Bard College is Run Like an Orchestra

Found in today's Times, in an article about threats to the survival of small colleges in the US, this cringeworthy quotation:

But for every college that has pulled off a rescue, there is one in trouble. Moody’s has criticized Bard, 100 miles north of Manhattan, for having little cash and relying on a few rich benefactors. “We operate under a different model,” Leon Botstein, Bard’s president, said in an email. “We’ve never operated under a deficit, and have raised over a billion dollars over the last 40 years.”

This model is unlikely to survive having an extremely charismatic president who can haul in the big bucks. As a matter of governance, the board should be concerned for the survival of Bard post-Botstein.