Joe Echevarria’s appointment on Friday morning was unprecedented. The full-time president position was filled internally and had only been vacant for four months.
Echevarria was unanimously endorsed by the Board of Trustees and has strong support from the rest of the UM community, according to the university, but he still has massive shoes to fill.
Former President Julio Frenk left an irreplaceable mark on the university, with an impressive record of academic achievements.
While Echevarria is no Frenk when it comes to academics, he has an impressive background that sets him up to serve UM well. His leadership and familiarity with the university are also undeniable. While his lack of academic experience is concerning, especially since the university has struggled in academic rankings recently, the community should be optimistic about Echevarria’s appointment.
Frenk’s shining moment was leading the university through the pandemic with a steady hand. The university offered both in-person and remote instruction during the 2020-2021 school year, which only 30% of higher education institutions did. His protocols and precautions also resulted in no recorded cases of “in-classroom transmission of the virus” through that entire academic year, according to News@theU.
He raised over $2 billion for his Ever Brighter campaign and earned the university membership into the Association of American Universities (AAU), a prestigious research group composed of only 71 universities.
This raises the reputation and prestige of this university tremendously, gives UM access to more research funds and grants. The AAU website states that AAU members perform the majority of federal funded academic research and development and were awarded more than $31 billion for it in 2021.
While Frenk was succeeding in the background, he had almost no on-campus presence with students. In my three years under Frenk, I never once met or spoke to him and I was unaware of any events he hosted to get to know him.
Both Patricia Whitely, the Senior Vice President for Student Affairs and Guillermo Prado, the interim provost, hosted multiple events interacting with students during each school year, but Frenk never made these efforts.
Echevarria is already drawing a strong contrast to this as he was in the locker room after the football team’s win over Louisville this weekend, something Frenk would never do. Echevarria may not compare to Frenk in terms of academic accomplishments, but he brings a different skillset to the table.
After graduating from the UM in 1978, Echevarria worked his way up the ranks at Deloitte LLP, one of the largest consulting firms in the world. After over 30 years at the company, he took on the role of CEO in 2011, leading the company for three years until his retirement.
As CEO, Echevarria managed one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, overseeing many of Deloitte’s about 200,000 employees at the time. This alone speaks volumes about his leadership and loyalty qualities, but he also knows the “U.”
Echevarria returned to UM as an alumni to sit on the board of trustees in 2012. He then held multiple advisory roles to Frenk before being appointed CEO of UHealth in 2020. Two years later, he would become CEO of the whole university, a role Echevarria was the first to hold.
“Joe Echevarria, our exemplary CEO and an incomparable leader, has been absolutely essential to navigating every crisis and challenge we have overcome during my tenure as president,” Frenk said after stepping down.
This is a ringing endorsement of Echevarria but also shows a reassuring trend. Echevarria worked closely with Frenk, giving him not just familiarity with running the university, but also hands-on experience with the leader who helped bring the university to where it is today.
Echevarria’s business expertise could also be a skill of his that proves invaluable. UM is more of a business than most universities, receiving more than 60% of revenue from UHealth and medical professional practice according to the 2023 president’s report. Echevarria has not only been the CEO of UHealth since 2020, he has expanded UHealth tremendously.
UHealth just recently opened a new medical center in Doral and will open up another medical center in North Miami in 2025. It is also expanding the UHealth tower and UHealth Boca Raton in coming years, among many other growth initiatives. Leaders on the UHealth side of UM have spoken highly of Echevarria throughout the selection process and commended his selection at the recent Board of Trustees meeting.
His expertise doesn’t just help with managing the business aspect of the university, but also making it more efficient. UM is more popular than ever, but while applications are rising and acceptance rates are dropping, the university has many inefficiencies.
The Miami Hurricane has documented multiple different issues the university has faced over the past couple of years including lack of housing, financial aid and communication from the University. A president who has experience running a large private firm could be exactly what UM needs to make it more efficient and fix these problems.
Besides UHealth, Echevarria garnered broad support from most other faculty and leadership. This support included the General Welfare Committee of the Faculty Senate and the student trustee according to UM professor and first vice chair of the faculty senate Scotney Evans, but not everyone is onboard.
His biggest drawback is he has never worked in higher education or academia before being appointed to the board of trustees and some are concerned.
The Miami Herald reported that some professors, speaking anonymously, are worried about how his lack of an academic background will affect his leadership. It is not hard to understand why. The business world is much different than the world of education, a point Benjamin Ginsberg, a political science professor at John Hopkins, argued in a 2016 New York Times op-ed.
“First, most business people believe in a management hierarchy, while universities function best in a state of managerial anarchy.” said Ginsberg, “The purpose of a college or university is to promote new thinking, new ideas and new perspectives. In this way, innovation and hierarchy are incompatible.”
Ginsberg also highlighted the fact that most business leaders have a “pseudo-practical orientation,” meaning they are focused on where an activity can take you, not what it gives you.
For example, when choosing a major, business minded-students are more focused on what jobs the major sets them up for as opposed to the skills it helps them build. They choose majors like accounting and finance, that can lead to jobs that are directly related, as opposed to a philosophy major, who is learning how to think, but has no set career path.
Still, university presidents who come from outside of academia and higher education are not uncommon. In 2018, Inside Higher Ed reported more than 40% of university presidents had never held a tenured or tenure-track-eligible position in academia.
A 2023 Arkansas State University study found that university presidents with business backgrounds are often more business and turnaround-driven than their academic counterparts.
This means they are often hired to help their institutions financially or “try something different.” They also treat the university as a business. The students are the customer and the education is the product.
But the study also found these presidents to be driven by the mission of the university when they have ties to it, as Echevarria does. These presidents feel a “love” for their institution’s mission, study body and faculty. They never had a desire to become president, but feel the need to give back.
It isn’t hard to see why some may be hesitant about this appointment, but Echevarria is more than qualified. As the “U” turns into its second century and is growing more and more, a business-minded president could be exactly what the University needs.