New Energy for N.Y.U.

It is one of the toughest jobs in U.S. higher education--and a tough job to fill. In the five months since James M. Hester announced that he planned to retire as president of New York University, a trustees' search committee--with the help of faculty and students--considered some 400 candidates for the post. Last week the university's trustees produced their man: John C. Sawhill, former Federal Energy Administrator.

Sawhill, who will officially take over in September after Hester, 51, leaves to become rector of the new United Nations University in Tokyo, was a natural for the job. "It would have been nice to have a pure academic," said Allen Burdowski, 27, a student member of one of the search committees. "But we needed someone who could communicate the problems of higher education to the Government." Sawhill acknowledges that his most important task will be to make "a forceful case for the continued existence of a strong private higher-education system" and seek greater Government support for private colleges and their students.

Faculty Cut. N.Y.U. could use some of that support. One of the largest private universities in the nation, it has an enrollment of nearly 40,000 students and is just recovering from a brush with fiscal disaster. In 1972 N.Y.U. faced a $7.9 million deficit, and the trustees had to embark on an austerity drive. They sold the university's second campus, ten miles uptown from the main campus in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, dropped its engineering school, and cut the full-time faculty from 2,200 to 1,965. This year the deficit is down to $3 million, but N.Y.U. still faces the long-term problems of other private universities. Tuition will be $3,300 next fall; yet the school must compete with the tuition-free City University and the low-cost State University of New York.

The experience that Sawhill brings to his demanding new job covers government, finance and higher education. A 1958 cum laude graduate of Princeton (where he wrestled and played hockey), he worked for Merrill Lynch, then entered N.Y.U.'s graduate school of business administration to earn a Ph.D. in economics while also holding down jobs of assistant dean and assistant professor. Returning to business, he rose to become $100,000-a-year senior vice president of Baltimore's Commercial Credit Co. before joining the Federal Government two years ago. As energy administrator, he was known as a "tough manager" and a "compulsive worker." He maintained good relations with Congress, but his insistence on a high gasoline tax led to a split with President Ford, and he resigned last December.

Once he takes over at N.Y.U., Sawhill hopes to strengthen programs and courses that will offer practical training for postgraduate jobs. Says he: "A successful business or professional man must have a facility with the liberal arts, the natural and social sciences and modern languages. But these must be put together with career skills such as business administration, hospital administration, law and medicine." Sawhill also thinks that N.Y.U. can attract more part-time and older students to its main campus. He promises to try to make education at the large urban university "a personal and warm experience."

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