The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Shrinking enrollment, mismanagement to blame at UHart
The second biggest mistake a university can make is to pit academics against athletics.
Academicians point to the hyper-emotion of those who support athletics. Those supporting athletics point to the condescending nature of the intelligentsia. Doesn’t matter that there is plenty of IQ and passion on both sides. The classic adage of sound mind within a sound body goes right out the window.
But the biggest mistake? Bad management of the second biggest mistake.
That’s where we find the University of Hartford.
And that’s what makes it such an interesting case for NCAA institutions across America considering reclassifying divisions. They should closely watch Hartford, looking to drop from D-I to D-3. They could be next.
We’ve already established UHart president Greg Woodward lost credibility when he got caught emailing to professor Warren Goldstein to spread propaganda and “let me and the spin doctors do the numbers.” We still can’t decide if it was comedy or tragedy that the emails were accidentally captured on Zoom by Goldstein’s class. We do know the two got caught with their honesty pants down.
Woodward commissioned a study from
CarrSports and evidently got the answer he wanted: $13 million annually in losses. We’re not going to keep digging old dirt here beyond saying that if Woodward thinks the email gaffe was the worst of it, he may have underestimated the rising tide. After a campus demonstration, I was on a Paradise Chat podcast with Mo and Ryan and several current and former UHart athletes. It was eye-opening how smart they were. Then again, college athletes have higher GPA and graduation
rates than the rest of the student body.
“We have a leader in there that it’s almost like you don’t believe in the student-athlete,” former Hawks basketball star J.R. Lynch said. “It’s like a slap in the face. It’s just disappointing I was on the committee that freaking hired the guy. I apologize to everyone here.”
But let’s get back to mismanagement of the crisis and what, Michael Gargano, calls changing the narrative from the real issue. Which is?
“The decline in enrollment and tuition revenue at Hartford,” said Gargano, the former provost and senior vice president of the Connecticut State College and University System. “Woodward has singled out athletics as being non-sustainable, but the driver is the lost revenue due to decline in enrollment on his watch.
“If he would present to the university community that UHart is in a fiscal crisis and all expenses must be reviewed, then there would be a better understanding among the stakeholders. Instead he singled out athletics as the culprit with a predetermined outcome report that has raised everyone’s suspicion especially with Woodward’s communication to the faculty member.”
Gargano got his degree in business at UHart, played and coached golf there. He also went on to get his doctoral degree at George Washington and held senior administrative positions at a host of universities from Texas to Rhode Island. He is the CEO of the Education Think Tank. He qualifies as a sound mind, sound body guy.
“College presidents have many responsibilities,” Gargano said, “but for a president at a tuition-dependent university the primary responsibility and often the number one criteria trustees use to evaluate the president is admissions and enrollment.”
Gargano broke out three charts from the UHart Institutional Effectiveness Factbook. It showed a decline of 3,000 applications since Woodward became president in July 2017. And it’s not just COVID. In 2016, 16,584 applied to UHart. In 2017, it was 15,008. In 2019 it was 13,859 and in 2020 it was 13,262.
The 12 percent of students that enroll — it was 1,233 in 2020, down from 1,508 in 2017 — is well below the national average. Comparing 2019 to 2020 enrollment that declined by 142 students, Gargano estimated a loss in gross revenue of $5 million. He found data that showed a similar systematic decline in fulltime transfers (945 applied, 163 enrolled in 2017 and 517 applied, 96 enrolled in 2020).
With overall undergraduate enrollment declined by 554 students since Woodward took over and applying an averaged tuition rate, Gargano estimated $19 million in lost revenue.
“I suspect the overall decrease in net revenue is much worst as the university discounts tuition upward of 45 percent to attract the few students that do enroll,” Gargano said. “President Woodward is right, the UHart is in a financial crisis, but of his doing on his watch. His decision to use intercollegiate athletics as the poster child ignores the budget crisis that rest with his senior leadership team.
“The department of athletics did not create the university fiscal crisis. Yes, in a budget crisis, administrators must review all aspects of the university expenses from academics, tenure, admissions, financial aid, physical plant and athletics. To single out intercollegiate athletics may gain applause from the academic community but does little to demonstrate that Woodward has the skills and ability to successfully manage a major fiscal crisis.”
Did I miss something or did he just skewer Woodward?
“University presidents earn their stripes in the way they manage and communicate a crisis,” Gargano said. “By all accounts Woodward has failed the faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors and parents of the studentathletes.
“Hartford deserves a stand-up guy, one who tells the truth, is credible and respectful. Not one who hides, ask faculty to carry his water or pays for a report to provide cover for his lack of leadership.”
OK, now we’re sure he skewered him.
The sides are going back and forth. The study maintains losses can be reduced from $13 million to under $4 million annually with a move to D-III. The other side points to the rising and declining scales of athletic and merit scholarships and says the difference in actual money lost between I and III is under $2 million annually.
A successful D-I program is known to attract more applications and, as evidenced by the Hawks’ first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance, bring lots of attention to the school’s overall brand. With COVID, even big schools cut programs. And with the Power Five conferences holding all the football revenue, no one is quite sure of the NCAA’s longterm future.
Savannah State has recently completed a move from I to II. Centenary went I to II to 2011 and Birmingham-Southern did it in 2006. Interestingly, Eastern Washington which also enjoyed a flash of March Madness against Kansas, already had been examining reclassification. EWU has a football team.
“We’re the first school in history to go to March Madness and talk about going D3,” former baseball star Erik Ostberg, now in the Tampa Rays organization said on Barstool Sports. “It’s embarrassing.”
Various Division III schools are battling financial crisis and Daniel Webster and Mount Ida come to mind as schools gone out of business in New England in recent years. There also is the matter of what league would want UHart. The NESCAC and NEWMAC are filled with prestigious academics, little Ivies if you will. The Little East are publics and MASCAC are Mass. publics. The CCC might be a fit. GNAC? NECC? Anybody? UHart would have the nicest basketball locker room in Division III. The coaches and athletes would be long gone.
The unknowns are rattling and if it isn’t cleared up soon, it’s going to be every man and woman for themselves. On Wednesday came word that Morgan Valley had left as head coach at UHart to become UConn assistant coach. Of course, Morgan went to Storrs. She’s a former player and it’s UConn. It’s the Mecca, she said. Valley also leaves behind a 4-37 record in her two years. When Jen Rizzotti was taking UHart to the NCAA six times, no way she was leaving to become a UConn assistant. Times change. UHart is in trouble. Who of real merit would take the job?
You want a name? Rizzotti’s husband Bill Sullivan. He coached beside her for two decades. Rizzotti is back as president of the Connecticut Sun. Sullivan’s available.
John Gallagher, so far, has stemmed the tide. After winning the America East and losing only one player, he added transfers Jared Kimbrough from LaSalle and DeJuan Clayton from Coppin State. He could have his best team ever next season.
But it’s not easy with a president who can’t keep admissions up and has little interest in sports. On the podcast it was fascinating listening to athlete after athlete talk about never seeing him on campus let alone sporting events. Milena Wilton, a softball player, talked about an email she sent to Woodward expressing her disappointment in things he had said. The upshot? Woodward answered he thinks he knows more about the budget than she did.
“You’re president … I really hope you do,” Wilton said. “After this spin-doctoring thing and leaked emails, I think there’s absolutely no coming back from that. This guy has tarnished the reputation of our school.”
Believe me, academics, that wasn’t the most passionate thing said on the podcast.