Dive Brief:
- Florida universities are spending large sums of money to executive search firms to help hire top administrators and coaches.
- The spending on search firms is defended as necessary to expand the pool of potential candidates in a search, to properly vet candidates, and to provide a veil of secrecy for searches.
- Among the search firm bills, the University of South Florida paid $160,000 to the headhunter that helped hire the medical school dean who starts in May, the Tampa Tribune reported.
Dive Insight:
This is one of those stories that portrays a let-them-eat-cake image of university administrators, especially when contrasted with the budget shortfalls and student debt issues across higher education. The Tribune cites some other Florida school search bills. The University of South Florida St. Petersburg paid $97,700 to the search firm that helped hire its regional chancellor last summer, Florida Polytechic University is paying a $120,000 retainer to the same firm for its presidential search, and the University of South Florida paid $100,000 to a headhunter for the search that landed its athletic director in January. South Florida also paid $60,000 to the same firm for the search that almost landed Manhattan College’s men’s basketball coach, before the search firm discovered he had lied on his resume.