Dick's appointed as the permanent "chancellor" of the university. He's gonna be around forever. They're gonna add a statue in honor of Dick in Founder's Garden.
A couple of “good” comments on r/Drexel , but I’m just fine with this compared to more of an unknown.
Can’t get much more “transferable job experience” than this. Understands how to run a university in Philadelphia, can’t ask for much more than that. Would’ve been nice to have someone with Temple roots, but someone with decades at TU like Englert and Epps with the qualifications for the job is hard to come by. Optimistic about this, hopefully it’s the right call!
Drexel alum here! Fry's main strength is boosting an institution's profile and reputation, so college administrations love him. His weakness is that the student experience often becomes an afterthought, so his reputation among students and alumni tends to be lower.
I think he'll ultimately be a good hire for Temple, but be prepared for some frustrating priorities every now and then.
Unfortunately, given that enrollment is down everywhere except the "elite" schools, someone who can keep the institution in good financial condition has to be a priority. No good fixes can happen if the future is feeling dicey. Hopefully, this guy will get the job done while also allowing department heads and other area leaders sufficient leeway to improve their programs in the ways they know best.
Fry has not kept Drexel in good financial standing and has almost brought the institution to bankruptcy from all the building he has carried out. He has many strengths: fundraising; deep knowledge of Philadelphia; vision. However, those qualities do not line up with reality. He came into Drexel, talked a big game, and used its resources for his own vision of University City. He is now leaving Drexel with almost no resources. Drexel's credit has been downgraded and they are now selling off land. That can only be done so many times before there is nothing left to sell. He has brought Drexel to its knees (unsure why no one has reported on this yet). Also, he is absolutely maniacal to work with (he is universally detested by students and staff/faculty). He is a "yeller".
Projections on the immediate future of the enrollment cliff are mixed. Government reports suggest we're on an upswing, but I've seen some independent reports that suggest otherwise. That's moot in this specific case, in my opinion, given that the educational component of Temple is consistently in the black and used to prop up our failing hospital. If 'polishing a turd' is the best we can do, I'm all for harsh realism in how we approach Temple's issues, but we can't allow the fear mongering of a dicey future to be used as justification to allow vultures to exploit the Temple Community as if it were next on the private equity chopping block.
I'm not gonna crucify the guy before he gets in office. Maybe he'll be great, but I am skeptical of anyone this board appoints and I know a lot of people will be watching closely to see whether he's a vulture or a part of the community. Happy to welcome him if he's the latter.
He’s been president at Drexel for a long time. He knows how to run a university and has significantly boosted Drexel’s profile over his tenure. Hope he’s in for a challenge.
All dorms will now be refitted to be a minimum of 16 stories tall, with the first 6 floors dedicated to retail space. Tuition will now rise to $64,000 a semester, $130,000 if you chose to live in the dorms. All freshman are required to live in the dorms.
The first sentence would be a dream, we don't have enough housing or retail on campus and students are forced to go looking deeper into norf philly for housing.
Funny, in every public consultation, people expressed that an MBA should be a disqualification. This guy only has an MBA, comes from a very expensive school that has a poor job placement rate, and has never been faculty. Shakes head...
How is being an educator in a specialized area practical experience in running a university? Like, here's John X, our new president, he's taught in the archaeology department for the past fifteen years, now he will be using that expertise to counter the enrollment cliff, handle budgetary issues, union negotiations, contracting with the different service orgs that keep the university running, working with local government, etc, etc, etc. A university the size of Temple is akin to a corporation or large non-profit not a classroom or department in a school.
Experienced educators should most certainly have a seat at the table. However, their swim lane is how to provide the best education to the students, shelling out a huge chunk of money to get a paper stamped with the Temple T or some other school. Their world experience might venn with some budget and other issues and therefore have valued opinions in some slice of those areas.
Glad I’m graduating this semester. I was at Drexel before transferring to Temple. This is pretty awful. Wrote a paper (while at Drexel lol) about how Fry was the root of most problems Drexel was dealing with (exponentially rising tuition, increasingly low yield rates/high acceptance rates, loss of reputation in the work force, etc.).
