU got its medical school, which today bears his name.
Now this state senator from St. Augustine wants to become president of FSU, succeeding Eric Barron who left in April to become president of Penn State.
But the selection process has become a big mess. Last week, the consultant overseeing it resigned under intense criticism for having called the search to a halt, saying no one good would apply so long as it looked like Thrasher had a lock on the job.
Now, FSU's board has postponed its special interview with Thrasher, which it scheduled before he'd even applied. A Florida Supreme Court justice and a state representative from Tallahassee have also joined the hunt for the well-paying post. And the faculty union — concerned about Thrasher's record on unions, tenure and ties to conservative causes — has submitted a 1,400-signature petition asking the search committee to start over.
The turbulence has cast a cloud over the university — once a women's college — that hopes to join the nation's top tier. It also stands in stark contrast to what's happening at the University of Florida, which also is seeking a new president and makes no bones about wanting someone with stellar academic credentials.
What's happening at Florida's two oldest universities is a tension we increasingly see in higher education today. The same dynamic played out this year at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where a Clemson academician was named president over two well-known politicians.
The trade-off breaks down this way: academicians carry more sway with their faculty peers, accrediting agencies and elite membership organizations. But politicians carry more fundraising and political swagger, so essential for success these days.
The preferred pedigree depends on the time and place. There's good examples on both sides.
But on balance in this case, if you're an alumni, student or faculty member at FSU, you could do worse than to have John Thrasher as your president.
Thrasher is passionate about FSU. He's a big-time benefactor and a former chair of FSU's board. If you were picking teams, you'd want him on your side. Yes, he's played political hardball, but he's also maintained friendships on both sides of the aisle, something not often seen in Tallahassee. He also knows how to cajole, flirt and twist arms to get donors to write big checks — a critical role for university presidents these days.
Perhaps you wonder what would happen to FSU if this big-time Republican lawyer became its president and Democrat Charlie Crist were to win the governor's race this fall. But Crist is an FSU alum, too. And Tallahassee is a company town. Few university perks pass through the Legislature without a tinge of garnet and gold.
It's also worth noting that Thrasher was nominated by Sandy D'Alemberte, a Democratic senior statesman, a former FSU president and a former Florida House speaker.
In his nomination letter, D'Alemberte said, "FSU, like all Florida schools of higher education, has suffered an extraordinary loss of resources in recent years. ... Our first priority now is getting that base funding restored and John Thrasher is the best person to accomplish this."
Thrasher, 70, knows that if selected FSU president, he could no longer be the champion of conservative causes and candidates. His job would be to create an environment that fosters quality scholarship and education.
Still, he would leave with friends in high places, connections that could give the university a leg-up in the remaining years he wants to work.
If history is a predictor of future success, Thrasher would make a strong president and grow the influence of FSU.
If he candidly and assuredly answers critics during a fair-and-square selection process, FSU would do well to have John Thrasher as its president."
FSU president search thick with politics, connected players
"The search for a new Florida State University president has turned into one of the prime political stories this summer in Florida that has nothing directly to do with the governor’s race.
The intrigue surrounds whether or not state Sen. John Thrasher, a former House speaker and current chairman of Gov. Rick Scott’s re-election campaign, is going to wind up with the job. Thrasher initially had the inside track for the position after a contentious narrow vote to make him the main frontrunner. But then Supreme Court Chief Justice Ricky Polston jumped into the fray and that triggered a whole series of events leading up to a decision last week to revamp the entire search process.
The idea that a Florida university would consider a politician is certainly not new. It reflects the reality that Florida’s university system is built on a financial structure that is highly dependent on the good will of the Florida Legislature and the governor. Additionally, the job of president pays relatively well, can boost one’s pension plan tremendously, and has a level of prestige and responsibility that is better than many political posts.
There’s a long line of political figures who have led universities — whether it was former Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan at Florida Atlantic University, former House Speaker T.K. Wetherell at FSU and Education Commissioner Betty Castor at the University of South Florida. It’s true that some of those picks drew criticism over whether the candidates had the academic credentials for the post.
But the lingering question for FSU’s search is whether the entire process so far is stacked in such a way that Thrasher is inevitably the person who gets the job.
Students and faculty who have protested the search have been critical of their level of participation in the search.
Allan Bense, the former House speaker and father-in-law of current House speaker Will Weatherford, nominated a 27-member committee (approved by the FSU Board of Trustees) that has four faculty members, three students and four people who work for the university. Contrast that with the University of Florida presidential search which on its 17-member panel has a majority with direct ties to the school: Three faculty members, two deans, three university vice presidents, one athletics administrator and one student.
Many of the other members on the FSU search committee have substantial ties to Tallahassee’s politically charged environment. That’s not to say they came in with the sole purpose of picking Thrasher, but they are people who are acutely aware of the heavy role that the Legislature plays and may consider that important to FSU’s future success.
