William G. Tierney in the Los Angeles Times: As Max Nikias pushed USC to prominence, checks and balances were missing
This op-ed, authored by Pullias Center co-director William G. Tierney, was originally published in The Los Angeles Times on May 28, 2018.
Scandal has hit the University of Southern California like a hurricane, a perfect academic storm. Such tempests are on the rise in higher education, and universities need to reckon with the conditions that are causing them. Similar forces damaged Penn State and then Michigan State. Now it’s USC’s turn.
C.L. Max Nikias, who resigned Friday as president of USC, was a prodigious fundraiser with an extraordinary work ethic. He opened a new campus addition in record time, and he set a pace that allowed USC to dramatically improve in university rankings. At his inauguration — the first of many over-the-top events — he exclaimed, “My own commitment to you is to run the next marathon at a sprinter’s pace.”
Read the rest of this op-ed in The Los Angeles Times.
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William G. Tierney is Wilbur-Kieffer Professor of Higher Education, a University Professor, and co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at USC.