How to save higher ed, according to Gordon Gee

Yahoo

2 days ago

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Gordon Gee owns somewhere around 2,000 bow ties. About half are 'in retirement,' gradually being repurposed into quilts for his granddaughters. A couple dozen or so hang in his office at West Virginia University, where he's served as president for the past 11 years.
The designs in his collection range from traditional to whimsical — classic stripes and polka dots to flamingos, Santa Claus heads, hearts and flip-flops. Ever since encountering his first bow tie in a doctor's office as a teenager in Vernal, Utah, the accessory has become his signature: a symbol of delight, abundance and a refusal to blend in.
It's as eclectic as his leadership style, which has won him both admirers and skeptics throughout his 45-year career in higher education.
On the day I met Gee in his office, the campus was winding down for the summer and he was preparing for his final commencement, capping the close of his second tenure leading WVU. He arrived a few minutes late, delayed by sorting through decades of belongings as he prepared to vacate the presidential residence on campus in June.
He was gearing up for graduation festivities and dressed for the part: a bow tie emblazoned with the university logo, a yellow vest and blue-and-yellow socks peeking out beneath his trousers. West Virginia is where Gee's career as a university president started when, at 36 years old, he was appointed president. Now, after a 45-year journey leading five major universities — two of them twice — 81-year-old Gee is ending his career where it began.
He is one of the most significant — and colorful — figures in modern American higher education. Over four decades, he's led more universities than any other person in U.S. history: the University of Colorado, Brown University and Vanderbilt University, as well as two stints as president of WVU and Ohio State. An ardent champion of public education, he pushed for ambitious changes in each school, raising billions and transforming the universities' structure, governance and athletics. But this charismatic, bow-tied man rarely managed to avoid causing a stir.
Most recently, Gee led West Virginia through a sweeping and contentious 'Academic Transformation' in response to a deepening budget crisis and falling enrollment after the pandemic. The overhaul resulted in the elimination of 28 academic programs and about 300 jobs, including faculty and library positions, changes Gee believed were necessary to keep the institution financially viable. The changes drew national attention and sparked fierce protests from students and faculty. Gee recalled waving at them from his office window as demonstrators gathered outside his office in Stewart Hall.
Despite the backlash, Gee says his decisions were guided by a central question: Was West Virginia University truly serving its students and the people of West Virginia? 'I think what we did is we reinvented the university — we repositioned it,' he told me.
As he prepares to step down, Gee believes he is leaving the institution on 'solid financial footing,' with its bond rating reaffirmed. The new president, Michael Benson, who is leaving a job as president of Coastal Carolina University, is set to take the helm in July.
At a time when public trust in higher education is eroding, intensified by the Trump administration's scrutiny of Ivy League schools, Gee believes universities are in the midst of an existential reckoning.
The way forward, he believes, is through bold, student-centered change. 'Higher education has been in the same model for so many years,' Gee said. 'The reality is this: we either change as institutions — or we die.'
Gee's office inside a Romanesque building on campus resembles an eclectic museum of curiosities. On his desk are a smattering of coins and pins — keepsakes collected from people he met over the years. He works at a hefty wooden desk with hand-carved features, his own 'resolute desk,' a nod to the storied Oval Office original. When he leaves WVU, the desk will go with him. Above it hangs an expansive landscape of Morgantown, painted by a WVU graduate.
Gee calls himself an 'accidental president' when reflecting on how he came to the job that became his life's work. In 1981, while serving as dean of the law school at West Virginia, he had a call with the board of governors about the possibility of becoming president. Before hearing back from the board, he spotted the front page of The Dominion Post, a local newspaper, and saw a headline announcing he would be the university's next president. The formal offer came soon after.
'It was something that would not happen in today's world,' Gee told me. 'It was highly unusual, very West Virginia.'
Gee may have aspired to a presidency someday, but the promotion came far sooner than expected, said John Fisher, a member of the dean search committee who later became Gee's chief of staff.
'I think people feel very comfortable with Gordon in a very short period of time,' Fisher said. A hallmark of Gee's leadership is that people don't work for him, but with him, he added.
Gee was 36 when he stepped into the role. There was no playbook for being a university president, he told me, and he faced a steep learning curve. One of his first tasks was understanding the university's mission as a land-grant institution — part of a national system established under the 1862 Morrill Act to deliver practical education in agriculture, engineering and the sciences. In a state that ranks among the poorest and least educated in the country, Gee came to see the university's mission as inseparable from his own: to spur economic growth, expand health care and bring opportunity to every county of West Virginia.
