While the school was stunned by Sullivan’s ouster, a plot to force her out had been building in secret for months, according to emails released by UVA at the request of The Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper. Members of the board, steeped in a culture of corporate jargon and buzzy management theories, wanted the school to institute austerity measures and re-engineer its academic offerings around inexpensive, online education, the emails reveal. Led by Rector Helen Dragas, a real estate developer appointed six years ago, the board shared a guiding vision that the university could, and indeed should, be run like a Fortune 500 company.

The controversy, which threatens to seriously damage one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious public universities, has implications beyond its own idyllic, academic refuge. For some, it is emblematic of how the cult of corporate expertise and private-sector savvy has corralled the upper reaches of university life, at the expense of academic freedom and “unprofitable” areas of study.

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