Daily Illini on the Univ. of Illinois MBA "jarheads" story

Here is my report on the University of Illinois Executive MBA program scandal that I posted last Tuesday: Broken promises: How "jarheads" got shunted aside at the University of Illinois: A Marathon Pundit series

Mark Spatz of the Daily Illini has a well-written version of the events that started unfolding about a year ago with the University of Illinois College of Business and its EMBA program.

The Daily Illini is not owned by the University of Illinois, but its staff is made up of U of I students, and university faculty sit on the board of the paper, so it took a lot of guts for Spatz to write the story. The same goes for contributors Amanda Graf, Kathleen Foody and Jonathan Wroble.

From the DI article:

After visiting a group of Marines nicknamed the "Mad Ghosts" that just returned from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, Robert van der Hooning, former director of the University Executive MBA program, had a life-altering experience. He started a program at the University that would partner the Illinois Veteran Grant with a scholarship to the Executive MBA program in Chicago. It was supposed to give back to Illinois veterans who made immeasurable sacrifices.

Then on May 23, 2006, an e-mail was sent to him by his boss that mandated him to rescind admission to this program of 11 Illinois veterans - and they would receive this news on Memorial Day.

Van der Hooning of course refused to follow that directive, and without his knowledge his literally-cut-and-pasted signature was placed on a letter rescinding the university's offer of an MBA scholarship to some Illinois War on Terror veterans.

One thing in my research for the story was that I missed was the disbelief among top College of Business faculty, including the dean of the college, Avijit Ghosh, and Larry DeBrock, an associate dean, that van her Hooning could find very many qualified Illinois MBA candidates among the military.

More from the Daily Illini:

Only after van der Hooning recruited tens of veterans for the program was he told by Ghosh, DeBrock and others to limit the number.

"Ghosh had told me on more than one occasion that he didn't think I could find 110 smart guys that were qualified for the MBA program," van der Hooning said. "I said to him ... 'there's tens of thousands of veterans here in Illinois. There's lots of very capable people.'"

Unlike myself, Spatz was able to get university officials to speak to him. Their side of it was that van der Hooning over-promised the scholarships. When van her Hooning and I met a few weeks ago, he told me that the press release announcing the 110 scholarships, "was approved by the public relations director and Dean Ghosh in writing."

Part two of the Daily Illini series will be published tomorrow.

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