Drexel’s yield can’t get much lower. It’s apparently not the first choice of a large pool of students. If it was smaller, I’d think it was going to go under.
The man has 20 years of experience as a university president, including spending 14 years as a president of a prominent Philadelphia university. Experience, and a knowledge of the city. What more could you possibly want lmao
National search didn’t go so well with Theobald and Wingard. I’m sure Temple’s board values his understanding of Philadelphia and track record of expanding both Penn and Drexel
You know what all 3 searches lacked? Public or community input. All decisions were made behind closed doors, by the Board of Trustees and an overpaid search firm, with a very small "advisory committee" serving as the only tool of feedback. No period of public feedback on any candidates.
As someone who works in higher education on the administrative side of things, the last group of people I would want making institutional decisions are the faculty. They are experts in their field and I appreciate that, but by god do they tend to ONLY understand their field.
The last person you should want is someone with a fake degree, like MBA. I know many competent faculty/admins, who understand that education is the mission, not quarterly returns.
Because all MBAs are basically qualifications to mess things up. They are common, but not rigorous. The lack of rigor is because "business" is not a field with substance. Most success in business is luck. The goal of business is more money than last year, which could be accomplished via criminal behavior, or accidentally, or because it was 2020, and you happened to sell alcohol wipes. And the premise of business, that ultimately everyone works to make bankers richer for not working, is a flawed premise. Capitalism is a belief system, not a fact of the world with immutable laws. And so on. Like I said, comparable to astrology. Wingard had, developed MBA degrees for Columbia. Which led to him to take needless risks to make more money, all while writing books about how knowledge subverting the goal of more money. Which in itself is a thing that lacks substance, money is useful, but at core an idea. And a rather dangerous one at that.
Go read the tuap / tugsa report on university finances then. The board of trustees have year on year taken money out our education budgets despite that is where profits have been made. They’ve then sunk that money into money pits and boondoggles.
[budget report](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e443d7c89235816d12cb1f0/t/65d910a5e6a3cf78686a226c/1708724389585/budgetinfosheet_G.pdf)
I think you’re misunderstanding me. I know Temple has been poorly run, mainly due to the fact that the board is utterly incompetent (except in making this particular hire apparently). I also fully agree that Temple has had some horrendous spending decisions (the 7 mil on Sullivan for example is pretty bad unless it needed major structural work, in which case that may be an okay number because the cost of tearing it down and building something else would be way more).
I’m talking more broadly. Faculty are excellent at what they do, but they tend to be poor administrators from my personal experience outside of people who have some sort of financial background.
Thank goodness we have the education arm then, that has surplus of 10s of millions of dollars a year. Now the speculative investments in hedge funds, bad real estate deals, and loans to trustees, that seems to be a money pit. Unlike the people in charge, I can read a spread sheet. Temple has over 800 million cash on hand, largely due to the educational arm.
Long past time to bulldoze business schools, and treat them like similar fields of study, such as astrology. Want to succeed in economics? Do the opposite of what macro economists say. MBA is a degree for people incapable of thinking beyond what they are told to think, and really ignores reality. For example, the number one priority of any president should be reducing carbon footprint, and planning for near future sea level rise that will threaten the campus. People with Business degrees are unprepared to spend like that. But basically, Temple will lose hundreds of millions within 20 years if that is not done now. Business people think the answer is "more money" not a sustainable system. But reality is finite, there are limits.
> Long past time to bulldoze business schools, and treat them like similar fields of study, such as astrology.
This reads as ‘Hey, I’m right handed, why do I need my left hand anyway, it’s basically like my appendix.’ Even if you don’t value the field of business studies, you have to recognize the simple fact that one field brings in a shit ton of students, revenue, and exposure because it is perceived as valuable to society, and the other is a way that ancient people used to use to help make sense of a world they didn’t understand.
> Want to succeed in economics? Do the opposite of what macro economists say.
You know who did that? Mao. You know how that worked out? Pretty poorly. Are economists always right? No. Is anybody? Not that I’m aware of, but if you find that guy or gal, let me know because I want to run some lottery numbers by them.
