University of Kentucky Mixes

Corporate Management With Educational Excellence

Angela Januzzi

August 1, 2007

Lee T. Todd, president of the University of Kentucky, has made major strategic management overhauls in the school since he took the position in 2001. Frustrated and motivated by the national conception of the state as uneducated, Todd has created an itinerary to boost the university’s profile into the nation’s top twenty public research institutions by 2020.

While Todd claims his research initiatives are motivated by the desire to improve the economic and social standard of living in Kentucky, the school’s faculty were mostly skeptical of his priorities. The plan itself was titled suspiciously like a business model, rather than an education outline: the “Top 20 Business Plan.” Ernest J. Yanarella, a political science professor who has taught at the university for 37 years, explained that the plan’s name “…smacked of corporate management.”

Such responses are typical from faculty of colleges and universities who feel their campus mission is being hijacked by corporate mentalities of earning revenue over imparting knowledge. However, as Yanarella points out, he felt the plan was ultimately worth backing because, “What Lee was emphasizing was the critical importance of this university to the economic well-being of the people of Kentucky.” 

Todd’s research-oriented initiatives, which involve the school’s creation of advanced auto paints and the development of tobacco into possible pharmaceuticals. Already the federal grants received by the university have tripled, and the number of endowed professorships has increased by nearly 200 positions. Faculty and legislators are now beginning to acknowledge that the corporate approach Todd has applied to university management will indeed be able to support the values educators first thought would be threatened by the plan.