The UI’s competitive advantage with Barbara Wilson

The hiring of Barbara Wilson as the new president of the University of Iowa is the right person for the position. Although we also said that about Bruce Harreld after his hiring. Her hiring is a return to a traditional academic leader with a doctorate who has gone up through the ranks rather than an outsider with a non-traditional background like Mr. Harreld. The subheading on the front page of the Cedar Rapids Gazette cover story on Ms. Wilson stated: Illinois’ Barbara Wilson has extensive academic administrative experience. It’s as if the Iowa Board of Regents learned its lesson after the unorthodox hiring and questionable tenure of Mr. Harreld and decided to go back to a traditional university president with traditional support from traditional constituents. She received overwhelming support from faculty, staff and students who provided feedback as part of the presidential search process. We like many things about Ms. Wilson’s background and approach to academic leadership. She is a Midwesterner having grown up in Wisconsin. She knows the Big Ten. She earned her bachelor’s in journalism and a master’s and doctorate in communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She most recently was number two at the University of Illinois System for the past five years. It has three campuses and a budget of $6.74 billion. Leaders like Ms. Wilson don’t advance to the top positions like she has without making tough decisions. It was reported that she served as interim chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus in 2015 and fired two football coaches and an athletic director. We would expect that Ms. Wilson and her area of academic expertise will enable and motivate her to engage and communicate effectively with all UI’s stakeholders, especially the media and state leaders. If done right she should be able to help counsel our state leaders so we can get our state back to being a national leader in education while also helping attract and retain students and families caught in Illinois’ well-publicized disfunction. According to US News & World Report, Illinois is ranked 32 in the higher education category. Iowa is number 11. The metrics that comprise this sub-ranking include the shares of citizens in each state holding college degrees, as well as the time it takes students to complete both two- and four-year college programs, the cost of in-state tuition and fees, and the burden of debt that college graduates carry. The fiscal stability of states was also ranked by US News. State credit ratings and public pension liabilities were measures of long-term financial health, while asset liquidity and budget-balancing – their spending in comparison with their revenue – were measures of short-term health. Iowa is number 23 and Illinois was dead last. Welcome, Ms. Wilson. We look forward to your leadership.