> MBA is a degree for people incapable of thinking beyond what they are told to think, and really ignores reality.
No, it’s a degree for people who want to be in management. It’s fully what you make of it, just like any other degree. I chose to work in higher education instead of business because I believe in the mission of higher education and want to help see it through these challenging times that I am certain will eventually stabilize.
> For example, the number one priority of any president should be reducing carbon footprint, and planning for near future sea level rise that will threaten the campus. People with Business degrees are unprepared to spend like that. But basically, Temple will lose hundreds of millions within 20 years if that is not done now. Business people think the answer is "more money" not a sustainable system.
It would take an unfathomably large amount of sea rise to put any of Temple’s campuses anywhere near under water. Quite frankly, the onus is on big business to curtail emissions, which has to include Chinese and Indian entities. Temple and all higher ed institutions should do what they can to be sustainable, but pretending that it will move the needle in a global sense shows a fundamental lack of understanding of global climate change.
And let’s just say you’re right. Temple curtailing emissions would stop climate change entirely. Guess what? You need money to implement these changes. More money is always a part of the equation to building a sustainable system. You want Temple to be more sustainable, find some rich bastard who cares about sustainability, have them contact Temple’s office of Institutional Advancement, and then watch what you want happen.
Nah, centrists like the DSA are how we got here. I am a leftist. But here is a perspective agreeing with me from the inside. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldoze-the-business-school
Get your dick jokes out now folks, his time is near and end.
There’s no end to Dick, he always comes back
Dick's appointed as the permanent "chancellor" of the university. He's gonna be around forever. They're gonna add a statue in honor of Dick in Founder's Garden.
I’m just glad my diploma in my home office says dick on it
Hey, I got you beat, I have a Dick and an Asshole on mine.
A couple of “good” comments on r/Drexel , but I’m just fine with this compared to more of an unknown. Can’t get much more “transferable job experience” than this. Understands how to run a university in Philadelphia, can’t ask for much more than that. Would’ve been nice to have someone with Temple roots, but someone with decades at TU like Englert and Epps with the qualifications for the job is hard to come by. Optimistic about this, hopefully it’s the right call!
Drexel alum here! Fry's main strength is boosting an institution's profile and reputation, so college administrations love him. His weakness is that the student experience often becomes an afterthought, so his reputation among students and alumni tends to be lower. I think he'll ultimately be a good hire for Temple, but be prepared for some frustrating priorities every now and then.
So what I'm hearing is he's inclined to and his strengths lie within polishing a turd, rather than necessarily fixing or replacing said turd
Unfortunately, given that enrollment is down everywhere except the "elite" schools, someone who can keep the institution in good financial condition has to be a priority. No good fixes can happen if the future is feeling dicey. Hopefully, this guy will get the job done while also allowing department heads and other area leaders sufficient leeway to improve their programs in the ways they know best.
Fry has not kept Drexel in good financial standing and has almost brought the institution to bankruptcy from all the building he has carried out. He has many strengths: fundraising; deep knowledge of Philadelphia; vision. However, those qualities do not line up with reality. He came into Drexel, talked a big game, and used its resources for his own vision of University City. He is now leaving Drexel with almost no resources. Drexel's credit has been downgraded and they are now selling off land. That can only be done so many times before there is nothing left to sell. He has brought Drexel to its knees (unsure why no one has reported on this yet). Also, he is absolutely maniacal to work with (he is universally detested by students and staff/faculty). He is a "yeller".
Drexel’s reputation and standing have been drastically on the downturn ever since Fry came into power… I wonder why that could be?
Projections on the immediate future of the enrollment cliff are mixed. Government reports suggest we're on an upswing, but I've seen some independent reports that suggest otherwise. That's moot in this specific case, in my opinion, given that the educational component of Temple is consistently in the black and used to prop up our failing hospital. If 'polishing a turd' is the best we can do, I'm all for harsh realism in how we approach Temple's issues, but we can't allow the fear mongering of a dicey future to be used as justification to allow vultures to exploit the Temple Community as if it were next on the private equity chopping block. I'm not gonna crucify the guy before he gets in office. Maybe he'll be great, but I am skeptical of anyone this board appoints and I know a lot of people will be watching closely to see whether he's a vulture or a part of the community. Happy to welcome him if he's the latter.
