University of Minnesota paid $329,000 for presidential search before landing on Rebecca Cunningham

The search for a new president that culminated in the hiring of Rebecca Cunningham cost the University of Minnesota roughly $329,000, according to university records.

That includes $245,000 paid to executive search firm WittKieffer, $46,000 in travel costs and $38,000 in meeting and interview expenses, including food and beverage and room rental, according to information provided to the Star Tribune through a public records request.

Cunningham, who was previously vice president for research and innovation at the University of Michigan, took office July 1. Under contract, she will receive nearly $1.1 million per year to start, including $975,000 in base pay and $120,000 in retirement contributions.

The search for a new president launched in the fall of 2023, after the departure of former President Joan Gabel. After less than four years, Gabel left to become chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh. Jeff Ettinger, former CEO of Hormel, has served as interim.

The U spent $260,000 on its presidential search when it hired Gabel. Under Minnesota law, finalists for the president job must be made public. In that process, it faced criticism for having just one: Gabel.

This go-around, the U named three finalists. Each traveled to the school’s Crookston, Duluth, Morris, Rochester and Twin Cities campuses.

The use of executive search firms has become nearly ubiquitous in higher education presidential searches, as the membership of boards governing schools increasingly comes from corporate environments, said Judith Wilde, research professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, who has studied university presidential searches.

But that wasn’t always the case. In the mid-1970s, Wilde and professor emeritus James Finkelstein found that around 2% of presidential searches involved the use of a search firm — all of them private schools. By 2015-16, at least 92% of schools used them.

A price tag over $300,000 isn’t unheard of, Finkelstein said.

“I’d say it’s at the sort of the mid-high end,” he said.

Wilde said WittKieffer’s $226,000 firm fee is higher than some contracts they’ve seen recently that are less than $100,000.

University spokesperson Jake Ricker said some of the increased cost of this presidential search is the expense of having a public process with more finalists.

“We heard there was a desire for multiple public candidates, thorough vetting, public engagement — all of that occurred, some of that does come with the cost,” he said.

Ultimately, the search settled on Cunningham, whose expertise Board of Regents Chair Janie Mayeron said is “beyond what I think we could have hoped for.”

Mayeron said conducting such a high-quality search couldn’t have been accomplished internally. She said the board looked at proposals from several search firms before settling on WittKieffer, partly because the firm charged a flat fee instead of a percentage of the president’s salary.

Star Tribune staff writer Liz Navratil contributed to this report.