The Bain of Furman's Existence
Furman's recent enrollment push was largely outsourced to professional consultants and was incredibly expensive.
Announcements:
📣 President Elizabeth Davis announced she will step down. On May 18, Davis informed campus that the 2026–27 academic year will be her last. The Board says it will “soon establish a presidential search committee, comprising trustees with representation from faculty, staff, students, and alumni.”
💰 Furman’s “Clearly Furman” capital campaign is set to conclude this month, having raised more than $500 million.
Furman Trivia:
Furman’s 2014 presidential search drew from a wide national pool. Roughly how many candidates did the committee consider before choosing Elizabeth Davis?
A) 20
B) 40
C) 60
D) 100
*Find the answer at the bottom of the newsletter!*
How Much Did Furman's Record Freshman Class Really Cost?
We have followed Furman’s enrollment closely. In fact, last month we celebrated the news that Furman’s incoming freshman class will likely be its largest in over a decade and congratulated President Davis on her success.
Since then, we have learned two things:
President Davis plans to step down at the end of the upcoming academic year.
Furman’s large new freshman class is the result of incredibly expensive outsourcing to professional consultants.
Financial documents reviewed by the Furman Free Speech Alliance indicate that Furman paid the consulting firm Bain & Company nearly $5.9 million in fiscal year 2025 alone. According to a source with knowledge of Furman’s engagement with Bain, much of that money went toward embedding Bain consultants directly in the admissions office to run student recruitment for the 2025–26 cycle.
Worse still, according to the same source, this year’s class was achieved in large part through unusually aggressive tuition discounting. A Furman professor with knowledge of the matter independently confirmed this and added that because of those discounts, the larger class is expected to generate little or no additional net tuition revenue.
This is seriously disappointing from a financial perspective. We celebrated Furman’s increased enrollment because we believed that it would improve the university’s finances and address the concerns of ratings agencies like Fitch, who cited declining freshman enrollment when it revised Furman’s bond outlook from stable to negative last July. The fact that we had to pay an outside company millions to reverse this trend speaks to just how bad the situation is at our alma mater.
Just as troubling as the financial picture is the lack of transparency from Furman’s leadership. After years of declining enrollment President Davis has been touting this year’s increase in the freshman class as a signature accomplishment, but she is not being forthright with alumni about the way Furman brought in these new students.
This is especially concerning as we prepare to begin a search for Furman’s new president. To find a candidate who has the right combination of experience, leadership qualities, and management skills necessary to do the job, the Board, faculty, alumni, and donors who care about Furman’s future need to have a clear picture about how difficult that job really is.
Now is not the time for carefully curated success stories. We need to be more clear-eyed than ever about Furman’s enrollment struggles, its unpopular Pathways Program, its lack of viewpoint diversity, and its culture of self-censorship.
Why? It’s not because we want to diminish Furman or attack the many hardworking faculty and staff who work there. Quite the opposite. We are demanding transparency because we love Furman and a candidate who is sold an idealized version of our university cannot be expected to lead it well.
So, as Furman’s Board moves forward in its search, we urge them to make transparency a priority. Washington & Lee (W&L), who is also looking for a new president, has already launched a dedicated search website, publicly named its search committee and the firm leading the search effort, asked for community input, and begun posting regular updates to the entire university.
Furman can and should do all this and more. Whoever serves as our next president will play a critical role in determining the future of our university. Making sure we have an open process to identify candidates will help ensure that we find the right person to lead Furman — challenges and all — into its third century.
Trivia Answer:
C) Roughly 60 candidates. In the 2013–14 national search, Furman’s presidential search committee narrowed an initial field of more than 60 candidates down to 13 for preliminary interviews before unanimously selecting Elizabeth Davis as the university’s 12th president.
I would love to know more about such decisions in order to determine if this payment is resulting in a sound ROI for an institution I donate to annually. That said, I personally wouldn't describe Furman's actions regarding the consultant firm or around the processes for the upcoming Presidential search as non-transparent. I also don't necessarily see discounted tuition as evidence of fiscal mismanagement.
In regard to the use of consultants, Furman itself acknowledged such plans across all areas of the university as part of developing and implementing its strategic plan, with enhanced student recruitment as one focus (https://www.furman.edu/strategic-plan/wp-content/uploads/sites/232/2025/01/UCOM23-24-Strategic-Plan-011325-Revision.pdf). The university held a number of forums with faculty, staff, and students about the process, including an open forum in September 2024 "to provide further updates on the strategic plan and our work with consultants and to discuss and answer questions about the 2024-25 budget and compensation. (https://www.furman.edu/about/update-on-future-focused-strategic-plan-consultants/)
I also see some important distinctions in the timing and process regarding the presidential search at Washington and Lee in comparison to Furman's still-to-be-announced process. W&L's president, Will Dudley, announced his departure in December 2025 (https://www.wlu.edu/about-w-l/leadership/office-of-the-president/messages-to-the-community/2025-26-academic-year/a-personal-announcement). He gave short notice about his departure and has now left his position, effective at the end of the academic year that just ended. The has left Washington and Lee with a very tight timeframe for selecting a new candidate and they have had to announce an interim as the process unfolds. In contrast, President Davis announced her decision a year in advance, giving Furman the important resource of time. I, for one, am grateful of that and not suspicious. Members of the Furman community, including alumni, should expect the search for a new president to be thoughtful, deliberate, and clearly communicated. I see no evidence, however, that anyone at Furman is trying to hide anything regarding the process.
In regard to the costs of tuition and Furman's decision to reduce tuition rates for the incoming class, this is complex issue that again is not evidence of anything nefarious on its face to my way of thinking. Emory now covers the complete tuition cost for any admitted student whose family makes less than $200,000. Wake Forest does the same, although it limits this program to families from North Carolina. Furman is going to have to offer competetive financial awards to compete with these and other universities in the region. And I would argue that a university with a rather large endowment such as Furman (the largest of any private university in South Carolina) should do so. Furman's financial health seems healthy; it just received an A+ rating in the 2026 edition of the Forbes College Financial Grades (https://www.forbes.com/lists/college-financial-grades), published less than two weeks ago.
I think questions about the wisdom of a $5.9 million outlay to a consulting firm are completely legitimate. But I see no evidence of Furman hiding anything or a "completely dysfunctional organization" described by another commenter.
Wow! The lack of transparency, the need to discount tuition, the need for a consulting firm to run the admissions department all sound like a completely dysfunctional organization. Furman needs help, and quickly. How can I get a copy of the recent financial statements?.