LARB | Wikimedia/Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers Collection
When taken together, these kinds of “strategic” moves look like a playbook: a new president arrives and uses their vision to shake up mandates at the school. They take on massive levels of debt through a series of poor decisions, which might include increasing administrative bloat, building more buildings, or investing in shiny but costly new programs. The hope, presumably, is that these actions will attract donors and students. At the same time, faculty are pushed to the periphery of the strategic plan and globalized initiatives are encouraged alongside innovative entrepreneurship. But higher education is not a business in the way that many of these MBA-influenced academic executives assume it to be.