December 4, 2019 by Philip Lewenstein

Can a Leading University, USC, Rebound from Scandals and Build a Better Future?

Every fall weekend, my oldest daughter, my son, and I gather in front of my TV to watch the University of Southern California (USC) football team. My son and I began this ritual while my daughter attended USC from 2001 through 2008, earning two degrees; the Trojans ranked as one of the nation’s top teams under Coach Pete Carroll.

A few years after her graduation, my daughter moved back to Minnesota and joined our viewing party except for the one weekend each year when she meets her college friends to attend a USC road game. Although not all alumni, we feel part of the “Trojan family,” which includes 375,000 living alumni.

During my daughter’s time in southern California, USC’s reputation ascended not only in football, in which it has historically been a national power, but in national rankings, academic enhancements, fundraising, selectivity, and diversity.

As noted by The Chronicle of Higher Education, USC has made a swift rise in the rankings, reputation, and fundraising, establishing itself as an internationally-recognized research university (“The U of Southern California Is on the Rise. Why Is It a Hotbed of Scandal?” by Terry Nguyen, March 29, 2019).

USC Professor William G. Tierney, in a Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, noted that “USC’s upward trajectory has been spectacular. It has made admirable progress in the recruitment and retention of first-generation students and students of color. The faculty and students can compete with their peers on any global campus.” (September 20, 2019).

In the past year, however, the university’s reputation has been tarnished by many embarrassing scandals that have highlighted failures in leadership and institutional accountability. USC has many strengths, but they have been overshadowed by a flood of negative headlines, leaving a new president to clean up the mess.

The USC rise and fall raises underlying questions about the values and culture of a university. An excellent university should focus on providing access and equal opportunity to high-quality education for students of all social, economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. However, USC has developed a climate in which wealth and social connections play an outsize role in admissions, and athletics has disproportional importance as do fundraising and rankings.

USC has been described as having a nontransparent, top-down imperial-style management and a fractured board of trustees.

USC is not the only university to suffer embarrassing scandals. But as an observer of higher education, an admirer of USC’s success, and alumni parent, I am as disheartened to read about the university’s failures as I am sad to see the once-proud football team’s recent struggles.

Nevertheless, I see some progress in recent months with the hiring of a new president, many new administrators, and new policies adopted by the board of trustees.

Located in the heart of Los Angeles, USC is a world-renowned private research institution with two main campuses, the University Park campus, south of downtown Los Angeles, and the Health Sciences campus, northeast of downtown. Within the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and 18 professional schools, the university offers bachelor’s degrees in 190 majors; graduate students are enrolled in about 481 master’s, certificate, doctoral, and professional-degree programs.

USC houses six arts schools in cinematic arts, music, dramatic arts, architecture (my daughter’s field), fine arts, and dance. Other top-ranked programs include art history, creative writing, a master’s program in professional writing, and the USC International Artists Fellowships, which are graduate fellowships for promising artists from across the Pacific Rim, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

The most-popular majors are business, management, marketing, and related support services, visual and performing arts, engineering, and communications, journalism and related programs.

USC is big. Among private, nonprofit institutions, USC had the third-largest enrollment, 45,687, trailing Liberty and New York University in fall 2017. In 2018-19, USC enrolled 20,000 undergraduates and 27,500 graduate and professional students.

USC is diverse. In fall 2018, the demographic distribution was 16.8 percent Asian, 5.6 percent black/African American, 14.8 percent Hispanic, 30.7 percent white/Caucasion, 23.9 percent international, and 8.1 percent other.

In 2017-18, USC ranked second behind NYU among doctoral institutions with the most foreign students, enrolling 16,075. In fall 2017, USC ranked fifth among four-year, nonprofit colleges in diversity among managers.

USC is increasingly selective with a fiscal year 2018 acceptance rate of 13 percent. The university had 64,352 applicants, 8,339 admits, and 3,401 matriculants.

