A Growing College Rivalry: The Fight for Faculty Stars

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 14, 2008

George Mason University officials could not shout loud enough when economist Vernon L. Smith won the Nobel Prize in 2002. Smith's recruitment a year earlier had shone a welcome light on the school, and the award was a crowning bonus.

Today, GMU is quiet, as Smith has slipped away for a job in California, lured by the same administrator who brought him to GMU.

Some universities play down faculty member moves, calling them part of the recruitment process in higher education. Others refer to many of the raids on star faculty members by competing universities as poaching or outright theft.

"Top-talent people who are happy and successful and thriving as academicians are free agents," said Mark S. Wrighton, chancellor at Washington University in St. Louis. "Imagine being manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, a World Series-class team, and every one of your players is always in free agency."

Dealmaking is constant, delicate and increasingly competitive as schools hunt for ways to attract top educators and keep their own stars from straying. The benefits to playing the faculty shuffle are many; academic prestige and grant money often come with new recruits, said David Ward, president of the nonprofit American Council on Education and a former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

But there can be costs, too. Some superstars bring their name and reputation, but that doesn't necessarily mean they want to mingle with students or peers. Even a Nobel can come with a caveat: Many are awarded the prize long after their most productive research days. (Although, as Ward noted dryly, having one is superior to not having one.)

And at some schools, the hunt for superstars -- who are offered big money and lavish housing -- can leave homegrown scholars feeling unappreciated.

That was how Siva Vaidhyanathan, a young tenured faculty member at New York University, said he felt. NYU, according to David Kirp in his book "Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line," took a page from Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and went on a shopping spree to buy the best faculty available. Vaidhyanathan left NYU and has just finished his first semester teaching at the University of Virginia, where his pioneering work on digital copyright made him a fine catch.

"These days academia is a lot more like the crazy private sector, in that you are punished for loyalty and consistency and truly only rewarded if you act as a mercenary free agent," Vaidhyanathan said.

NYU Vice President John Beckman said he could not discuss the specific case but said the college wished Vaidhyanathan well. He also said it was unfair to judge a school on the complaints of one person.

In some cases, one school's average Joe is another school's star. Small liberal arts colleges prize great teachers who can connect with students and are committed to building a career there; big research universities want big-time researchers with a knack for winning grants.

Identifying potential recruits can be extraordinarily calculated. A school will decide to reinforce a department. A target is approached, sometimes surreptitiously. An offer is made. Incentives are dangled.

Other times, it's just serendipity.

That's what led to the recent move by renowned genome scientist and microbiologist Claire Fraser-Liggett to head a new research institute at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Fraser-Liggett said she had been thinking about leaving her job as president and director of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, where she helped pioneer the field of comparative genomics.

Her husband, Stephen Liggett, a professor at Maryland's medical school, mentioned to a colleague that his wife wanted a new challenge. In no time, negotiations were started, and Fraser-Liggett made the move with a team of scientists that instantly elevated the school to a world-class player in the field of genomic research.

That was a big win for the University of Maryland. But, like all schools, it has recently been on both sides of the win-loss equation.

Out: Prominent nanotechnology scientist Hamid Ghandehari, to the University of Utah.

In: Mandeep R. Mehra, a nationally recognized cardiologist, to the University of Maryland in 2005 from Louisiana. He joined leading cardiologist Bartley P. Griffith, head of cardiac surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who had been wooed from the University of Pittsburgh a few years before. "In the dead of night, we went to Pittsburgh and stole him and his entire department," said one Maryland official who declined to be identified because his characterization of the incident would not be appreciated by his superiors.

The country's wealthiest private schools and most prestigious public schools have an advantage in the faculty sweepstakes because they have more to offer: money, housing, big offices, fancy laboratories. To compete, some schools, such as the University of Oregon, have started offering salary incentives.

But salary is only part of the equation: A promise of time off to develop grants, seed money for research, or new laboratories and offices are sometimes part of the deal. Some moves are sealed with a job for a faculty spouse.

The promise of better working conditions and an easier time obtaining research money is what lured Smith from the University of Arizona to GMU in 2001, he said.

Nobel Prize winner James M. Buchanan, an economist who pioneered public choice theory, already graced GMU's economics department, and Smith, whose work in experimental economics is considered revolutionary, was brought in to further burnish GMU's reputation.

Daniele Struppa, then a GMU dean, made an offer to Smith and his economic research team and they went.

"It's about where we can do our best work," Smith said. "That's what's important to our group."

So when Struppa, now chancellor of Chapman University in Orange, Calif., called Smith last year, a new deal was made.

Ward said Smith's departure was "a major loss" for GMU. Although one can practically trip over Nobel laureates at some schools, it was unusual for GMU to have two at the same time. (Buchanan has since retired.)

GMU spokesman Daniel Walsch said the school was sorry to see Smith go but emphasized that the economist still has a connection to the school: He retains the title of professor emeritus. And, Walsch said, the success of the school's basketball team in 2005-06 -- reaching the Final Four -- probably had more impact on student interest than Smith's presence.