Adams reflects on his time at UGA and the future

Enrollment … 29,693 … 34,518

Diversity … 13 percent minority … 24 percent minority

SAT (math/verbal) … 1,175 … 1,238

Endowment … $249 million … $744 million

Tuition* … $747 … $3,823

Source: University System of Georgia, University of Georgia.

*NOTE: The university system used a quarter system in 1997 and now uses semesters. The state Board of Regents sets tuition.

What’s next for Michael Adams?

Adams, who turned 65 in March, will remain at UGA. While he will take some time off, he plans to teach undergraduate classes in political communication and graduate classes with the Institute of Higher Education.

He received $1.26 million in total compensation for the 2013 fiscal year, which ends June 30. That total includes a one-time deferred compensation payment of $600,000.

What’s next for UGA?

The new president, Jere Morehead, will take over July 1.

Morehead, the current provost, has been described as a quiet and brilliant academic with an unparalleled understanding of the university’s inner workings. He moved up through the school’s ranks, starting as a business professor in 1986.

He is known for working hard. He enrolled at Georgia State when he was just 16. By the time he was 23 he had a law degree from the University of Georgia Law School.

Michael Adams will step down as president of the University of Georgia June 30, having led the flagship institution for 16 years.

He is the last of a trio of long-serving research university presidents. Wayne Clough left Georgia Tech in 2008 after 14 years and Carl Patton retired from Georgia State University in 2008 after 16 years.

UGA became more respected during Adams’ tenure and is now consistently ranked among the top 25 public colleges in the country.

Adams sat down with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week to discuss his time at UGA and challenges facing colleges and the state. (Editor’s note: This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.)

Q: Why step down now? When you announced your plans last May you said you had reached the decision only a few weeks prior.

A: I think a lot of things came together. My daddy just passed away. I was very close to him and I was emotionally wrung out. I knew I was turning 65 this year. My third grandchild was in the oven. We completed the health sciences campus and got the engineering school started, so a lot of the things that I had come here to do were done. And I was tired. More tired than I had been. I had always told myself that when I got to the point that I was not thinking, “Boy, I really want to get up the next day and go do this,” that it was time.

Q: How much of your decision was because of funding battles and fights here and nationally about the value of college?

A: That’s a big part of what I’m talking about when I talk about being tired. I was tired of the battles. The last three years have been very tough for all of us. I know it’s been tough for the Legislature and the governor. But we have sustained cuts approaching $150 million here, and that’s real money. I was frustrated by what we haven’t been able to do for faculty.

There just comes a time, when you’ve fought enough battles and accumulated enough scars, that it’s time to let someone else fight those battles.

Q: You regret not being able to give faculty raises. What other regrets do you have? What haven’t you achieved that you wished you did?

A: Not much. I don’t want to be self-serving about that. We’ve tripled the endowment. We’ve attracted hundreds of really bright people, top faculty and key students. They are the strongest ever. We’ve moved up in all the rankings, not as high as I would have liked in a couple of cases, but we’ve moved up considerably. I’ve pretty well done what the (Board of) Regents asked me to do when they hired me.

I sometimes laugh and say I’ve survived four governors and five chancellors. My nine lives were probably near the end.

Q: Part of UGA’s rise is attributed to the HOPE scholarship. How important is HOPE to UGA?

A: I think the overall ascendancy here is due to five or six key factors. You can argue whether HOPE is the leading one and, if it isn’t, it’s certainly near the top.

We have a number of faculty now who have national and international reputations and just draw kids. The campus looks like a first-class place. The greater minority participation in this student body has brought into the mainstream a group of people who were not a part of the mainstream in any appreciable number when I got here. We’ve put in place programs that reach into every corner of the state for kids taking college-preparatory curricula. We bring hordes of eighth-graders to campus to let them see what a place like this can be.

Q: You just mentioned attracting minority students to campus. The Supreme Court will soon rule on an affirmative action policy in Texas, and UGA saw its own policy ruled unconstitutional in 2001 by a federal appeals court. While UGA has become more diverse, you have said UGA should look more like Georgia. How can that happen?

A: We are more diverse today. And the (admissions) standards have continued to go up. It is doable. It’s not doable easily.

I think we have to set very high bars for young people in k-12. I don’t think we yet talk enough about high school curriculum in this state.

The problem I see developing is we’re continuing to have a divide. About 40 percent of the schools in this state are very good and are producing young people we get to work with here, who can come compete with kids from China, India, Germany, Brazil, you name it. In that upper 40 percent are more and more minorities who are doing the work, who are paying the price, who are basically getting themselves to an academic level where they can compete at a place like this.

We still have about 40 percent of the schools in this state that are not producing competitive young people. That is what worries me about the state for my grandchildren. We’ve got to figure out better ways to bring up the lower schools.

We need a leadership class in this state that represents the ethnicities in this state. That’s to the state’s benefit. And I think we have an important role to play in that.

I’ve supported affirmative action and I’ve been asked how long it needs to go on. I don’t think affirmative action, as we’ve known it, will last or should last. But we can argue about when is an appropriate time.

I grew up in Jim Crow. I remember separate bathrooms and water fountains. My late father was well ahead of his time. He came at it from a very committed religious perspective about how a lot of people weren’t treated properly. He didn’t get much more philosophical about it than that. But that stuck with me from a pretty young age. I don’t want to be melodramatic about it, but it’s one of the things that people who know me know have driven me. I think if we challenge minorities properly they can, and will, and have risen to the bar.

Are we in the state yet where we need to be? You can argue pro or con, but we’re probably not.

Q: When you look at higher education in Georgia, what are we doing right? What are we doing wrong?

A: I think we’re doing a lot of things right. Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia Regents and Georgia State have made great progress. I think most of the future growth is likely to come in places like West Georgia, Valdosta State, Savannah State, etc. There are a lot of places in this state where you can get a very good undergraduate education other than just Georgia and Tech.

I don’t think we’ve done as well with that hard balance between access and preparation. A lot of that has to do with the historic two-year institutions. They do not, percentage-wise, carry as big a burden in this state as what you see in other states. And, frankly, it is less expensive to educate a student there than it is at a place like here.

Q: In January you said “athletics at UGA is part of the whole, not an entity unto itself.” How do you maintain a healthy balance between academics and athletics? (Note: A move was made to oust Adams after he forced Athletic Director Vince Dooley into retirement in 2004.)

A: A lot of it resides in the athletic director. It also resides in the type of student athletes you admit. It resides in the philosophy of why are these young people here and how do we prepare them for life and how do we serve them? We’ve come a long way with graduation rates, class attendance and seriousness about the prime reason for being here.

I was in New York in the fall with the basketball team. I had breakfast with the players and I was amazed how many of them had books with them, and they were playing UCLA and Indiana. That’s not the image that the average guy in the state has about our teams.

Q: How would you react if your grandchildren say they want to go to Alabama instead of UGA?

A: (Laughs) I would probably say we’ve not done as good a job in raising them as I hoped to do.