He's gearing up for his last tour of all 55 counties in the state, his annual summer tradition. 'The advantage and the disadvantage of this university is the fact that it is so tied to the future of this state,' Gee told me. 'It represents the hopes and dreams of all West Virginians.'
Gee learned how to be a university president by trying things others hadn't. Early on, when he became aware of dust blowing from the air vents in the operating room of the state-owned and outdated university hospital, he knew changes had to be made. Though he had no background in health care, he understood the political risks: If the state Legislature funded a new hospital, they might relocate it to Charleston.
So Gee proposed an unorthodox solution — creating a nonprofit public university corporation. He persuaded the West Virginia Legislature to separate the hospital from the university, paving the way for the school to ultimately take ownership of the hospital and build a new facility. The result grew into WVU Medicine, a sprawling system of 25 hospitals. 'We wanted to make certain that no one in West Virginia had to leave the state to get health care.' He later applied the same model at the University of Colorado.
Gee's sense of purpose came through leading public universities — at Colorado, then at Ohio State, and ultimately back at West Virginia, where he had the longest tenure. Institutions hired him to shake things up, he told me. 'I made a living on being very disruptive,' he said.
At Ohio State, he introduced selective admissions to what had been an open-access institution — a controversial move, particularly in rural parts of the state. Gee said many parents viewed him as 'the devil incarnate' for limiting access. But he believed the old model was failing students and families: Tuition was spent on students who weren't committed, and many would leave without graduating. He also undertook a major academic reorganization, consolidating five arts and sciences colleges — a task he likened to 'moving a graveyard' — and shifted the school from a quarter to a semester calendar.
Public universities were more open to change than elite private ones, he found. At Brown University, where Gee served as president for three years starting in 1998 — his shortest stint — his attempts at reform quickly clashed with tradition.
'They wanted to remain a wonderful Ivy League institution, and when I started the disruption, I could tell that it was going to be hand-to-hand combat,' he said. After Brown, he became chancellor of Vanderbilt University, where he eliminated the athletic department and consolidated several programs — part of a broader effort across his career to streamline operations and cut bureaucratic redundancy.
Gee believes higher education has grown 'isolated' and 'arrogant.' He points to the ongoing maelstrom at Harvard University. While he disagrees with the Trump administration's 'sledgehammer to a problem' approach, he's unequivocal about one belief: To regain public trust, universities must commit to self-examination and meaningful change. Instead of acting as 'architects of change,' universities have become victims of their own inaction, Gee said — unwilling to address thorny issues like free speech, open inquiry and cultural change. Now, he said, those problems are catching up with them.
'We need to make sure we're constantly asking the right question of how we make the institution better,' Gee told me. 'And how do we do it in ways that make common sense for the public that supports us?'
Gee's disruptive streak — and his affinity for rural communities — took root in his upbringing in Vernal, Utah, a small town that didn't yet have a movie theater or television when he was growing up. His family owned an oil business that was started by his grandfather, along with several car dealerships and the only bank in town. For a time, all signs pointed to Gee becoming a third-generation banker. But eventually, the family sold the bank.
Gee's childhood revolved around The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Boy Scouts and 4-H. His family emphasized the value of education. His mother was a schoolteacher, and Gee became a voracious reader and a regular at the local library. He served as student body president in both elementary and high school, graduating as valedictorian. 'I was the guy that everyone loved to hate,' Gee told me.
At the University of Utah, where he studied history, Gee's path took a decisive turn. Although Gee initially considered a medical career, his plans shifted after meeting Neal A. Maxwell, a prominent educator and future member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Maxwell became a close mentor and friend, encouraging Gee to consider law as a route to leadership in higher education.
Even in college, Gee's ability to work the room and befriend others stood out. 'He liked practical jokes, often on himself as well as anyone else,' recalled Cecil Samuelson, the former president of Brigham Young University who belonged to the same fraternity as Gee at the University of Utah.
'He was comfortable in his own skin, and he always wore a bow tie,' Samuelson said.
After serving a mission in Bavaria, Germany, Gee earned both a law degree and a doctorate in education from Columbia University, completing both in four and a half years. He went on to clerk for a federal judge before becoming a judicial fellow and staff assistant to Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative on the Supreme Court who had been nominated by Richard Nixon.
Gee later returned to Utah, where he joined the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU as a professor and associate dean before moving to West Virginia to become the dean of the law school and within two years, a university president.
In 2006, Samuelson invited Gee to give a speech at the BYU Forum. 'Everything I know about being a Latter-day Saint, I've learned from running universities,' Gee said in the address.
