Jim Rogers leaves his mark on universities

LAS VEGAS - Jim Rogers started speaking his mind early, writing editorials in 1956 for the campus newspaper at Las Vegas High School.

One of his commentaries about grading system inequities prompted the principal to call his father to complain.

"My father said, 'What have you done this time? They're going to throw you out of school,'" Rogers recalled. "I was 17 years old and a crusader. I came from a family of Methodist ministers who were always on one crusade or another."

Now 70, having built a business empire as a hardball lawyer and no-nonsense owner of a group of television stations, Rogers has stepped down after five years as chancellor of Nevada's public colleges and universities.

When Rogers convinced regents in 2004 that he should be given the reins to the Nevada System of Higher Education, he had no prior leadership in education, save for a brief stint as a teaching fellow in legal writing at the University of Illinois. He had made a mark in academia with a record-sized donation to the renamed James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona.

Since then, he has built a reputation as a fierce advocate for academic excellence, and attracted as many critics as supporters for a management style still distinguished by outspokenness.

Throughout his career, Rogers has used everything in his arsenal - his television stations, his personal wealth, his biting wit and his intelligence - to lecture and opine, always confident that he knew how to run things better than the other person.

Still at work

As he left the chancellor's office July 1, Rogers still had a full plate.

Johns Hopkins University has invited him to teach a class at its world-renowned business school, and he still owns Sunbelt Communica-tions, which operates 16 television affiliates in five states, including the Las Vegas NBC affiliate, KVBC Channel 3.

Rogers said he also planned to continue to campaign for a stalled pet project: a health sciences system linking academic and research interests of the individual colleges as well as the Desert Research Institute.

Former Nevada governor and U.S. senator Richard Bryan, a former classmate at Las Vegas High, said Rogers' brutal candor and demanding standards are part of the reason he's been successful as a lawyer, businessman, banker and chancellor.

"Jim Rogers is not a plain-vanilla personality," Bryan said. "You love him, or you hate him. But everyone has an opinion."

Rogers scored some impressive achievements as chancellor, including commanding the UNLV Foundation in 2003 to raise an ambitious $500 million by 2008.

The foundation missed that deadline - but is expected to meet the goal this year, despite the recession.

Clashes

Rogers' relentless advocacy for higher education also protected Nevada colleges from bone-deep cuts proposed by Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons.

But his clashes with UNLV President Carol Harter and UNR President John Lilley caused both to quit.

Rogers is now second-guessing his replacement for Harter, David Ashley, and recommends that he be fired before his contract ends in June 2010.

Dan Klaich, who took over as chancellor at Rogers' recommendation, said there's no question his former boss' tactics put higher education "at the table for every major discussion."

"What I learned and what was reinforced working with Jim is that there's no substitution for directness and clear, concise honesty," Klaich said.

Rogers volunteered his services as interim chancellor in May 2004, after then-Chancellor Jane Nichols stepped down for health reasons. He wasted no time asserting his authority and his priorities. He banned campus presidents from hiring lobbyists, in favor of one systemwide lobbyist to represent their collective interests.

"Eight institutions competing for the same pile of money wasn't helpful," said James Dean Leavitt, the newly appointed chairman of the Board of Regents. "One of the chancellor's top priorities is to make sure all of the presidents are working together. In that regard, Jim Rogers has been very effective."

The consensus in inner circles of academia is that higher education improved under Rogers' watch.

"We are more focused, we are more strategic, we are more innovative," Leavitt said. "I think higher education has a higher profile because of who Jim Rogers is, and the message he preached."

Rogers said that although it may be unrealistic to expect to challenge Stanford, Berkeley or Cal Tech, Nevada universities should be on par with schools in New Mexico, Utah and Arizona.

"You can get a pretty good education at UNR and UNLV," Rogers said. "That doesn't mean the university is doing what it ought to be doing. It should be a place where research is taking place, where the most creative and intelligent people go to talk, to think, to share ideas."

It's not the universities' fault, Rogers says, that they come up short. "It's the community's fault mostly, but also the governor's fault and the Legislature's fault. There's no mandate from the people saying, 'You are going to fund higher ed and K-12 education in the right way."'

In battles with a governor calling for a 36 percent cut in higher education funding, Rogers may have crossed the line from advocate to combatant with an opinion written for the Nevada Appeal of Carson City. It excoriated Gibbons as having "absolutely no regard for the welfare of any other human being," and earned Rogers a written reprimand from the chairman and vice-chairman of the Board of Regents.

The governor's office declined to comment for this story.

Rogers became well known for public pronouncements like one in August 2004, just three months after being named interim chancellor, about revoking a $25 million pledge to UNLV because he was frustrated by the higher education system. He changed his mind two months later, and the pledge was restored.

In January 2007, Rogers announced his resignation as chancellor. He changed his mind 36 hours later.

In August 2007, upset about criticism of his leadership by some regents, Rogers said his family decided not to make a $3 million gift to UNR.

"Jim Rogers wants to make progress, and he wants to make it now," said Richard Morgan, who retired in 2007 as the first dean of the UNLV Boyd School of Law. "He's big on efficiency, short on patience, aggressive, hard-charging and ambitious."

Others said the strength of Rogers' convictions comes not from arrogance, but from a deeply rooted belief that he knows the best route through the brush, and that it's in everyone else's best interest to follow.

"Jim does not try to be subtle, so it's easier to get a read on him than on someone who tries to hide the ball," said Morgan.