After three tumultuous years, President Michael Schill would be “stepping down,” we learned in early September. Interim President Henry Bienen, previously NU president from 1995 to 2009, left retirement to take the helm.
Colleagues voiced guarded optimism. Bienen, 86, had a reputation for some of the better qualities known as “old school.” The “Bienen School of Music” and his leadership of the Poetry Foundation, though attacked by Black Lives Matter advocates, suggested a more genteel temperament. One that might obstruct efforts to turn NU into more of a tech school.
Turns out Bienen is as good at branding as NU, which has the same modus operandi and even leadership as a trade school — a scandal-ridden one at that.
If you look away from the glossy brochures and consider NU’s actual operations, much of what happens here looks a lot like for-profit enterprises at degree mills such as Rasmussen College, a tech school flagged by Senate investigators in 2012 for academic integrity violations, a YouTube-equivalent curriculum, meaningless degrees and cut-to-the-bone budgeting.
NU has many outstanding faculty and programs. But no one can deny the cheating by the NU administration, including of a donor supporting medical research, as alleged in a lawsuit a federal court just green-lighted, lucrative online certificate programs taught by adjuncts and undergraduate degrees that reflect up to six course credits and ‘As” for paid employment, through the popular Chicago Field Studies program. This contrasts with the University of Chicago, which promotes internships, but does not pretend a job is fungible with academic coursework, nor provides a fig leaf “class” to suggest otherwise.
At Rasmussen, a place that profited its owners more than students, directors mandated ever-increasing budget cuts. Likewise, NU regularly moves money out of education and into finance, cutting benefits, library services and freezing pay. In 2009, 26% of Rasmussen’s income went to profit, 32% above the for-profit industry average. How was this accomplished? “Manage Expense Growth to be less than revenue growth by a minimum of 5%.” In other words, increase the rate of profits 5% each year, the quality of education be damned.
Why should you care about Rasmussen? Because Henry Bienen has run it since 2005, first as a director, then Vice Chair and eventually as Chair. Bienen sits today as a director at the renamed “Rasmussen University,” where graduation rates of either certificates or a two-year degree range from 40% in Florida to 63% in Wisconsin, outcomes profitable for Rasmussen’s investors and devastating to students who leave only with their debt.
At Rasmussen, Bienen was working with the same guy doing business through NU, John Canning, Jr., a NU trustee and private equity magnate behind the firm that ran Rasmussen when Bienen was brought on board. And, just like his for-profit enterprise, Canning had his investments intermingled with those of NU’s endowment. When expenditures on education are from trustee-controlled funds, beneficial to trustees, cuts to education are inevitable. It’s no surprise that NU’s leaders are using the same cut-to-the-bone business model they used at Rasmussen.
Rasmussen is not the only business where Bienen served in leadership positions for firms intertwined with NU trustees, endowment or research contracts. Bienen’s other NU-related gigs include Bear Stearns, Boeing, Gleacher and Company, Grosvenor Multi-Strategy Fund, Onconova Therapeutics, the Qatar Foundation, Ryan Specialty and The Vistria Group. It’s no wonder people call universities hedge funds with academic window-dressing.
When the American Association of University Professors Executive Committee asked Bienen his thoughts on the status of an AAUP-sponsored resolution the Faculty Assembly passed last spring that calls for faculty oversight of Board business, Bienen said, “It’s a conflict of interest. They would be setting their own salaries,” referencing a conversation about trustees who had taught and could not receive payment. The NU bylaws prohibit faculty and students from serving as trustees, and trustees from being paid, though the bylaws may be amended. So, shared governance is a conflict of interest, but trustees mingling their own assets with those of NU is completely fine.
That said, the resolution on which we requested Bienen’s views was only for faculty oversight of the Board, not voting rights. Alas, Bienen’s entitled aloofness from important details conveys the same contemptuous disengagement from campus concerns about academic freedom and self-governance we encountered with Bienen’s predecessor, and the Board more generally.
The real problem is not Henry Bienen, John Canning Jr. or other board members who use the endowment for their own investments, including Board Chair Peter Barris, a trustee of the Central Intelligence Agency venture capital group In-Q-Tel, a firm that, along with NU, invested in Barris’s firm Cleversafe. The problem is weak nonprofit laws and little oversight.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. A bill that would obligate detailed disclosures of trustee or donor co-investments with funds from nonprofit endowments could easily attract bipartisan support, as would a law obligating mission compliance, i.e., education, not entertainment stadiums. The citizens of Illinois deserve officials and trustees who work on behalf of the public, not themselves, at institutions of higher education and beyond.
Jacqueline Stevens is a Professor of Political Science and the President of the Northwestern University American Association of University Professors. She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
