University presidential searches are growing more secretive despite disclosure laws

In this article originally posted in the Post and Courier, Dr. Oran Smith  comments on legislation concerning the transparency of University president headhunting.

By Anna B. Mitchell amitchell@postandcourier.com

CLEMSON — After decades of giving the public a chance to vet candidates for some of the state’s top positions in academia, South Carolina’s leading universities have moved almost entirely to confidential searches — despite a state law intended to open up records on finalists.

Under the S.C. Freedom of Information Act, materials related to “not fewer than three” finalists for a position must be disclosed — but this provision of the law, in place since 1998, does not say when public schools and government agencies must release the information.

The result: Many public universities now withhold information about finalists until after trustees have chosen their school’s next president — positions with seven-figure salaries and budgets to manage that can exceed $1 billion.

Nothing in state law prevents K-12 school districts or other government agencies from following suit.

When searches were public

The last time Clemson disclosed a shortlist of candidates being considered for president was 1999.

That was the year architect Jim Barker was named Clemson’s 14th president — in a selection process that included naming three finalists on a Friday, hosting meetings with stakeholders over the weekend and naming Barker the following Monday.

By 2013, the university had adopted a confidential search model to hire former president Jim Clements, a strategy that has since been followed by the University of South Carolina, Coastal Carolina and S.C. State.

While not technically illegal, this tactic “flies in the face” of the Freedom of Information Act’s spirit, said Taylor Smith, an attorney for the South Carolina Press Association.

South Carolina’s law on candidate disclosures

Section 30-4-40: Matters exempt from disclosure

(a) A public body may but is not required to exempt from disclosure the following information:

(13) All materials, regardless of form, gathered by a public body during a search to fill an employment position, except that materials relating to not fewer than the final three applicants under consideration for a position must be made available for public inspection and copying.

“Why are some people creating a sense they might be trying to hide the information?” Smith said. “It makes sense to instead get out in front of that concern so you can maintain the public trust in your institution.”

Not all public universities have interpreted the law this way. This spring, The Citadel identified four finalists roughly a month before trustees selected the military school’s next president. Winthrop and The College of Charleston also held open searches in recent years.

Coastal Carolina trustee Oran Smith said he’d welcome legislation to clear up what colleges must reveal to the public during high-stakes searches. He has taken part in three presidential searches — the last two of which were confidential — and likens the recurring concerns over legal compliance to “Groundhog Day.”

“The board’s going back to their legal counsel, maybe even some outside counsel: ‘Tell us exactly what we can do legally,’” Smith said.

The Post and Courier asked the General Assembly’s leading education policymakers — state Sen. Greg Hembree, R-Little River, and state Rep. Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort, — for comment, but did not hear back by deadline.

A secret search, a day’s notice and internal candidates

Clemson repeated its confidential search strategy in 2026, culminating last week with the appointment of Michigan State’s Kevin Guskiewicz to replace Clements, who announced in December that he would be leaving.

Clemson’s search committee held five meetings over five months — all behind closed doors and all but the first off campus. The penultimate two-day meeting at the end of April took place in downtown Charlotte, N.C., 140 miles from the university.

Clemson gave the public 24 hours notice on May 26 that it intended to name its 16th president. When the newspaper asked for details about candidates, the university did not immediately respond.

On May 27, trustees introduced Guskiewicz during an online-only meeting, voted him in unanimously, gave him a few minutes to talk about his vision and adjourned with no further information about who else might have been considered for the job.

The other two finalists identified by Clemson two days later, on May 29, were internal candidates: deans of two Clemson colleges.The newspaper asked Clemson when it had narrowed its pool down to Guskiewicz and the deans, but the university has not yet responded.

In a Zoom meeting with reporters an hour after his appointment, Guskiewicz said he was committed to transparency.

“It’s about storytelling, and I think the media plays an important role there,” he said. “So I say this to all of you, I will spend time with you.”

Under state law, Clemson is not obligated to disclose who the other 74 candidates might have been.

A Clemson spokesman declined to comment on the university’s search strategy but pointed to stakeholder meetings held early in the search process that gathered input for the search committee’s candidate prospectus published in early March.

A non-voting faculty representative sat in on search committee meetings. The faculty senate’s president, Tyler Harvey, said a small group of professors had a candid discussion with trustees about what they wanted in a president.

