Roderick Chu has won over state lawmakers, but professors remain suspicious
ALSO SEE: Biographical information on Roderick G.W. Chu
By JEFFREY SELINGO
From redesigning New York State's accounting system to improving tax collection in Russia, Roderick G.W. Chu has long been a quick study in unfamiliar situations, mastering the issues -- and how to persuade corporate leaders and bureaucrats alike to buy into his ideas.
Now Mr. Chu is putting those talents to different use, as he works from the other side of the table. Last January, the consultant became chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, which advises the Governor and General Assembly on higher-education policy; coordinates academic programs at Ohio's 179 public and private colleges; and requests and manages state appropriations for the 61 public colleges, which are receiving $2.3-billion this fiscal year.
Hard-charging but affable, with boyish looks and comparable enthusiasm, the 49-year-old Mr. Chu was an unconventional choice to lead the Ohio system, the seventh-largest in the United States in terms of students and state spending. He worked at Andersen Consulting for two decades, and his know-how in college management came not as an administrator (unlike his predecessor, Elaine H. Hairston) but as a trustee for seven years of the State University of New York System.
Yet the Ohio regents who hired him believe that the state's challenges call for the abilities of someone like Mr. Chu, who is believed to be the first Chinese American to head a statewide college system. The chancellor talks constantly about making higher education "relevant" when it is rarely on the radar screens of most government officials here. Ohio has one of the worst college-going rates in the United States, and lags well behind most other large states in spending on higher education.
"This is not about taking a state that is doing really well and making it better," Mr. Chu says about his task ahead. "This is about creating a shared vision for higher education. We need to show we're the answer to the three issues that are bigger priorities than higher education in Ohio: K-12, economic development, and crime."
The chancellor's ultimate goal -- to turn higher education into a kitchen-table issue here -- is driven partly by a selfish motive: protecting state appropriations for public colleges. Legislators here are looking for hundreds of millions of dollars more for public schools to comply with a 1997 ruling, by the Ohio Supreme Court, that struck down the state's method of financing schools as unconstitutional.
Mindful of that and other potential troubles ahead, the Board of Regents felt that Mr. Chu, a former managing partner at Andersen, possessed the political and managerial skills needed to win over lawmakers quickly -- an important priority, because Ohio legislators are bound by term limits.
While he has largely succeeded in the General Assembly, his strategic approach has raised concerns among faculty leaders and even some college presidents.
"The chancellor doesn't have an appreciation for academia and for its role in a democratic society," says Josephine F. Wilson, a psychology professor at Wittenberg University and past president of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors. "If he can't sell what we're doing to the general public, then he's not interested in it."
Mr. Chu believes that some professors and administrators will not recognize problems, going so far as to compare them to alcoholics. "They're in denial," he says. Fond of using what he calls "Andersen aphorisms," he offers one to describe Ohio's troubles: "If you keep doing what you have always done, you're going to keep getting what you always got."
The chancellor is taking his own advice. In September, the regents approved a two-year budget request that reflects Mr. Chu's desire to better meet the needs of students and businesses. The document was crafted by a commission of college and business officials and politicians that Mr. Chu had convened. He has also put a corporate touch on his office, organizing the 80-person staff into "project teams."
But for a man who makes provocative statements and demands much of others, Mr. Chu is notably evasive on how colleges can help improve schools or help businesses create jobs. (Doing both, he hopes, could help reduce crime.) He wants to wait at least until the state's new Superintendent of Public Instruction takes office before revealing his plans in "a big-splash announcement."
Before that happens, Mr. Chu wants to firm up cooperation among the state's higher-education sectors. Harmony has been missing here, he says, with lawmakers pulled in different directions rather than toward the goal of improving higher education statewide.
"It's harder to persuade people here" to work together, Mr. Chu says, "to use words like synergy, collaboration." He adds, "Here there are different voices, singing different songs."
Parochial attitudes among college officials, rooted in Gov. James Rhodes' promise in the 1960s of a college within 100 miles of every resident, have increased inefficiencies more than access, Mr. Chu says. The access problem is compounded, he adds, by the fact that Ohio is 41st in per-capita spending on higher education, a ranking that the chancellor acknowledges will never rise into the top 10.
Tahlman Krumm, vice-chairman of the Board of Regents, agrees. "We can't keep asking for more money," he says. "We're too expensive for people to say, 'Do as you've always done.'"
The new budget request represents a break from the past. The regents want a tuition cut for students seeking associate degrees at four-year public institutions in cities without a public community college, such as Akron, Toledo, and Youngstown. And the board has proposed financial rewards for colleges that increase the number of students who complete their degrees on time.
Mr. Chu sees his "revolution" as only beginning. He wants colleges to rethink their program availability, class hours, curricula, and heavy investments in libraries.
"The question is, Do we want to compete with the Cornells and Harvards and always be in a second league, or do we want to define a new league," Mr. Chu says. "The Harvards and the Cornells have the easy job in higher education. They bring in top people and make them better. All the others have a tough job. They're doing the greater public good. They're actually transforming lives."
A marathon worker, Mr. Chu packs his 12-hour-plus days with meetings here or around the state (he's visited more than 20 Ohio institutions so far), in an effort to build coalitions for his ideas. In his off time, he likes to visit his native New York City to regularly attend performances of the Metropolitan Opera. Closer to home, he meets with his eating club at pricey restaurants here. He occasionally invites regents to join him, proudly showing a taste for fine wines that he acquired by taking a wine class while earning an M.B.A. at Cornell.