USC strives to serve low-income students (see “USC Shows How Top Colleges Can Connect With High-Achieving, Low Income Students,” www.philsfocus.com, May 18, 2017). In 2017, USC and NYU had the highest graduation rates for Pell Grant (federal aid to low-income students) recipients among the top 15 four-year private, nonprofit institutions.

Of 18,794 USC undergraduates that year, 3,939, or 21 percent, were Pell recipients. The USC graduation rate for Pell recipients was 89.5 percent versus 91.7 percent for nonrecipients of Pell Grants or subsidized Stafford loans. One in six USC students has parents who did not go to college.

However, as the New York Times reports, the divide between rich and poor students at USC is vivid (“What’s Life Like as a Student at USC? Depends on the Size of the Bank Account,” by Jennifer Medina, April 3, 2019). Medina notes that the college-admissions bribery scheme,  which has ensnared dozens of wealthy parents accused of bribing their children’s way into USC, has brought renewed attention to class divides on campus—and how different the student experience can be depending on the size of the bank account.

“Interviews with students on campus from across the economic spectrum show how difficult it is to navigate a university that tries to be a home for all,” Medina writes. “After decades of attracting some of Los Angeles’s wealthiest families, USC has aggressively recruited and enrolled students who could never afford the roughly $57,000 annual tuition. But the reality for many is a microcosm of the economic disparities of the city the campus calls home—and as in the rest of Los Angeles, the vast majority feel ill-equipped to bridge the divide.”

Medina notes that as USC has fought to shed its reputation as a playground for the spoiled elite, officials have boasted about its racial and socioeconomic diversity. “And yet, as the bribery cases have made clear, the campus remains a place of pervasive wealth where celebrity, money, and status are still part of daily life,” Medina writes. 

USC is pricey. Among four-year private, nonprofit institutions in 2018-2019, USC ranked eighth at $71,620— $56,225 for tuition and fees and $15,395 for room and board. But the net price was $30,232 and average debt $7,747. Financial aid awarded from all sources was $570 million in the 2017-2018 fiscal year.

USC does well in retaining and graduating its students. Among private, nonprofit colleges with the best four-year graduation rates in 2017, USC ranked fifth, 2,920, or 76.8 percent (78 percent in 2018). The average six-year graduation rate is 92 percent; the six year rate of Pell students is 91 percent, 93 percent for non-Pell. The freshman retention rate based on full-time, first-time freshmen is 97 percent—an indicator of student satisfaction.

USC raises a lot of money. The university endowment was $5.5 billion in fiscal year 2018, number 21 in the country, a one-year change of 8.1 percent. Among private, nonprofit colleges that raised the most in private donations in fiscal year 2018, USC ranked sixth at $649,970,748. The university budget was $5.3 billion for the 2018-19 fiscal year.

From 1991 to 2010, under President Steven B. Sample, and then under President C. L. Max Nikias, USC had one of the most successful fundraising efforts of any university in the nation. Nikias oversaw a capital campaign that reportedly raised more than $7 billion.

The dollars keep flowing. On November 13, it was announced that USC and three other research institutions (Duke, MIT, and the Cleveland Clinic) have been given an equal share of a distribution that tops $1 billion from a group of foundations set up by Tom Lord, a businessman who died in 1989. (“$1 Billion in Grants Will Support 4 Research Institutions,” by Alex Daniels, The Chronicle of Philanthropy). Each institution will receive $261 million.

“Quite simply, this is a provost’s dream,” said USC provost Charles Zukoski in a written statement. “The flexibility and scale of this gift allow us to build much more rapidly than normally possible upon cross-university strengths in areas such as artificial intelligence, big data, and analytics, and to support our faculty as they leapfrog into emerging areas of research.”

USC ranks high among national research universities. The university is 22nd in this year’s U.S. News and World Report rankings; USC jumped 25 spots from 1991 to 2010 under President  Sample. In this year’s Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education rankings, USC is 18^th among 500 schools. USC is tied for fourth in the category of how engaged students feel they are with their professors, their peers, and their education.

