Alumni report cites concerns at RPI
Group claims administration dismissed outreach effort
TROY, N.Y. » Shortly after Shirley Ann Jackson took over as president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1999, she unveiled The Rensselaer Plan, a long-term road map for the college that placed more of an emphasis on research as a way to elevate its profile in the academic community and unlock a wealth of public and private funding.
Nearly 18 years after that plan was unveiled, though, four distinguished alumni say it was instead the first step down a road pocked with financial, academic and governance questions that have left students, faculty, staff and alumni divided — at times bitterly — between Jackson supporters and critics and cost perhaps millions of dollars in donations from former students. In a comprehensive examination of the college over the past two decades, authors Bill Criss, Ted Mirczak, Peter Vanderzee and John Krob paint a picture of a plan that failed to achieve its stated objectives and instead resulted in a debt-ridden school with ONLINE: View Renew Rensselaer’s report, RPI’s response and both versions of The Rensselaer Plan with this story at www.saratogian.com.
a disappointing endowment, declining rankings among its peers and a campus culture they describe as a “culture of fear.”
“They had a great idea that they were going to create MIT West,” Krob said in a phone interview last week. “That failed.”
While their work, posted on the Internet at www.renewrensselaer.org, points out a laundry list of concerns they feel need to be addressed, the group — which cites the support of more than 200 other alumni — also offers a 10-point platform to bridge what they feel is a still-growing divide. However, they said their attempts to deal directly — and privately — with college trustees were brushed aside, leading them to take their concerns and research directly to the public, especially their fellow alumni.
“We offered our services as fundraising volunteers for the Capital Campaign provided the Board expressed willingness to reform several aspects of RPI’s governance practices; however, no support for our initiatives or recommendations was forthcoming,” the group states on its website. “Consequently, we have elected to reach out to RPI’s base of nearly 100,000 alumni and relate this untold story.”
In a five-page statement responding to Renew Rensselaer’s report, college officials addressed the group’s concerns point by point and reaffirmed the commitment of Jackson and college trustees to The Rensselaer Plan, which was updated in 2012.
“With a relatively modest resource base, we invested upfront in a ‘once-ina-generation’ institutional transformation because we were, and continue to be, confident that the Rensselaer Plan and its execution represents the best investment in Rensselaer and its future,” reads the statement. “Our belief that we were making the right investments in Rensselaer has never wavered and we persevered through difficult and tumultuous economic times.”
Renew Rensselaer was born out of what is now a two-plus-year battle over control of the Rensselaer Union, which has been student-run since its founding in 1891. The fight has led to a pair of high-profile protests during signature campus events and allegations of administrators trying to use the college judicial system to punish protesters and deny their civil rights.
“The union was a flashpoint that our concern was with the lack of governance in general,” Criss explained last week.
Those concerns have led both the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to criticize the college administration for trying to infringe on students’ rights to free speech. Renew Rensselaer claims it also is playing a key role in the estranged relationship between the college and its alums that can be seen by comparing alumni-giving rates that have fallen from 24 percent in 2001 to 12 percent in 2016, with the school falling from 48th to 88th over the same period in U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of alumni giving at colleges and universities nationwide.
That loss of funding was only amplified, the group argues, by the economic turmoil of the past two decades, the college taking on a concerning amount of new debt both to fund The Rensselaer Plan and to square up a pension plan that was woefully underfunded when Jackson took over in 1999, and other factors, including more than $170 million in cost overruns related to construction of the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, which opened in 2008 and had been originally budgeted at $50 million.
One result, Renew Rensselaer claims, is anemic growth in the college’s endowment dating back to 2005. Industry data measured RPI’s endowment at $667 million in 2015, up just 8.5 percent since 2005. By comparison, similar schools including Lehigh, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech and MIT saw their endowments grow by no less than 17 percent and as much as 108 percent over the same period.
The group also questions the college’s immediate future, with more than $205 million in bonds coming due in 2020 and likely requiring refinancing. The Renew Rensselaer report, however, admits the $100 million capital campaign launched last fall could improve RPI’s financial condition and credit ratings, which have also declined steadily over the past two decades, and help get a better deal on refinancing.
The intricate weaving of all these issues may make for an uncertain future, but the group says it and its supporters remain dedicated to their alma mater but need to see a commitment from college administration and trustees to be more receptive to the concerns of students, faculty, staff and alumni.
“Things have not been done in a way that makes us happy,” Criss said.