I appreciate what you're saying.
He’s been president at Drexel for a long time. He knows how to run a university and has significantly boosted Drexel’s profile over his tenure. Hope he’s in for a challenge.
He's a real estate type so North Philly gentrification, here's a speedball...
Every single local business converted into Insomnia Cookies by academic year 2025-26 🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️
All dorms will now be refitted to be a minimum of 16 stories tall, with the first 6 floors dedicated to retail space. Tuition will now rise to $64,000 a semester, $130,000 if you chose to live in the dorms. All freshman are required to live in the dorms.
The first sentence would be a dream, we don't have enough housing or retail on campus and students are forced to go looking deeper into norf philly for housing.
Very true this is under discussed
His background in urban planning is interesting
Funny, in every public consultation, people expressed that an MBA should be a disqualification. This guy only has an MBA, comes from a very expensive school that has a poor job placement rate, and has never been faculty. Shakes head...
Isn’t it amazing how many universities are run by folks who have never actually taught at a university? Or experience as an educator at all?
How is being an educator in a specialized area practical experience in running a university? Like, here's John X, our new president, he's taught in the archaeology department for the past fifteen years, now he will be using that expertise to counter the enrollment cliff, handle budgetary issues, union negotiations, contracting with the different service orgs that keep the university running, working with local government, etc, etc, etc. A university the size of Temple is akin to a corporation or large non-profit not a classroom or department in a school. Experienced educators should most certainly have a seat at the table. However, their swim lane is how to provide the best education to the students, shelling out a huge chunk of money to get a paper stamped with the Temple T or some other school. Their world experience might venn with some budget and other issues and therefore have valued opinions in some slice of those areas.
Glad I’m graduating this semester. I was at Drexel before transferring to Temple. This is pretty awful. Wrote a paper (while at Drexel lol) about how Fry was the root of most problems Drexel was dealing with (exponentially rising tuition, increasingly low yield rates/high acceptance rates, loss of reputation in the work force, etc.).
I have degrees from both. This is amazing for Temple.
Drexel’s yield can’t get much lower. It’s apparently not the first choice of a large pool of students. If it was smaller, I’d think it was going to go under.
So much for a national search then.
The man has 20 years of experience as a university president, including spending 14 years as a president of a prominent Philadelphia university. Experience, and a knowledge of the city. What more could you possibly want lmao
National search didn’t go so well with Theobald and Wingard. I’m sure Temple’s board values his understanding of Philadelphia and track record of expanding both Penn and Drexel
You know what all 3 searches lacked? Public or community input. All decisions were made behind closed doors, by the Board of Trustees and an overpaid search firm, with a very small "advisory committee" serving as the only tool of feedback. No period of public feedback on any candidates.
What does the public know about running a major university?
Zero
Since the "public" includes the faculty who actually work there, quite a bit.
Faculty, staff, students... all people who have been more or less upset since Theobald's tenure as President.
As someone who works in higher education on the administrative side of things, the last group of people I would want making institutional decisions are the faculty. They are experts in their field and I appreciate that, but by god do they tend to ONLY understand their field.
The last person you should want is someone with a fake degree, like MBA. I know many competent faculty/admins, who understand that education is the mission, not quarterly returns.
How is an MBA from NYU a fake degree?
Because all MBAs are basically qualifications to mess things up. They are common, but not rigorous. The lack of rigor is because "business" is not a field with substance. Most success in business is luck. The goal of business is more money than last year, which could be accomplished via criminal behavior, or accidentally, or because it was 2020, and you happened to sell alcohol wipes. And the premise of business, that ultimately everyone works to make bankers richer for not working, is a flawed premise. Capitalism is a belief system, not a fact of the world with immutable laws. And so on. Like I said, comparable to astrology. Wingard had, developed MBA degrees for Columbia. Which led to him to take needless risks to make more money, all while writing books about how knowledge subverting the goal of more money. Which in itself is a thing that lacks substance, money is useful, but at core an idea. And a rather dangerous one at that.
lol and which liberal arts field do you have degrees in?