And, of course, athletics, most visibly but not exclusively football, has long played a central role at USC. The Trojans have won 130 team national championships including 107 NCAA championships, the third-highest count of all universities. The Trojan men have won 97 national championships (84 NCAA titles), more than any other university. The women have won 31 national championships (22 NCAA titles), third nationally.

The football program, started in 1888, has a .707 winning percentage, 793-313-54. USC has been voted national champions 11 times and is second in Heisman winners. During my daughter’s attendance at USC, three Trojans won the Heisman—Carson Palmer, 2002; Matt Leinart, 2004; and Reggie Bush, 2005. More Trojans are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame than any other university, and more Trojans have been taken in the NFL draft than any other university.

Now, however, USC is referred to as a “scandal-weary university.” Tierney explains that first came revelations about a medical school dean’s drug use and criminal behavior, followed by allegations of sexual assault at the student health center, of pay-to-play shenanigans at the school of social work, and of bribery in admissions. Also contributing to problems, he writes, is USC’s fiscal model, Responsibility Centered Management (RCM). The scandals culminated in May 2018 in forced resignation of Nikias.

USC is facing about 700 civil lawsuits and has agreed to a $215-million federal class-action settlement to compensate hundreds of former and current students who have said they were sexually abused by former campus gynecologist, George Tyndall. USC officials partly attributed  a 200-percent increase in reports of rape and fondling in 2018 to sexual-misconduct accusations against Tyndall.

USC is more deeply involved than any other U.S. university in the scandal in which prosecutors have charged 52 people in connection with the scheme to cheat on college admissions exams and bribe college coaches to designate students as recruits despite not being competitive athletes. More than half the parents charged in the case were accused of trying to bribe their children into USC.

As part of the admissions scandal, according to prosecutors, coaches in low-profile sports such as tennis, water polo, and volleyball would accept bribes to falsely designate these parents’ children as incoming athletes. At USC, the Wall Street Journal reports, the scheme was far more systemic, involving four people who worked for the athletic department, and bribes became a form of institutionalized fundraising for athletics.

In March 2019, USC fired senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel, charged with receiving more than $1.3 million in bribes to fabricate athletic credentials of more than two dozen students seeking admission to USC. Also fired was water polo coach Jovan Vavic, charged with receiving $250,000 in bribes. They had been indicted by federal prosecutors. Also indicted and charged with racketeering were former assistant women’s soccer coach Laura Janke and former women’s soccer coach Ali Khosroshahin.

Heinel had been actively involved in coordinating the admissions process for student-athletes. According to the indictment, from 2014 to 2018, the Wall Street Journal reports, William “Rick” Singer’s clients sent more than $1.3 million in bribes to USC accounts controlled by Heinel. Prosecutors said Heinel helped facilitate the admission of more than two dozen students, some of whom didn’t play the sports for which they were purportedly recruited.

In response to the US Justice Department’s investigation of the college admissions scheme, USC has taken several actions (“USC information on college admissions issue,” August 11, 2019, USC statement). USC immediately terminated two employees associated with the allegations and placed on leave a faculty member who was named in the federal indictment as a parent. As part of its full review of the matter, USC is identifying donations that may have been received in connection with the alleged scheme and determining how to redirect the funds.

The university determined which applicants in the current admissions cycle are connected to the alleged scheme and is denying them admission. A case-by-case review of current students who may be connected to the alleged scheme is underway. “We will take all necessary steps to safeguard the integrity of our admissions process and to ensure we conduct ourselves in a manner consistent with our values,” the statement says.

Yet money still talks in USC admissions. Emails among athletics, admissions, and fundraising officials show how USC explicitly weighed how much money applicants’ families could donate when determining whether to admit students (“The Role of Money in USC Admissions,” September 14, 2019, Wall Street Journal).

