Perdue counting on executive experience in new role as university system chancellor

ATLANTA — Sonny Perdue isn’t your typical University System of Georgia chancellor.

His two immediate predecessors — Steve Wrigley and Hank Huckaby — spent large portions of their careers in academia. Huckaby was a professor and later administrator at several USG institutions including the University of Georgia, while Wrigley served inside the system’s central office as executive vice chancellor of administration.

Perdue, a Republican, was Georgia’s governor for eight years and U.S. secretary of agriculture in the Trump administration for four more. He thinks that executive experience will stand him in good stead as he takes the helm at Georgia’s 26 public colleges and universities.

“This is a big job,” Perdue said last Thursday, four weeks after succeeding Teresa MacCartney, an executive vice chancellor who had assumed the top role on an acting basis last summer when Wrigley retired. “It requires good judgment, wisdom in decision making, and the courage to carry out those decisions . ... It doesn’t imply you have to be an academic to do that.”

Perdue pledged an inclusive approach to decision making, taking into account input from students and faculty.

“We won’t always agree,” he said. “But I have a responsibility when we don’t agree to give them a reason.”

Perdue said he isn’t entering his new role with preconceived goals or policies but is rather in the “assessment stage.”

One issue that is on his radar screen is the decline in enrollment portions of the university system reported last fall after seven consecutive years of growth.

Enrollment at the system’s state universities including Albany State, Savannah State and the University of North Georgia is down 3.7%, while the state colleges including Georgia Gwinnett, the College of Coastal Georgia and Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College have seen enrollment fall by a more alarming 6.7%.

Perdue said the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic has contributed to the decline. Another factor stemming in part from the pandemic is the growing demand for workers, he said.

“Young people, the traditional market for higher education, can walk out of high schools and get a job at $15, $20 or $25 an hour,” he said. “That sounds good to them. It’s instant gratification.”

But Perdue said settling for a job that does not require a college degree isn’t a recipe for long-term success.

“Our job is to put out the value of a four-year education over a lifetime,” he said.