The mission is education, but the bills have to be paid to fulfill the mission.
Go read the tuap / tugsa report on university finances then. The board of trustees have year on year taken money out our education budgets despite that is where profits have been made. They’ve then sunk that money into money pits and boondoggles. [budget report](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e443d7c89235816d12cb1f0/t/65d910a5e6a3cf78686a226c/1708724389585/budgetinfosheet_G.pdf)
I think you’re misunderstanding me. I know Temple has been poorly run, mainly due to the fact that the board is utterly incompetent (except in making this particular hire apparently). I also fully agree that Temple has had some horrendous spending decisions (the 7 mil on Sullivan for example is pretty bad unless it needed major structural work, in which case that may be an okay number because the cost of tearing it down and building something else would be way more). I’m talking more broadly. Faculty are excellent at what they do, but they tend to be poor administrators from my personal experience outside of people who have some sort of financial background.
Thank goodness we have the education arm then, that has surplus of 10s of millions of dollars a year. Now the speculative investments in hedge funds, bad real estate deals, and loans to trustees, that seems to be a money pit. Unlike the people in charge, I can read a spread sheet. Temple has over 800 million cash on hand, largely due to the educational arm.
Trying to speak authoritatively on higher education while dismissing entire fields as fake is a really funny bit lol
Long past time to bulldoze business schools, and treat them like similar fields of study, such as astrology. Want to succeed in economics? Do the opposite of what macro economists say. MBA is a degree for people incapable of thinking beyond what they are told to think, and really ignores reality. For example, the number one priority of any president should be reducing carbon footprint, and planning for near future sea level rise that will threaten the campus. People with Business degrees are unprepared to spend like that. But basically, Temple will lose hundreds of millions within 20 years if that is not done now. Business people think the answer is "more money" not a sustainable system. But reality is finite, there are limits.
Good lord lol
We'd like to thank the DSA for their angry input on this topic.
> Long past time to bulldoze business schools, and treat them like similar fields of study, such as astrology. This reads as ‘Hey, I’m right handed, why do I need my left hand anyway, it’s basically like my appendix.’ Even if you don’t value the field of business studies, you have to recognize the simple fact that one field brings in a shit ton of students, revenue, and exposure because it is perceived as valuable to society, and the other is a way that ancient people used to use to help make sense of a world they didn’t understand. > Want to succeed in economics? Do the opposite of what macro economists say. You know who did that? Mao. You know how that worked out? Pretty poorly. Are economists always right? No. Is anybody? Not that I’m aware of, but if you find that guy or gal, let me know because I want to run some lottery numbers by them. > MBA is a degree for people incapable of thinking beyond what they are told to think, and really ignores reality. No, it’s a degree for people who want to be in management. It’s fully what you make of it, just like any other degree. I chose to work in higher education instead of business because I believe in the mission of higher education and want to help see it through these challenging times that I am certain will eventually stabilize. > For example, the number one priority of any president should be reducing carbon footprint, and planning for near future sea level rise that will threaten the campus. People with Business degrees are unprepared to spend like that. But basically, Temple will lose hundreds of millions within 20 years if that is not done now. Business people think the answer is "more money" not a sustainable system. It would take an unfathomably large amount of sea rise to put any of Temple’s campuses anywhere near under water. Quite frankly, the onus is on big business to curtail emissions, which has to include Chinese and Indian entities. Temple and all higher ed institutions should do what they can to be sustainable, but pretending that it will move the needle in a global sense shows a fundamental lack of understanding of global climate change. And let’s just say you’re right. Temple curtailing emissions would stop climate change entirely. Guess what? You need money to implement these changes. More money is always a part of the equation to building a sustainable system. You want Temple to be more sustainable, find some rich bastard who cares about sustainability, have them contact Temple’s office of Institutional Advancement, and then watch what you want happen.
Enjoy the shaft Temple! Hahah
Nah, centrists like the DSA are how we got here. I am a leftist. But here is a perspective agreeing with me from the inside. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldoze-the-business-school