A lawyer for two parents accused in the national college-admissions scandal claims USC wasn’t the victim of any scheme but rather based admission decisions in part on expectations of donations from wealthy families.

Documents obtained during the discovery process in the case include spreadsheets color-coded by university officials to track “special-interest applicants”—applicants flagged for their  connections to USC officials, trustees, donors, or other VIPs—with direct references to past and prospective dollar amounts of gifts from their families.

The documents also include email exchanges about specific candidates whose qualifications were portrayed as questionable by admissions and other officials but whose family ties and bank funds won out. USC responded that it allows many departments to mark applicants with a “special interest” tag, and that the emails disclosed in the court filing “demonstrate that no athletic department official has the authority to compel admissions decisions.” In a separate court filing, USC said that its admissions office doesn’t track donations, know dollar amounts given, or focus on donations when deciding whether to admit an applicant.

USC athletics, too, has been tainted by scandals. The NCAA placed sanctions on the athletics program in 2010, citing a lack of institutional control over the football, men’s basketball, and women’s tennis programs.

The football team was forced to vacate the final wins of its 2004 national championship season and all its wins in 2005. The team was banned from bowl games in 2010 and 2011 and docked 30 scholarships over three years.

The Football Writers Association no longer recognizes USC as the 2004 national champion, and the Bowl Championship Series stripped the Trojans of the 2004 BCS title; however, the Associated Press still recognizes the Trojans as the 2004 national champions. Bush returned his 2005 Heisman trophy, which the Heisman Trust left vacant.

In 2017, an assistant coach of the men’s basketball team was charged with facilitating bribes to players, and he pleaded guilty in January.

Another crisis, according to Tierney, is USC’s fiscal model, Responsibility Centered Management, or RCM. Under this model, revenue-generating units—colleges, schools, and departments at USC—keep a majority of the revenue they generate but also are responsible for their own costs.

The model, according to Tierney, has enabled USC to compete by providing resources to build buildings, develop labs, and hire new faculty. Tierney attributes USC’s rise in higher-education rankings in part to RCM; but, he adds, it has contributed to USC’s problems.

“A radically decentralized fiscal system lacks oversight, and it makes everyone’s prime goal a constant search for more money,” Tierney writes. “It might, say, lead administrators to forgive problems of a doctor at the medical school because he is a good fundraiser, or push deans to lower admission standards to increase tuition revenue.”

Further, revenue streams encouraged by RCM have limits, Tierney says. For example, he notes that a decrease in full-paying international students may lead to eliminating revenue from thousands of students whom USC previously viewed as easy money. Another example is the negative effect of recent scandals on philanthropic giving, the lifeblood of a private research university, Tierney says.

“At the least, RCM needs to be reformed and probably dismantled,” Tierney says. “It will be the faculty’s job to develop a new strategic plan that concisely sets a new course. The board needs to swiftly review the plan and launch a reconfigured capital campaign with clearly stated rules and enforcement mechanisms related to the parameters of donations.”

Another troubling issue at USC this fall is a series of student deaths (“9 student deaths at USC since August stun campus, spark alarm,” Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2019). USC officials confirmed that nine students died between late August and early November. The most recent death, November 11, occurred after top USC administrators sent letters to students and parents acknowledging the series of fatalities.

Winston Crisp, the university’s vice president for student affairs, said some students who had not known about the deaths said recent information and unknown details have been emotionally triggering, according to the article. Some families have expressed gratitude after receiving the emails. Others have voiced dismay over lack of information. And yet others think that the details have made matters worse.

Trying to recover from the multitude of scandals, USC on September 20 inaugurated Carol L. Folt as the university’s 12^th president and first female to hold the post. The Los Angeles Times stated that Folt “faces one of the most daunting assignments in American higher education—fixing USC.” (USC President Carol Folt’s daunting task: Fix a university battered by scandal, September 20, 2019, by Matt Hamilton and Harriet Ryan).

