Eric Kaler

In his first year on the job, Kaler emphasized his commitment to academic excellence and rigor by investing in new faculty positions. He stressed the importance of the university's groundbreaking research enterprise. He led a campaign to contain costs and operate the university more efficiently and effectively, with the goal of freeing up resources for the university's core teaching, research, and public engagement and service mission.[8]

He acted on a pledge to keep the university accessible to students of all economic backgrounds by increasing financial aid and limiting the university's 2012 tuition increase to the smallest this century.[9]

In his second academic year, Kaler and the university, in partnership with the Minnesota Legislature, froze tuition for Minnesota-resident students. He proposed a set of innovative tax and tuition relief initiatives to aid students, their families, and donors, and also proposed performance measures that the university must meet to gain some of its state support.[10] The State of Minnesota also invested in a new research program known as MnDRIVE, in the amount of about $18 million per year. MnDRIVE in its first funding cycle, was focused on research around clean water, robotics, neuroscience, and food.[11] That request was expected to be heard by the DFL Party controlled Minnesota Legislature and Governor Mark Dayton during its 2013 session.[12] Kaler's outreach to the Minnesota business community has earned him and the university recognition by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the White House.[12]

In 2012, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano named Kaler to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Academic Advisory Council.[13]

Kaler was appointed President of the University of Minnesota after Robert Bruininks during a period of decreased funding from the state legislature to the University of Minnesota.[14] During his first year in office the state legislature reduced appropriations to higher education down to a level that were equivalent to the funding amounts from 1998.[15][16]

In 2012, the Minnesota Daily, the university student newspaper, criticized the university athletic department, under then-Athletic Director Norwood Teague, for deciding to spend $800,000 to reschedule a football game with North Carolina to increase the football team's rankings.[17]

The University of Minnesota was profiled by The Wall Street Journal in an analysis of higher education spending and mismanagement. According to the article, the University of Minnesota salary and employment records from 2001 through the spring of 2012 show that the university system added more than 1,000 administrators over that period. Their ranks grew 37%, more than twice as fast as the teaching corps and nearly twice as fast as the student body, the Journal reported.[18] Growing under previous president Robert Bruininks, the Journal reported that under Kaler the University of Minnesota has the largest share of employees classified as "executive and managerial" among the nation's 72 "very-high-research" public universities in the 2011–12 academic year.[19]

In the wake of The Wall Street Journal story and a commentary in The Washington Post (that was reprinted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune), Kaler wrote a response, detailing many of the accomplishments of the university in reducing administrative spending and holding down tuition. In it, Kaler wrote: "The articles did not report that, despite stunning state disinvestment, the university is more productive than at any time in recent history."[20]