‘STAYING AFLOAT’

The size of the school’s faculty jumped 40 percent under Nye’s tenure, with the number of minority professors increasing at an even faster rate. And since 1996, the number of women with tenure or on a tenure track at the Kennedy School nearly doubled.

“It’s also true that the percentages start from a low base, so there’s still a long way to go,” Nye said. “So we’ve made progress, but there’s lots left for David to do.”

Meanwhile, the school has encouraged more of its students to pursue public service careers. In 1997, a whopping 51 percent of graduates took private-sector jobs after leaving the school. Nye said he feared “that the Kennedy School might become Harvard’s second business school.”

In response, Nye moved to bolster the school’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP), which offers financial aid to alums in low-salary public service jobs. He made changes that increased LRAP’s budget five-fold—with stunning results. Last year, just 20 percent of Kennedy School graduates took private-sector positions.

But the expansion of the school’s faculty and the growth of its financial aid outlays soon left the Kennedy School swimming in red ink.

The school reversed a fiscal year 2002 deficit of $5.9 million and ran a modest surplus last year. But balancing the budget came at a steep cost: the school cut 47 staff positions in 2003.

“That was a sad chapter for us,” Ellwood said. “Any time you lose staff, there are certain consequences...but ultimately, we have to keep ourselves afloat.”

In March, Nye said he would have to scale back graduates’ LRAP eligibility in order to preserve the Kennedy School’s financial health. But after students staged an all-night demonstration to protest the changes, Nye announced that he would exempt past and current students from the more stricter eligibility requirements.

Meanwhile, the outgoing dean has raised additional donations earmarked for LRAP from alums, and students have initiated a fundraising drive of their own to sustain the program. Ellwood pledged to continue Nye’s effort.

“LRAP remains something I’m very concerned about, and I will work hard over with alumni and donors to expand the program as much as we can,” Ellwood said.

WAITING IN THE WINGS

Nye juggled his responsibilities as dean with his scholarly writing, which most recently has included the March 2004 book, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.

Ellwood said some of the same strategies that Nye recommends for international leaders also apply to graduate school administrators.

“The basic idea here is that the power to persuade is much more effectively done through the authority of your ideas than the authority of your office,” Ellwood said.