Rutgers pays $165K for consulting firm to help presidential search committee

Rutgers will pay the search firm R. William Funk & Associates $165,000 to help the search committee in its quest for the University’s 21st president, according to NJ Advance Media. 

The contract with the firm was the lowest Rutgers received, said Mark Angelson, chair of the Board of Governors, according to the article. Hiring a firm to consult in the search for university presidents is common, and Rutgers hired the same firm to hire University President Robert L. Barchi, Angelson said. 

The University also wants to hear from students and other members of the Rutgers community. A University-wide email urged students to send their input to presidentialsearch@rutgers.edu or attend a town hall at 1 of 3 campuses sometime in the next couple of months. 

David Hughes, treasurer of the Rutgers American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT), said to The Daily Targum that the consulting firm hired to help the committee turns university presidents into CEOs, and that the faculty overall is not properly represented in the search committee.

“They have deliberately excluded the representative bodies of faculty thus far,” Hughes said. 

The Targum reported yesterday that Barchi is stepping down to become a professor, after eight years serving as University president, where he saw Rutgers become more competitive academically, the creation of the Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences and the University’s admission into the Big Ten.