That list includes Bense himself, as well as Kathryn Ballard, a trustee and husband to powerhouse lobbyist and GOP fundraiser Brian Ballard. There’s also former Senate President John McKay, current state Rep. Jimmy Patronis, Delores Spearman, the wife of another big-time lobbyist Guy Spearman, Drew Weatherford, former FSU quarterback turned lobbyist and brother of the current House speaker, and Al Lawson, a former state legislator turned lobbyist.
It’s worth noting that two of those members present at this week’s meeting — Weatherford and Lawson — said they had not asked to serve on the search committee ahead of time.
“I read it in the newspaper just like everybody else,” said Lawson, who this spring had a lobbying contract worth at least $20,000 with the FSU Board of Trustees headed by Bense. (Lawson for his part doesn’t believe this constitutes a conflict on his part to serve on the search committee.)
Weatherford, who works at Strategos Public Affairs with former Rep. Trey Traviesa and former legislator and Education Commissioner Jim Horne, also said he did not ask anyone ahead of time to appoint him.
“Having been a student athlete here I think they appreciated my perspective,” said Weatherford who added that he is also recent graduate who is not “too far removed” from campus life.
Bense defended the people he recommended for the search committee to the full FSU board saying he tried to get a “cross section of folks” who had various ties to the university including alumni and athletic boosters and professors.
“I’m sure I made a lot of people unhappy,” Bense said following last week’s search committee meeting.
Bense, who has said several times that politics are a reality for university presidents to deal with, continues to insist that the search is wide open and that no one nominee has the job locked down.
“I’m doing all I can to do away with that myth,” Bense said.
Bense also contends the decision to hire a new search consultant and to revisit the timeline now in place shows that he and other search committee members are listening.
“I do hope that the faculty recognizes that today we clearly listened to them,” Bense said on Wednesday. “We’re going to reset the clock and hopefully we can find a great new president.”
But Lawson, who spent three decades in the Florida Legislature, said that in his mind Thrasher remains firmly “in the mix” of people that the university should consider.
“If you are not very astute to the legislative process, the university may not flourish,” he said."
FSU shouldn’t need a headhunter
"FSU shouldn’t need a headhunter
At the end of my career as an English professor at a state university up north, we hired a new president who had been a low-level college administrator at an Ivy League school, but had never taught. He turned out to be a petty tyrant and a disaster. Before getting fired in the wake of a damaging audit, he had alienated the whole faculty, and a number of our best professors had retired early, weakening the university for years to come.
We saw Sen. John Thrasher in action in his peremptory split of FAMU-FSU School of Engineering, without consulting the academic parties involved, so we have some idea of what kind of a dictator he would be as a university president.
Everyone agrees that Eric Barron made an excellent chief administrator for FSU, so nothing significant is lost by choosing someone with an academic background who understands and appreciates the work of faculty and the needs of students.
Of course, a university president also has to have political skills and fundraising ability, but faculty who have done administrative work gain these skills, and that experience would naturally be a requirement for application, along with teaching experience.
The headhunter for the FSU presidential position has just quit, and good riddance. What a waste of money those characters are. To hire a university president, you put an ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education and wait for applications to pour in, and for a prestigious and well-paid job like this, you’ll get plenty of applicants. Individual faculty can also contact appropriate people at universities around the country, urging them to apply. You set up a 10-person faculty committee to pick the five best applicants and arrange for interviews. For the interviews, you expand the committee to include some students, a couple of academic deans and a financial administrator. This process costs almost nothing and puts the decision-making in the most competent hands.
WILLIAM MURDICK
Emeritus professor of English, California University of Pennsylvania
wmmurdick@comcast.net
Re: “University Administration 101: Here’s a Final Exam” (My View, June 8).
Ned Stuckey-French wrote a witty column detailing the rather badly directed presidential search for Florida State University’s next president.
Shamefully, John Thrasher commandeered the process, and it has reached an absurdist result. Rather than compete through fair means, he has used his considerable influence to become the front-runner for that position, and moreover, frightened off top-tier candidates.
Stuckey-French goes wrong in his comparison between Purdue’s Mitch Daniels and Thrasher, but that does not diminish his unassailable assault on Thrasher’s arrogance.
In many ways, Thrasher is a man of solid character: a Bronze Star adorns his CV.
But as a result of the rapacious nature of power, Thrasher has allowed himself to commit a grievous error and confused his slight ability to maneuver through the halls of power as an entitlement to manage a billion-dollar institution.
Normally, the fact that someone has no settled ideas about what it takes to move an institution forward is a wholly positive development. In this case, it is perilous for FSU.
John Thrasher’s anemic ideas (as indicated in his letter) are a combination of status quo thinking and errant nonsense.
Quite simply, it is clear John Thrasher is not the man for the moment.
CHRIS TIMMONS
christimmons@yahoo.com"
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