“All faculty would have liked the opportunity to hear from candidates, to have them come to campus,” Harvey said. “I think most of them understand, though, that in the modern age and how competitive it is and the caliber of people that we were likely to bring in, that most of them don’t want it to be out in public.”

Clemson University assistant professor Mike Gregory said faculty involvement has been perfunctory.

“There’s been, as far as I can tell, zero actual faculty input,” Gregory said. “I think procedurally they have the president of the faculty senate involved … but that role is purely advisory.”

National shift toward secrecy

Disclosure laws around presidential searches vary widely from state to state, a Post and Courier review found, and the ambiguity within South Carolina’s open records law has allowed the state’s institutions of higher education to join a national trend towards secrecy.

Without the promise of confidentiality, top candidates nationwide typically decline being considered, said Roderick McDavis, CEO of AGB Search and former president of Ohio University.

“The risk is, what happens if you don’t get the position?” McDavis said. “Then you have to go back home, you have to explain to the board why you are on the market, what you’re unhappy about.”

Beyond South Carolina, public schools across the nation — Purdue, North Carolina State, Ohio State, Texas A&M, West Virginia and Florida — have conducted confidential searches over the past five years.

“There has been a growing trend among public universities to only reveal the name of the person who is going to be offered and accepts the position,” McDavis said.

Coastal Carolina started confidential searches in 2020

Coastal Carolina University, shown here in spring 2021, opted for a confidential search process for its president starting in 2020, when trustees began referring to candidates by the letters “A,” “B” and “C” during discussions. Trustees have chosen two presidents this way, most recently James Winebrake in 2025.

Factors contributing to this trend are increasing financial and political pressures facing higher ed as well as Baby Boom retirements that have sharply reduced the number of qualified candidates, recruiters told the newspaper. A 2023 study by the American Council on Education found the average tenure of college presidents is just under six years, and declining. Most presidents surveyed said they planned to leave higher ed in five years.

Dave Cuillier, director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project in Florida, pointed to another factor contributing to confidential searches: declining transparency in government overall.

“Heck, you know, 10 years ago, if you wanted public records out of the federal government, you got it about half the time. Now it’s down to about 10 percent of the time,” Cuillier said.

Local and state governments are following the federal example, he said.

“And you know what happens when it gets to zero percent and we can’t find out what our government’s doing with our money, whether or not they’re doing a good job?”

The case for public vetting

Open searches create a sense of stakeholder inclusion and can expose flaws in candidates, transparency advocates say.

Consulting faculty in presidential searches also is a cornerstone of shared governance within the academic community, said Carol Harrison, who heads up the South Carolina chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

“Faculty see things in candidates that the board may miss,” Harrison said.

McDavis said he knows of a couple presidents who faced scrutiny at home after their candidacy at another was made public, but he declined to disclose details.

An example of this at the K-12 level occurred in 2023 when two finalists for a superintendent position in Charleston County pulled out of the search when their names were made public before they’d had a chance to speak with their home boards about it.

Harrison and Cuillier rejected the claim that public disclosure of searches can jeopardize a sitting president’s job.

“I think it is safe for any board of trustees to assume that the president in place is always looking for the next move, and a board of trustees who is not paying attention to that is not doing their job,” Harrison said.

Closed searches also erode government efficiency and accountability, Cuillier said. Studies show that open governments function better, he said.

“People say, ‘Well, CEOs, they get hired in secrecy.’ Well, yeah, for private corporations, fine … but this is one of the largest public institutions in the state, and it’s our money, and it’s our kids’ education,” Cuillier said.

‘Best practice’ — some transparency

As South Carolina’s universities strive to recruit the nation’s top talent, closed searches likely will continue, Coastal Carolina’s Smith said.

“You don’t want to handcuff the selection process, but at the same time you don’t want to not let the public know about how the process is moving, and so I think it puts the colleges and universities in a bad position,” he said.

The best practice for universities, in terms of getting stakeholder input while also respecting candidate privacy, is to reveal a shortlist of two or three and let stakeholders publicly vet those — in other words, a version of how South Carolina agencies had practiced hiring for decades, McDavis said.

“We’re not talking about best practices now,” McDavis said. “We’re just talking about the reality of what happens in a given situation for an individual who wants his or her name to remain anonymous.”

Post and Courier intern Mary Ho contributed reporting to this story.