Universities: Columbia’s Missing President

Doesn’t anyone want to be president of Columbia University? The job has been wide open ever since Grayson Kirk resigned after the convulsive student uprising 14 months ago. Informal overtures by Columbia’s trustees have since been rebuffed by John Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and Martin Meyerson, president of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Hopes recently rose when the trustees formally offered the post to Alexander Heard, 52, the able chancellor of Vanderbilt University (TIME, Aug. 1). But last week Heard too bowed out. “At this juncture,” he wrote in a letter of regret, “I personally will have a better chance at Vanderbilt to make a useful contribution to higher education.”

Unfortunately for Columbia, Heard had a point. The man who eventually accepts the job will face excruciating problems on Mormngside Heights. While working outlandish hours, he will have to cope with more possible student disorders, plus the angry local residents whose homes impede the university’s needed expansion. He will deal with trustees whose unquestioned talents are too often diverted to their own eminent careers. While some Columbia graduate schools have become untouchable fiefdorns, the high quality of some academic departments (sociology, government, philosophy) has declined. In average faculty salaries, Columbia now ranks a mere 25th among U.S. universities. Worst of all, Columbia expects an $11 million deficit next. year. The new president will have to raise that much just to break even, then raise more to pay for higher salaries and capital improvements.

By default, the man who seems likely to face these trials, at least for the coming year, is Acting President Andrew Cordier, 68. Some people at Columbia feel that Cordier, by virtue of his adroit interregnum administration, deserves to be made the new president. But Cordier insists that he wants to return as soon as possible to his regular post as dean of the School of International Affairs. Columbia’s search continues.