"He's not one of these educators who has just worked his way up the administrative ladder," says state Sen. Robert A. Gardner, a Republican and chairman of the Ohio Senate's Education Committee.
For the first time, higher-education officials are holding a seminar for legislators to spell out the agenda for colleges. Mr. Chu has invited John M. Goff, the state's outgoing Superintendent of Public Instruction to attend, a move that prompted some regents to question why they should share the floor with the chief advocate for Ohio schools.
"By inviting John, I could guarantee that lawmakers will show because K through 12 is the most important issue in this state," says Mr. Chu.
While it's premature for Ohio lawmakers to make promises to Mr. Chu, they say his inclusive style and focus on results will help colleges during the 1999 legislative session. "He certainly keeps me in the loop," says Senator Gardner. "And not just at budget time," he adds, recalling how Mr. Chu stopped by his office for the first time less than a week after Senator Gardner had assumed his committee post.
The chancellor needs to do a similar sales job with a group that could prove a lot more difficult to sway: faculty members.
Of the plans that Mr. Chu is willing to discuss, most would need the support of professors to succeed. Mr. Chu often talks of tapping university experts to rewrite textbooks or teach parental skills to Ohioans. He wants to improve teacher-education programs, and to retrain current mathematics and science teachers to instruct students by provoking discussion rather than by simply lecturing. He also encourages more partnerships between colleges and businesses, such as at Sinclair Community College, in Dayton, where instructors now teach skills that local business leaders cite as critical for their workers.
But the chancellor's focus on higher education's "relevancy" worries some professors. They fear for university research that cannot be applied to Mr. Chu's priorities, or classwork that doesn't spur economic development.
"What happens to Latin?" asks David B. Patton, an associate professor of community development at Ohio State University.
"I understand his logic, but I find it shortsighted," adds Mr. Patton, president of the Ohio Conference of the A.A.U.P. "If we're driving all these resources to specific needs of the state now, what happens to research and teaching in areas that could be critical needs in the future?"
Mr. Chu says he wants to avoid a "highbrow debate over, Are we educating people versus training people?" He adds: "The faculty tell me about the importance of a liberal-arts education. I tell faculty, 'Frankly, you're not doing it. You know what you call teamwork at your university? Cheating.'"
Mr. Chu has made some headway with professors, but on his terms. He makes a point of meeting with professors on campus visits, and has invited faculty leaders to regents' meetings -- a personal invitation the leaders say has never been extended before. When Mr. Chu took office in January, however, he refused to meet with the Chancellor's Advisory Committee, a group of faculty representatives from Ohio's colleges. Mr. Chu says such a meeting would have been "an insult" to other professors because some committee members had not been elected by their peers.
"At first I was surprised," says John W. Buttelwerth, a committee member and an instructor in engineering technology at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. "But now I view it as a positive move. He now meets with elected faculty leaders, and those get-togethers are less ceremonial than with past chancellors. He seems to want to engage us in the decision-making process."
Opinions of Mr. Chu are also split among presidents, though the skeptics prefer to talk in private. "Some presidents would have preferred more-traditional leadership," says Les Cochran, president of Youngstown State University, who is a strong supporter of the chancellor. "Some think he's moving too fast and doesn't organize things as they would."
Such criticisms roll off Mr. Chu. He views his work here as a civic duty, not a way to earn a living. Single and independently wealthy from his days at Andersen, Mr. Chu acknowledges that he would have been "more than comfortable" staying at the company. He enjoyed his role behind the scenes, advising New York officials to adopt corporate accounting principles before many states had done so, and urging Russian leaders to crack down on tax cheats.
His plans began to change four years ago, when he gave the eulogy at the funeral of his father, a government chemist. "I realized that most of the people there were those he touched through his civic duties, like the Rotary Club," Mr. Chu recalls.
So the younger Chu decided to change careers, and chose education. In 1994, he made an unsuccessful bid to become New York's education commissioner. But as it happened, the firm that conducted the New York search also led the one for the chancellorship here.
Today, in his 36th-floor office here, Mr. Chu has reached a pinnacle of higher-education management that would ordinarily follow decades of work. Just as he has climbed quickly, he feels his goals as chancellor are too important to have open-ended deadlines. He'll give himself five years before he expects to see the results of his efforts. And to those who say the problems here are too great for a tight deadline, he answers with another Andersen aphorism:
"There are no problems, only opportunities."
EDUCATION: B.S. in mathematics and physics, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, 1969; M.B.A., Cornell University, 1971.
PROFESSIONAL CAREER: Staff positions at Arthur Andersen and Company, 1971-83; New York State Commissioner of Taxation and Finance, 1983-88; Partner, Andersen Consulting, 1988-90; Worldwide Managing Partner/Government Practice, Andersen Consulting, 1990-97.
ACADEMIC CAREER: State University of New York Board of Trustees, 1990-97; served on several advisory councils at Cornell University, including one for its Johnson Graduate School of Management.
PERSONAL: Single. Hobbies include photography and alpine skiing. He most recently read Dava Sobel's Longitude (Walker, 1995), the story of the man who discovered how to determine longitude.
OFTEN QUOTED AS SAYING: "I am impatient with a group of people sitting in a room, admiring a problem."