The University of North Carolina will soon run an advertisement in the Chronicle of Higher Education as part of its attempt to find a new president to succeed the retiring Erskine Bowles.
The ad, measuring one-eighth of a page, will run twice in the Chronicle, considered the bible for higher education insiders. Cost: $5,000.
That's one way to approach your search.
Another way, recounted Monday by search consultant William Funk, is what the University of Southern California did recently as part of its search for replacement for longtime President Steven Sample.
Funk, who is working with the UNC system on its search, worked with USC but had nothing to do with the $500,000 it spent on splashy advertisements in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and other mega-publications with national and international readerships.
Yes, $500,000. But USC, a private institution, saw the advertisement as a way to brag on its accomplishments, Funk recalled.
"They viewed it as an opportunity to tell people about their successes," he told members of a UNC search committee. "They felt it was money well spent. But a lot of places don't have those resources."
All those ads and all that money certainly allowed USC to broadcast its vacancy broadly. But to snare the university's eventual choice, an ad in the campus newspaper would have sufficed.
He was on campus all along.
Brown, formerly the chief scientist at Xerox Corporation and director of its Palo Alto Research Center, will speak May 9 at the RBC Center in Raleigh. The ceremony starts at 9 a.m.
