USC President Carol Folt, who calmed the scandal-rocked college, boosted athletics and expanded pupil entry — but additionally drew heavy criticism for her dealing with of pro-Palestinian protests this spring — has acquired an extension to her five-year contract, the college confirmed Tuesday.
USC wouldn’t disclose the phrases of the contract extension, together with its size or any amendments made. It was unclear whether or not the extension was short-term whereas the Board of Trustees conducts a radical overview on whether or not to supply Folt a longer-term contract.
“President Folt’s contract stays in full drive,” a college assertion mentioned Tuesday. “Like all college officers, the president is topic to annual overview and reappointment, which occurred this final spring. The Board stays happy with the college’s robust path underneath President Folt’s management.”
Folt, 74, took the helm on July 1, 2019, with a contract that compensated her on the identical degree as former president Max Nikias, based on Rick Caruso, USC board chairman on the time. He mentioned then that he anticipated Folt to serve for at the very least a decade.
Folt was employed with an overriding mandate to revive belief within the college, which had been rocked by one scandal after one other. She changed key directors, brokered a $1-billion settlement with alumnae victimized by a sexually abusive gynecologist and licensed the elimination of the title of an antisemitic, eugenics-supporting former USC president from an iconic campus constructing.
The primary lady to guide USC since its 1880 founding, Folt additionally labored to open entry to extra low-income, first-generation and underrepresented college students of coloration. In considered one of her most extremely touted initiatives, Folt directed USC to remove tuition for households incomes $80,000 or much less yearly and not think about residence fairness in monetary help calculations. The estimated annual price of attendance for 2024-25 is $95,225 for college kids residing away from their households.
She drew nationwide consideration for distinguished strikes to reshape USC’s athletics program. That included hiring a nationally famend head soccer coach, Lincoln Riley, on a $10-million annual contract — one of many highest salaries within the sport — together with heavy funding in new and improved athletic amenities and the landscape-altering transfer to the Large Ten that in the end resulted within the demise of the Pac-12 Convention.
However these actions had been overshadowed this spring by monumental controversy over her dealing with of pro-Palestinian protests.
Particularly, her choice to rescind pro-Palestinian valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s talking slot in USC’s major graduation ceremony drew widespread outrage. Folt justified the choice by citing unspecified security threats.
The turmoil escalated when Folt canceled the “major stage” graduation ceremony, depriving college students and their households of a treasured ritual. Folt and her crew referred to as in police to dismantle a tent encampment that college students arrange in help of Palestinians, resulting in 93 arrests.
She made no public remarks for 2 weeks, drawing criticism that she was lacking in motion throughout essentially the most explosive challenge of her tenure.
Such actions price Folt key school help. In Might, the USC Tutorial Senate voted to censure her and Provost Andrew Guzman over their dealing with of occasions round graduation. Among the many senate’s 44 members, who symbolize about 4,500 school, 21 supported the censure movement, seven opposed and 6 abstained.
William Tierney, a college professor emeritus at USC’s Rossier Faculty of Schooling and an skilled on college administration and governance, mentioned Folt’s dealing with of the protests was a “whole failure” and mentioned the college wanted a brand new chief in a position to navigate such points with out her “head within the sand” method.
Though he gave Folt credit score for bringing presidential management at a “vexxed time” of serial scandals, he grew to become soured by her pivot to sports activities boosterism. He’s additionally crucial about what he sees as a scarcity of the fundraising prowess of earlier presidents, who enabled the monetary largesse for formidable educational and analysis enterprises — together with poaching two star mind researchers from UCLA.
USC ought to reprioritize the pursuit of prime donors — as Johns Hopkins College did in touchdown $1 billion from Bloomberg Philanthropies for tuition-free medical schooling for many college students — quite than prime soccer coaches, Tierney mentioned.
“We’re not a soccer college,” he mentioned. “We’ve school aspiring to vary the world. I don’t see the president offering the mental or monetary management in that method.
“Once I look to what USC aspires to do within the subsequent 5 years,” he mentioned, “I don’t suppose it’s with Carol Folt.”
Anna Krylov, a chemistry professor, mentioned she was “impartial” on whether or not Folt needs to be granted a long-term contract renewal. She mentioned she appreciated Folt’s takedown of the pro-Palestinian encampment, which she mentioned fed rabid antisemitism. However Folt and campus management had not performed sufficient to fight antisemitism basically, which had grow to be “severe and pervasive” in recent times, she mentioned.
Krylov additionally mentioned Folt centered an excessive amount of power on the “fallacious points,” together with what she referred to as performative efforts to advertise range, fairness and inclusion. Like Tierney, Krylov mentioned USC management wanted to focus extra on its core mission of schooling and analysis.
Folt’s supporters, nonetheless, famous that the president had created a brand new faculty of superior computing and boosted psychological well being companies. She additionally presided over a file variety of candidates — 82,000 for fall 2024 — driving down the admission fee to 9.3%, a file low. Admitted college students, one-fifth of them the primary of their households to attend faculty, had a median 3.89 GPA.
Inside her first six months as president in 2019, Folt got down to reshape USC’s athletic division. She changed Lynn Swann, a Trojan soccer hero who resigned as athletic director that September, with Mike Bohn, the primary outsider to helm USC athletics in 1 / 4 century.
However Bohn resigned abruptly final Might after The Instances despatched inquiries to him and USC concerning his conduct as athletic director and administration of the division. In his place, Folt employed Jennifer Cohen, the college’s first-ever feminine athletic director.
Earlier this yr, USC started development on a state-of-the-art soccer efficiency middle that’s simply considered one of a number of capital amenities tasks at present within the works.