USC’s governing board is betting that Folt, who weathered high-profile controversies in North Carolina, “can change an institutional culture many have said became corrupt and money-centric as the university pursued ambitious growth,” the Times said.

“This is really a moment of decision for the University,” Professor Greg Thalmann told the Times. (Thalmann, a professor of classics and comparative literature, has taught at USC for 32 years). “Either it is going to clean up its problems, go forward, and become the institution it has the potential to become, or it is going to slide into mediocrity.”

Beginning as president in July, Folt has installed several new key administrators. Most notably, she forced out athletic director Lynn Swann, a former Trojan football star of the 1970s, who many regarded as unqualified but had a close friendship with USC’s largest donor, B. Wayne Hughes, according to the Times. USC has had a pattern of hiring former football stars to run the athletic department. It was felt that Swann and predecessors Mike Garrett and Pat Haden lacked management experience at any athletic department before their hiring. The new athletic director is Mike Bohn. It is uncertain when or if he will fire football coach Clay Helton.

In working to address the scandals, Folt is dealing with faculty (Concerned Faculty of USC, a group formed last year) who are advocating for faculty oversight of student health, admissions, and other facets of the University, according to the Times. Faculty demands include releasing  reports commissioned by the trustees into the college-admission scandal and a former medical school dean who was abusing methamphetamine and other drugs while overseeing doctor training and treating patients.

The revelation of Tyndall’s allegedly inappropriate conduct—and how USC mishandled it—turned the traditionally passive faculty into an outspoken and well-organized resistance, leading to Nikias’s resignation, according to the Times.

In an effort to reform leadership weaknesses, USC trustees earlier in November approved far-reaching changes to their governing board. (“In wake of scandals, USC radically cuts number of trustees, imposes ages limits, pledges more diversity,” November 5, 2019, by Teresa Wantanabe, Los Angeles Times).

Trustees voted to dramatically reduce the board’s size, impose term and age limits, diversify membership, and limit the ability of the university president and board chair to handpick members of the powerful executive committee.

“For the first time, the unusually secretive USC board will publicly disclose membership on committees, including academic affairs and finance—a standard practice even among private institutions,” the Times reported. “The reforms mark efforts to change an institutional culture that many believed was too insular and focused on fundraising as the university pursued ambitious growth.” Board Chairman Rick Caruso said trustees are aiming to shift to a culture of “open-mindedness, being inclusive and being open to learning.”

Caruso told The Chronicle of Higher Education that under the board’s plan, USC’s trustees will become a more diverse lot, and that includes adding some folks who are not so well heeled (“Scandal-Plagued USC Will Shrink Its Board. So What?” November 15, by Jack Stripling).

Larry Gross, a communication professor and member of Concerned Faculty of USC, called the changes “significant progress,” the Times reported. But the board did not act on a key demand of some faculty—that professors and students be given seats on the governing board and committees. Tierney said he wanted the board to lay out clear rules around donations—including what donors may expect for their contributions—and more directly engage faculty in crafting a strategic plan for university priorities.

Overall, there is hope for the future of USC. New provost Zukoski laid out a vision at his formal installation November 15 (“Charles Zukoski officially installed as USC provost,” by Chandrea Miller, www.usc.edu).

“I recognize that USC is poised for change,” Zukoski told an audience at Town and Gown on the University Park Campus. “Among the reasons is a thirst of faculty, students, and staff to face the issues of the past few years, learn what went wrong, develop strategies to avoid repeating them, and move forward united to address the opportunities of our age with intention, creativity, and energy.”

Zukoski sees USC as “the place where one must go to be educated or one is simply not at the leading edge.” The provost listed his three goals: build toward a sustainable and just future, engage with the problems of dense urban environments, and face the challenges of educating the next generation.”

Despite the scandals, USC has a foundation of assets upon which to build a successful future as one of the nation’s leading universities—the type that attracted my daughter and gained my admiration. Going forward, USC must learn from its mistakes. Fight on!