'If you think this is a popularity contest, you're in the wrong business.'
Gordon Gee
While he was cognizant of politics, he managed to stay above the fray. 'He was not viewed as a political figure,' Fisher said, but as a president 'working to try to make the university the best it could be.'
Throughout his career, Gee became known for his fundraising prowess — or 'friend-raising,' as he calls it. During his tenure, the West Virginia University Foundation raised record-breaking funds — in the last fiscal year, it brought in more than $282 million, the most ever in the foundation's 70-year history.
He's viewed his presidency more as vocation, not a job — even a kind of ministry. Nearly every night, he spends two to three hours writing notes and emails to people he has met that week.
Benson, who will succeed Gee on July 15, told me he's gotten a note from Gee after every single interaction and meeting he's had with him. 'He does it in genuine ways,' Benson said. 'Gordon has a unique trait to make everyone feel important.' Although Gee and Benson had known each other, Gee didn't know that Benson had applied for the job. 'He's going to be a great president,' he said.
Sure enough, the day after I met Gee, I received an email from him, which said: 'As you can tell, the university presidency is a wonderful world in which to live but it is also very intense.'
I asked Gee what it was like, personally, to watch his university community reeling from the upheaval that followed the announcement of layoffs and program cuts which included language programs. The experience, he said, was painful. 'If I didn't grieve for them, then I obviously wouldn't have a sense of human kindness in me,' he said. 'But I believed in the higher purpose.'
In 2023, the university faculty voted no confidence in Gee, a move which is largely symbolic. While the the Board of Governors backed Gee, the faculty resolution accused Gee of financial mismanagement and failure to protect the academic integrity and mission of the institution.
He anticipated the fallout, Gee said, and had calibrated the process and its timing: In 2023, he first announced his retirement, and shortly after, rolled out the sweeping academic cuts to address a $45 million budget shortfall or a structural deficit, which is a more accurate term, according to Gee. 'We determined that we were going to be very transparent, which is very difficult,' he said. 'Universities are very opaque institutions.'
He believes that the cuts were essential for the long-term stability of the institution — and for preserving future jobs. 'There are many people now who have jobs who would not have had jobs had we not made those decisions,' he said. Gee stands by the choices he made: 'I believe that people of good will, if they had the same information that I have, would make the same decision.'
Over the years, Gee has grown accustomed to criticism — from scrutiny over what some considered lavish spending at Vanderbilt to offhand remarks about Roman Catholics and questions over his administrative decisions. But Gee, whose self-effacing nature seems to make him only more relatable, is quick to admit his mistakes.
'Sometimes there was legitimate criticism,' he acknowledged. 'You always learn from those kinds of things.' Without thick skin and 'nerves like sewer pipes,' a university president doesn't stand a chance, he told me. 'If you think this is a popularity contest, you're in the wrong business,' he said.
Samuelson told me one of the biggest challenges of being a university president is earning the trust of diverse constituencies — faculty, students, donors. 'And I think that's one of the things about Gordon Gee. People would say: 'Maybe we didn't always agree with him, but we felt he was fair and trustworthy. We could count on him to do what he said he would do.''
I asked Gee what accomplishment he was most proud of throughout the span of his career. 'After 45 years, the fact that I survived,' he joked. Then, in a more serious tone, he spoke about building a robust, high-quality health system in West Virginia that now serves about 90% of the state's residents and includes facilities like a new children's hospital and a planned cancer center.
'I came to realize very early on that without a healthy population, we can't do any of the other things,' he said.
As we stepped out of the historic Stewart Hall, the college's film crew was waiting outside for Gee, ready to film his farewell message to the graduates, who were mingling for various end-of-year festivities. He then floated from one picnic table to another, chatting with students about their highlights at West Virginia and their plans after graduation.
It was already 80 degrees and wasn't yet summer, but Gee didn't seem fazed. 'It's time to sit by the pool,' one woman told Gee.
'Sit by the pool?' Gee responded as if such a thing was utterly inconceivable. 'Not a fat chance. I'll do something.'
After losing his first wife to cancer and his second to divorce, he's now engaged to be married again. In May he told graduating seniors, 'my best days lie ahead.'
Gee hasn't committed to the next project — he's considering several possibilities, all of which would keep him in West Virginia.
Before we said goodbye, I asked Gee where his audacity comes from. Some of it, he said, came with age. He couldn't have imagined carrying out the changes at West Virginia as a 36-year-old president. He would have been too worried about public perception, he said. Not anymore.
What changed?
He paused before answering.
'I wish I knew. It's in my DNA,' he said. 'I have no fear.'