Troubled RPI alumni stop donating

Troy

Jan Pirrong was a faithful donor to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the esteemed engineering school in Troy where he completed his undergraduate degree in 1969 and his graduate studies in 1970. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he led the school's alumni association.

He donated so much that he earned the title of "Patroon," a distinction given to donors who give more than $100,000 in their lifetime. But it's been roughly a decade since he made his last donation.

Bill Criss, a 1968 alum who also earned the rank of Patroon, gave his last dollar in 2015. Ted Mirczak's last donation was in 2001. John Krob, a 1978 alum, gave his last dollar directly to the school in 2011, then shifted his annual giving to his old fraternity house corporation, which is independent of the school.

All did so to make a statement: They will no longer donate to their alma mater, they say, until the board of trustees commits to turning RPI's increasingly autocratic leadership, falling rankings and declining finances around.

"I have repeatedly responded to solicitations that I would not give again until a major change in leadership occurred," said Mirczak, a 1966 alum who went on to become director of campus planning and facilities design at the institute in the 1990s, and for a year served as acting vice president of administration.

It's a stance a number of alumni have taken privately over the past decade in an effort to express their discontent quietly in the hopes that things would change for the better. But in the wake of a large spring 2016 protest to save the student union and a lack of action from the board, a growing number of alumni have taken their concerns public, culminating with the online publication last Saturday of two years' worth of exhaustive research into RPI's finances, academics and governance since Shirley Jackson's tenure as president began in 2000.

The findings were posted on the website RenewRensselaer.org, named for the group of alumni that launched the effort. It tells the story of the group's formation, its members yearning to channel their discontent and years of experience in research and financial analysis toward a productive end. Ultimately, it is a platform for them to tell what they consider to be the "untold story" behind RPI's present financial and academic standing.

Their findings paint a picture of an institution that over the past 17 years has experienced falling rankings, rising debt and liabilities, research revenue well short of stated goals, declining alumni participation and donations and declining graduate enrollment. Though overall enrollment has grown — last fall, RPI recorded its largest incoming class ever, 1,691 students — other data suggests an institute in decline, the alumni concluded.

While initially their findings were kept confidential and shared only with the fellow members and the board of trustees, the group said it decided to share its findings with the public after the board made it clear on multiple occasions that it did not support Renew Rensselaer's calls to action.

"We came to the decision slowly and carefully," said Criss. "We tried for a year and a half to work behind the scenes within the family, and just didn't get any results."

Added Krob: "Ultimately, we knew we won't get accountability without transparency."

One thing the alumni were struck by as they dug through their alma mater's financial filings was what they characterized as "disingenuous" reporting of gifts and donations that had been made to the school over the past 17 years.

RPI made headlines in 2001, for instance, when an anonymous donor gave the school $360 million to use however it wished. It was the largest single gift ever given to a university in the U.S. at the time, a record that has since been surpassed.

But what school leaders didn't tell anyone at the time, Mirczak said, is that the gift would be awarded in installments over a span of more than 20 years.

Other findings around gifts and bequests were also surprising, they said. Gifts of software technology, for example, weren't reported as "in-kind" gifts as the alumni believe they should have been, but rather in dollar terms — suggesting to readers of school communications that the school had more liquidity than it did.

"The reporting about capital campaigns isn't strictly monitored," said Krob, a credit analyst who's worked in banking for his entire career. "It's kind of an art, and everyone wants to put their best foot forward."

Perhaps most indicative of growing alumni concern were the data compiled on alumni participation and donations.

Alumni donor participation fell 48.6 percent from 16.6 percent in 2001 to 8.6 percent in 2012, according to the Council for Aid to Education. Declines were felt elsewhere, too — a likely result of the economic downturn that began in 2008. But they were smaller: An average for five comparable schools showed a decline of 31.4 percent over the same period.

The most recent data from U.S. News & World Report shows RPI's alumni participation rate falling by half from 24 percent in 2001 to 12 percent in 2016, while its rank for alumni giving fell from 48th to 88th over the same time period.

Over the past decade, gifts and bequests to RPI have remained flat at an average of $40.5 million a year. Adjusted for inflation, however, gifts and bequests have declined, the group noted. Of particular concern, alumni say, is the downward trend in "unrestricted" giving since 2015.

Unrestricted gifts are highly desirable since they can be put toward anything the board chooses, and long-term declines in such gifts affect liquid reserves and can hurt a school's credit ratings.

Alumni say they would be happy to start giving again, but that something has to change.

"I would not deny that initially in her tenure President Jackson did do some very good things at the institute," said Criss. "But as time has gone on, her administration's relationships with faculty, with students and with rank-and-file alumni have just gotten worse and worse."

The core group of alumni that conducted the research met with the board of trustees on two occasions to discuss their findings, and went armed with a 10-point platform for change that included allowing alumni to have some say in the selection of trustees and encouraging regularly scheduled, open and unfiltered dialogue between stakeholders on campus.

Their pitch? Implement some of these ideas and we'll help you with the capital campaign.

The trustees listened, "but at the end they told us that while they appreciated our offer they were going to stick to their plan of action, and thank you for the suggestions," Criss recalled.

Board of Trustees Chairman Arthur Golden did not respond to a request for comment for this story. The school, however, released a five-page statement that touted the school's accomplishments under the Rensselaer Plan, a blueprint for the school's development rolled out early in Jackson's tenure.

"With a relatively modest resource base, we invested upfront in a 'once-in-a-generation' institutional transformation because we were, and continue to be, confident that the Rensselaer Plan and its execution represents the best investment in Rensselaer and its future," the statement reads in part. "Our belief that we were making the right investments in Rensselaer has never wavered and we persevered through difficult and tumultuous economic times."

Among its stated accomplishments, the school notes that it has grown research expenditures by 176 percent, from $37 million in 1999 to more than $102 million in 2016.

RPI also pointed to the recently initiated effort to raise more than $1 billion. "We have added $100 million in designated gifts to the endowment over the last five years, thanks to the generosity of our donors, most of whom are alumni/ae," the school said. "The successful conclusion of this campaign will enhance Rensselaer's standing as a world-class technological research Institute with global reach and global impact by 2024."

The school also took issue with a number of Renew Rensselaer's findings — claiming, for example, that the group's analysis of research revenues and expenditures mixed various sets of data and that some metrics, such as calculating research revenue as a percentage of total revenue, were irrelevant among private universities.

The school also defended itself from the group's criticism of its response to an Oct. 13, 2017,rally by students outside a kickoff event for its $1 billion fundraising initiative. The protest was intended to resist the latest effort by the school's leadership to gain greater influence over the operation of the student union — a move seen by many as emblematic of what critics describe as Jackson's excessively autocratic management style.

Several students who took part in the rally subsequently received letters warning of potential disciplinary action, communications that drew a scolding from a group that promotes campus free-speech rights.

"We support freedom of speech and the students' right to demonstrate," the school said in its statement.

bbump@timesunion.com • 518-454-5387 • @bethanybump