Baylor on the Rise?

When Baylor officials started engaging in enrollment management and financial aid leveraging, they signaled that they wanted to improve the university’s reputation and standing. But just how high were their ambitions? The answer arrived in 2002, and it was “the sky’s the limit.”

That year, Baylor’s president, Robert B. Sloan, introduced a ten-year plan, named “Baylor 2012,” that aimed to “put Baylor in the upper echelon of American universities, while reaffirming and strengthening our Christian mission.”¹ According to The New York Times, Baylor’s goal was “to remake itself into a national Christian university on the model of Notre Dame.”²

To carry out its plan, Baylor hiked up its tuition—by 44 percent the first year and by 30 percent or more annually in the following years—to catch up with what top-tier colleges were charging.³ The university also issued nearly $250 million in bonds and went on a building spree to upgrade facilities and add top-shelf amenities that the affluent students and families they hoped to attract have come to expect, including more-upscale dorms.⁴ The scale of construction and renovation sent the message that Baylor was a campus on the rise. “The 158-year-old university looks like it just came out of the catalog,” Texas Monthly reported in 2003. “Baylor, the pride of Waco, is changing.”⁵

Baylor officials not only wanted to change the look of the campus but to enhance the academic profile of its students.

Baylor officials not only wanted to change the look of the campus but to enhance the academic profile of its students. At the heart of “Baylor 2012” was the aspiration to “attract and support a top-tier student body.” The university “will recruit a student body of high academic merit, Christian character, commitment to service and potential for leadership,” the plan stated. “We will seek students from a range of backgrounds to enrich our community and, through scholarships and other forms of support, will further enhance Baylor’s student profile,” it said.⁶

To attract these high-achieving students, the university established an honors college where the best and brightest could thrive. And during Sloan’s presidency, the university nearly doubled the amount it spent on non-need-based aid to attract these students, from about $16 million (the twenty-second highest among private selective colleges) in 2001 to nearly $30 million (the ninth highest) in 2005.⁷ And by jacking up its sticker price, Baylor officials were able to provide steeper tuition discounts to the students they coveted the most. The average award the university provided non-needy freshmen during that time period rose from about $6,000 to $11,000, a 70 percent increase.⁸

Despite all the hype and activity, “Baylor 2012” did not go off without a hitch. In fact, the problems started almost immediately. The university fell hundreds of freshmen short of its enrollment targets in the fall of 2002, causing it to bring in far less revenue than expected. This shortfall was particularly untimely because the university had to start making payments on the bonds it had issued for its building spree. As a result, Baylor cut its operating costs and froze faculty and staff hiring. These freezes continued into the 2003–04 academic year, after the university once again missed its enrollment targets, by a smaller margin this time.⁹

But even these problems paled in comparison to a much bigger, and more existential, crisis going on at the university. The Baylor community was deeply divided over President Sloan’s heavy-handed leadership style and decision-making. The majority of faculty members opposed Sloan, accusing him of being a “control freak” who created “an atmosphere of fear and intimidation” on campus.¹⁰ In September 2003, the faculty senate overwhelming approved a vote of no-confidence in the president, saying, “Dr. Sloan’s presidency has produced a chilling work environment, a climate characterized by distrust, anxiety, intimidation, favoritism, as well as about the sanctity of academic freedom and professional standards.”¹¹

Soon after the vote, two opposing groups of alumni formed to wage publicity campaigns for and against Sloan. The Committee to Restore Integrity to Baylor (CRIB) opposed Sloan and expressed alarm at the direction the university was heading. The group’s president, who had worked for an earlier and more-moderate administration at Baylor, said that CRIB wanted to “call attention to the kind of violation that we believed was going on concerning Baylor’s historic mission of providing a reasonably priced education, primarily for the people of Texas, in the traditional, historic Baptist framework with a world mission in mind to prepare students to compete and live in the contemporary world.”¹² On the opposing side were the members of Friends of Baylor, who argued that Sloan’s muscular leadership was essential to forcing the kinds of changes Baylor needed to propel the university to national prominence.

Baylor’s board of trustees ultimately took a middle ground approach, forcing Sloan to step down but urging his successor—John Lilley, an alumnus who previously served as president of the University of Nevada at Reno—to continue pursuing the “Baylor 2012” plan.¹³

During his tenure, Lilley helped grow Baylor’s endowment to over $1 billion.¹⁴ Campus construction continued apace. And the university continued using its financial aid to pursue high-achieving students. From 2006 through 2008, the university increased its spending on non-need-based aid from about $35 million (eleventh highest among selective private colleges that year) to $43 million (the eighth highest) annually, a 25 percent increase.¹⁵

Unfortunately, for Lilley, the scars left over from the battles over Sloan’s presidency were not easily healed. Members of the Friends of Baylor managed to get on the Board of Regents, and they were not in the mood for reconciliation after Sloan’s ouster.¹⁶ The board fired Lilley, saying he had failed his main task. “The reality is the board lost the confidence in John’s ability to unite the various Baylor constituencies,” the board chairman said during a news conference. Stronger, but less divisive, leadership was needed.¹⁷