Monday, November 8, 2010
The search is on for a new dean for the School of Business.
Last Monday, Provost Jeffrey Vitter announced the members of the search committee, which will now begin the process of a nationwide search.
William Fuerst, the current dean, announced on Sep. 22 that he would step down at the end of the academic year.
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KU Provost Jeff Vitter announced on Monday the names of members of a search committee put in place to find a new dean for the School of Business. Reporter Courtney Bullis has the details.
The resignation came after a summer-long conflict with 25 MBA students who sought information about the differential tuition plan that had been established in 2004.
The differential tuition plan was brought about by Dean Fuerst who appointed a committee to determine whether a tuition increase could fund improvements for the Business school's educational programs. In the proposal for this extra course fee, it says that it was established for students to "represent an opportunity to invest in their own intellectual capital." Undergraduates are charged $102 in course fees and graduates are charged $186.
Since the time of the tuition plans establishment, business students have paid more than $31 million dollars in differential tuition. Fuerst disbanded the advisory committee that was responsibly for auditing the funds after one year. In doing so, he removed the accountability to students.
Fuerst also failed to make public financial reports semi-annually, which was also part of the 2004 agreement.
“Our differential tuition, which is also called course fees, is $104 per hour for undergraduates this year,” said Toni Dixon, director of communications for the School of Business. “That fee is set by the University and the Board of Regents, but all of the money is set towards benefitting the students.”
Andrew Carlson, an MBA student from Fairway, Kansas wrote to the Kansas Board of Regents, requesting an investigation into where the funds have gone.
Carlson said he was concerned as to how the School of Business has collected millions of dollars, yet has declined in the U.S. News and World Report Rankings. In 2009, the KU School of Business undergraduate program was ranked 28th in the nation. This year the school is not ranked. Also, KU is the only university out of 32 schools in the country to not be renewed for the CIBER program, which is a prestigious international program.
“I think you see that in the school that there has been a genuine lack of leadership,” Carlson said (in person). “There has been a lack of the creation of endowed chairs or a drive for a new building. There is no confidence in the leadership so no one is willing to donate money. It all plays into one sort of pot.”
An independent investigation of the differential tuition funds, which make up 40 percent of the School of Business’ budget, is still going on.
“I started to make some comments on it, but I shouldn’t say what I think the outcome will be until I find out what the outcome is,” Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little said. “I won’t comment on it, but there will be an independent review, which will be, I don’t know when it will be completed, but that is the plan to have an outside review.”
Included among the goals of the Differential Tuition Program was increased funding for the School of Business’ study abroad programs. However, when Carlson and some other MBA students began applying to study abroad, they discovered that the money was not there.
From that point, the group began to realize some greater problems behind Fuerst’s conduct with the differential tuition program.
The advisory committee that was disbanded in 2005 has been reinstated, but some students said they would not be satisfied until the review is complete and a new dean is in place.
“We just want a good business school and we’ve got a decent one,” Boone Bradley, an MBA student from Wichita, Kansas said. “We have some really great faculty and some really great people there. But sometimes the support can be lacking or the overall efficiency of the school seems to be a little below par.”
Carlson said that the issue is more about trust and accountability than the money.
“There has been really no oversight and that is really our main concern,” Carlson said. “In today’s world with all these sort of problems in corporations to not have oversight is something you just don’t do. “
— Edited by Emily McCoy.
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Business School moving beyond controversy
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