McRaven hints he may not stay at UT
University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven would not say Thursday whether he wants to remain in his role leading the state’s largest university system beyond his current contract, which expires at the end of the year.
The decision, McRaven said, depends largely on whether he and the Board of Regents share the same vision for UT and whether the board wants him to stay.
“If some of the things that have occurred over the last couple years have created friction for the board … if I’m not adding value to the University of Texas System, then maybe I’m not the right guy for the job,” McRaven said Thursday at an event sponsored by the Texas Tribune.
McRaven has faced
backlash from politicians and regents for his attempt to expand the UT System further into Houston with a $215 million land purchase near the Texas Medical Center that was planned largely in secret. Critics said the acquisition showed a lack of understanding of the tight state budget, and that McRaven should have gotten support from Gov. Greg Abbott before moving ahead.
Support for McRaven has eroded among several state lawmakers and Abbott’s office, according to various state officials, though he pulled back the Houston plan earlier this year.
In the legislative session, McRaven weathered sharp criticism from lawmakers and had to defend big-ticket spending like the Houston land and UT’s new system headquarters.
UT spokeswoman Jenny LaCoste-Caputo said Thursday that McRaven has no indication that he no longer has the board’s support. When asked for clarification on his statement that he may not be the right person for the job, she said that McRaven was saying that it’s for the regents to decide.
“He’s not speaking for his bosses,” she wrote in an email.
McRaven’s statement comes as board members are preparing to discuss the role of the system at a retreat this summer in Houston.
Differences on direction
Regents have questioned if the system should primarily support UT’s academic and health institutions, or if it should continue to push for largescale initiatives like broad research programs and new institutes, a vision put forward by McRaven less than a year into his tenure.
In late April, he told the Houston Chronicle that he had “absolutely no concerns” about whether his contract would be renewed.
But after that interview, in a quarterly board meeting, two new regents appointed by Abbott said that the system needs to become more of a support structure for UT’s universities and health institutions. Savings can then be passed down to individual institutions, these regents said.
Janiece Longoria, one of the new Abbott appointees, said at that meeting that the system should be pared down to “essential” services and back away from “very significant, growing, top-down expensive architecture” that she said “burdens” the 14 universities and health institutions.
“I think a smaller, more efficient system is what people are looking for,” said Steve Hicks, a regent who was first appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2009, in an interview Thursday.
McRaven’s broad vision includes several projects that he describes as “quantum leaps,” including a system-sponsored national security network, a brain health program and a leadership institute for students and business executives.
When he introduced those ideas about a year and a half ago, he said the system should aim to improve “the human condition in every town, every city, for every man, woman and child.”
Hicks said he doesn’t necessarily oppose McRaven’s big ideas, but he said the system shouldn’t run them.
Charles Miller, a former UT regent who supported the Houston plan, said spending system money on large projects like the ones McRaven presented is important.
“They have the resources to do things that can’t be done any other way,” he said. “Rarely is there something that’s only done at the system level that doesn’t have a broader benefit.”
McRaven and UT’s regents need to get on the same page, said Miller, who served on the board from 1999 to 2004. “The best combination is both of them having the same goals.”
Cutting jobs, costs
McRaven said Thursday that the system is cutting back on spending. It’s eliminated more than 150 positions this fiscal year, about 16 percent of the roughly 925 it employed at the beginning of the year, LaCoste-Caputo said.
“You need regents to ask the hard questions,” McRaven said Thursday. “This is what’s going to make our system administration better.”
McRaven, who is credited with orchestrating the secret mission to kill al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, joined the UT System in January 2015 after a 37-year military career.
He came to the job without experience in academia or in Texas politics, unlike chancellors of the University of Houston System, the Texas A&M University System and the Texas Tech University System.
With more than a $17.8 billion operating budget, the system enrolls more than 220,000 students and employs more than 100,000 faculty and staff.
He told the Tribune that backing off the Houston project helped smooth the session for the system’s universities.
“I knew if I continued to fight the battle in Houston, and we fought it all the way through the end of the session, the session would not have turned out the way it (did),” he told the Tribune.
On Thursday, McRaven called his leadership of the UT System bold, citing his prior statements against campus carry and supporting students who immigrated to the U.S. illegally.
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