Anonymous wrote:Take the word of former UVA President Teresa Sullivan. When she was president, she wrote a highly critical memo to the UVA Board diagnosing the university's ills:
She called out the "reputation gap" -- “In a number of critical areas we are reputed to be better than we actually are,” she wrote.
“The more recent emphasis on science and engineering is interpreted in some quarters as a sign that we will no longer cherish our traditional strengths, and recent political attacks on universities reinforce this fear. Meanwhile, our need to improve [science, technology, engineering and math] fields persists.
“It must be candidly admitted that some of the fields that bring us the greatest distinction are not those in which most people would today invest (e.g., Spanish, English, Religious Studies),” Sullivan wrote.
“In some of these units, our reputation is derived from a small number of faculty, rending the reputation of those units particularly vulnerable to the outside recruitment of a single person or a few departures of senior leaders.”
“It is true that we have some international ‘star’ quality faculty, but many fewer than most of our peer institutions,” Sullivan wrote.
https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/sullivan-saw-reputation-gap-at-uva/article_3dcc495b-fdfb-5e52-b27f-0029288c8e7a.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/is-university-of-virginias-reputation-gap-growing/2012/06/17/gJQAi8kVjV_blog.html?utm_term=.fd3311e4897a