Word: botstein
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...bushy-haired Leon Botstein became president of New Hampshire's Franconia College in 1970. He immediately imposed one unusual new rule: no dogs on campus. "Fifty unkempt dogs running around was just too much," said Botstein, "so I got rid of them...
...years Franconia drifted toward ruin under an interim president. Then the trustees hired Botstein, who was completing his Ph.D. in history at Harvard and working as a special assistant to the president of the New York City board of education. He had little administrative experience when he acquired the distinction of being perhaps the youngest president in American higher education, but improbably enough, he has turned out to be a smashing success. In less than three years he has improved conditions at the college to the point that it expects to receive full accreditation...
...Botstein took advantage of the depressed job market to recruit a new faculty willing to work for comparatively low pay (average salary: $10,960) and without tenure. Despite the poverty of most colleges (see following story), he raised enough money through cost cutting to pay the overdue bills. With $800,000 in federal grants, he built three small dormitories, a student union, an auditorium and a new library. As the college's reputation improved, applications increased; enrollment rose to 425, even though Franconia's tuition and other fees amount to $4,200 annually. By opening the library, concerts...
...same time, Botstein preserved many of the innovations that gave Franconia its freewheeling reputation. Students still serve on all committees, including those that appoint new faculty members. There are no required courses, no formal academic departments and no grades. After spending much of their last two years on independent study projects, students must demonstrate competence in their fields to a faculty committee in order to receive a degree...
...permanence of institutions and pay too little attention to what they do," he says. He counts on the school's experimental aura to engage students in a day when collegians increasingly regard traditional education as "irrelevant." If Franconia can awaken more and more students to their own capacities, Botstein believes, the problems of funding and accreditation can be solved. However he fares, Botstein is firmly convinced that a president should never become inseparably tied to one institution. He expects to retire before he is 30, "to start from the bottom somewhere else...