Vanderbilt Places Divinity School Into Receivership

Vanderbilt University has placed its divinity school into receivership, a move that officials told The Nashville Banner is intended to improve its finances and will last for at most two years.

Officials told divinity school employees that receivership is “a temporary administrative arrangement in which the university oversees a school’s operations in order to return it to independent, healthy standing,” according to a copy of an email obtained by the news outlet. “The goal is to position the divinity school for renewed investment and growth.”

In the process of receivership, university administrators assume greater control over academic units, typically those that are struggling with financial, operational or governance issues. Such arrangements are intended to be temporary measures intended to stabilize academic units.

Deputy Provost Tracey George told the Banner that the university will handle the divinity school’s budget, operations and other aspects, but the process will be collaborative. She added that faculty will retain authority over academics.

The Nashville Banner reported that the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education is also currently in receivership. Vanderbilt is currently expanding its national footprint with active or planned campuses in California, Florida and New York. Some sources, speaking anonymously, told the news outlet that they questioned the university’s funding commitment to the divinity school and Peabody, which they suggested officials are leaving “to die on the vine.”

Vanderbilt told the Inside Higher Ed that the placing the Divinity School in receivership was “a mechanism for renewal.”