New U of I president walking into tough times

[May 13, 2010]  CHAMPAIGN (AP) -- When Michael Hogan takes over at the University of Illinois in July, he'll walk straight into some of the toughest times a president at the school has faced.

Hogan will inherit a budget that's short $380 million in overdue state appropriations -- money that may not be coming anytime soon.

And the former University of Connecticut president will be asked to keep members of Illinois' General Assembly and others with clout away from university admissions. Hogan has his job because of a scandal last year over the influence of politics on admissions, which led to the resignation of then-President B. Joseph White.

In a farewell message on his University of Connecticut blog Wednesday morning, Hogan called his move to Illinois "a very unexpected development."

"When I started here about three years ago, I was presented with a slate of challenges that needed to be addressed: Complete our Academic Plan, deal with enormous financial problems, launch a new capital campaign, align our resources with our academic priorities, and find a path forward for our fiscally troubled Health Center (hospital)," he wrote. "We've risen to these challenges."

Timothy Koritz, a University of Illinois trustee, said Wednesday that Hogan will have to find a way to shield the university from political influence while at the same time working with those same politicians to ensure the university has financial support.

But if protecting Illinois and its three campuses from political influence means having less money, "that's just something we're going to have to deal with," Koritz said.

One outside observer familiar with Illinois' troubles of the past year said the new president faces a tough balancing act.

"I don't know what (trustees are) saying to the incoming president -- if you get a call from the speaker of the house, hang up the phone?" said Ray Cotton, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who often represents academic administrators in negotiations over new jobs. "That's an impossible job."

Hogan's hire still needs formal approval from university trustees, expected at their next meeting, on May 20 in Chicago.

The Waterloo, Iowa, native becomes the university's 18th president after White's resignation following months of news on the influence lawmakers had on admissions. Urbana-Champaign campus Chancellor Richard Herman also resigned and has not been replaced.

The university is also struggling with the state's $13 billion budget deficit. It is waiting on about $380 million in overdue appropriations that the state says it can't afford to pay. As a result, thousands of employees have been furloughed at the Urbana-Champaign campus this spring and more than 600 have taken buyouts.

Hogan is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and the University of Iowa, where he earned master's and doctoral degrees in history. He was at Ohio State from 1986 through 2003 and Iowa from 2004 until 2007, when he took the president's job at Connecticut.

[Associated Press]

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