McRaven: College leadership ‘herculean’
UT chancellor lauds system presidents at final meeting of job
Leading a university or health institution is “the toughest job in the nation,” University of Texas System Chancellor Bill McRaven said Tuesday morning at his last in-person board meeting before his resignation.
The assessment means a lot from McRaven, credited with orchestrating the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. He plans to step down at the end of the month after about three years as chancellor. The retired Navy admiral, who saw opposition from some state lawmakers, attributed the decision to his health.
McRaven praised the presidents of universities and health institutions in the UT System in his remarks, at one point calling their jobs “Herculean.” Recent surveys of college presidents have indicated that pressure from external parties including state lawmakers has challenged their jobs.
Legislative challenges like these were front of mind on Tuesday for UT leaders, who named state funding fears as a top concern for the upcoming session.
Barry McBee, vice chancellor for governmental relations, said institution presidents are focused on state funding allocations. Texas put off several payments last session that will need to be paid, and Hurricane Harvey recovery will cost the state more money.
“The overall forecast … is overcast if not exceedingly cloudy,” he said.
Outside challenges, funding
McBee said he expected other systems to try to access the multibillion-dollar Permanent University Fund, which by state law can only be accessed by the UT and the Texas A&M university systems.
Rep. Carol Alvarado, a Houston Democrat, authored an unsuccessful bill last session that would have given the University of Houston and Texas Tech University access to some money from that fund.
“We anticipate that again,” McBee said, calling the attempts “incursions.”
He also expressed caution that attempts to create new medical schools in Texas should not come “at the expense of our formula funding,” echoing a concern from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that creating new degrees would dilute resources to existing programs. The University of Houston is attempting to offer a medical degree, for which it needs money from the state and approval from the Coordinating Board. Sam Houston State University in Huntsville is pursuing a school of osteopathic medicine it says will be 100 percent selffunded.
UT will also need to introduce a new chancellor to lawmakers, he said. In December, Tucker urged a search committee to find a successor with time to prepare for the session, which begins in January.
Sources have told the Chronicle that two Texas oilmen — former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Alta Mesa Resources Inc. Chairman Jim Hackett — have been mentioned as possible successors to McRaven, though a system spokeswoman called any floated names speculative.
‘Very good hands’
McRaven set out an optimistic vision for the UT System on Tuesday, calling it an institution that should build leaders and challenge accepted ideas. He will work at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin after he steps down as chancellor, said board chair Sara Martinez Tucker.
He said he trusted students with the nation’s future and hoped faculty came to work each day “wondering whether they were good enough for our students.”
“Make no mistake about it — we have challenges in the country today, but I am more convinced than ever that the future is in very good hands,” he said at the board meeting, held at the UT Health Science Center in Houston.
As chancellor, McRaven is responsible for overseeing the UT System and its 14 academic and health institutions with their 230,000-plus students.
Several large initiatives under his leadership were based out of the system itself, not the institutions it oversees, including a canceled expansion into Houston that McRaven once called one of his key projects.
Regent Jeff Hildebrand said Tuesday that UT hopes to unload the southwest Houston land — a process supported by several board members — by the beginning of the 2019 legislative session.
McRaven conceded Tuesday that he did not always agree with every regent all the time, but he said he never doubted board members’ dedication to UT.
McRaven was honored on Friday with an endowment for use by future chancellors. Tucker said Tuesday the fund has nearly doubled in size to $900,000, and officials expect it to continue to grow in size.
The chancellor was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia when he was in Afghanistan and was briefly hospitalized in November.