In this commentary, Jane Shaw of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy looks at the pros and cons of the hiring of Dartmouth’s Carol Folt to succeed Holden Thorp as chancellor of UNC Chapel Hill.
The search committee might have detected a red flag in the divisiveness that has characterized Dartmouth for the past decade or so, the period during which Folt has held high administrative posts. This divisiveness stems from a group of alumni who argue that Dartmouth is adrift—putting more money into administration and graduate schools than into undergraduate teaching. To halt this drift, alumni elected several dissenting trustees—until the board decided to change the governance structure that gave alumni-elected trustees a major voice, a structure that had been in place since 1891.
One of the critics (and a dissenting candidate in 2010) was Joseph Asch, ’79, a Yale Law School graduate and international businessman. He became concerned about the college when he spent his summers in Hanover, New Hampshire (where Dartmouth is located), auditing more than 30 courses and getting to know professors there—and also writing articles for the Dartmouth newspaper.
Asch noticed that students were unable to get into classes because there weren’t enough classes being taught (before 2000 that was unknown, he says) and, academically, Dartmouth seemed “dead in the water.” But spending on facilities was lavish; Asch says that total debt increased from $286 million in 2000 to $1.128 billion now, even though the college conducted a $1.3 billion capital campaign during that period. As a result of those observations, Asch writes an outspoken blog that has been critical of Folt and other administrators.
