LSU Fires John Lombardi as President

John V. Lombardi has a reputation as a higher education administrator for raising tough issues, attracting strong faculty and student support, and then clashing with his superiors. That was the pattern at the University of Florida and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. That pattern has now repeated itself at Louisiana State University, where he was fired as system president on Friday. Board members said that Lombardi had failed to build key relationships, The Baton Rouge Advocate reported. He had pushed to move beyond budget-cutting (which he said was equivalent to rearranging deck chairs) and to instead look at new sources of revenue (such as tuition increases and reallocating funds from a popular statewide merit scholarship program). Those views and others placed him in disagreement with Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican. (Editor's Note: Lombardi is also a blogger for Inside Higher Ed.)