Nancy Dye has been the President of Oberlin College for the last 13 years. She will retire this summer.

The last time we spoke you seemed uncertain about your future plans. Have you come to any decisions?
I’m still uncertain. First, I need a break, so now I may have a sort of a gap year. I will be doing some work for the Asian University for Women. Its campus is being built right now in Bangladesh. I will be doing some work for the UNCF [United Negro College Fund] and its institute for capacity building. I’ve also become very interested in historically black colleges in the South and will be doing some work with an organization that helps them. I also hope to bring the Oberlin-Iran musical exchange to fruition. So as you can see, there’s a fairly heavy international thread in my interests right now.

It seems like you haven’t been on campus as much this year. What have you been doing?
I’ve continued to do some development traveling and I’ve gone to see people who I’ve gotten to know well. I will continue to keep relationships with them in continuing to support Oberlin. I’ve gone all over the country. Moving has also been a major task. We have to move out of this huge house so we have to slim down our possessions. We have to organize a move and we have to pack. A fair amount of time has gone into that. I’ve always liked to move because it gives you some time to take stock and see what you need and don’t need and also it’s kind of exciting. Actually, I’m going to talk about that in my commencement speech.

Where are you moving?
Lakewood. We’re staying in this area. We bought a very cute craftsman house in Lakewood.
I’ve always liked that area because it’s right on the lake and I also like that it’s kind of edgy and has an urban feel. It’s close to the Westside market and good Indian grocery stores, and I like to cook, so I’m going to brush up my cooking skills and enhance them, hopefully.

Have you met with presidential candidate Marvin Krislov?
I have known Marvin professionally since we met at a conference at Harvard Law School on affirmative action. I have spoken with him several times and was very impressed with what he had to say. I’ve found him very likable and very smart. I think he’s a really good person.

How has this search been different from the one that brought you to Oberlin?
It’s quite different from the search 14 years ago, mostly in positive ways. One of the things that I would have to say about the search that yielded me as president, and I’m not exaggerating, was that it made all of the finalists less enthusiastic about coming here. We were each invited for two and ahalf days of meetings with everyone on campus and there was a lot of hoo-ha that was really just unpleasant. That search was also made very public, which didn’t bother me so much, but I know that it caused several other qualified applicants to remove their candidacy. I didn’t really play any role in this search, but I would have to say that from my point of view as an outsider it’s been a much better process.

Would you say that some of that hostility you encountered during the search prepared you for the more controversial moments of your presidency?
Yes, certainly, but it was kind of a surprise when I got here. Once I was announced in
early February, a lot of students said they didn’t want me to be president, so I came out to campus from Poughkeepsie and I asked Bob Haslun to put together two-and-a-half-days of meeting with students.
That was done and by the time I had left I had met many, many students and they met me in more casual and smaller groups...I went back thinking, “Oh, I love these students” and I really had such a good time, but also had a better sense of how contentious it can be here. Vassar was a very active campus as well, but I don’t think any campus has students as involved as this one. I can honestly say that Oberlin is the only place I have ever been where I can give full vent to my love of argument.

How has the landscape of higher education changed in the last 13 years?
I would say that the biggest change is that higher education, like almost everything else, has become more market-driven, particularly the more highly selective schools. This has been an uncomfortable thing for Oberlin to make its peace with. Of course it shouldn’t be about marketing, it should be about education but we have to pay attention to what people know about us and think about us. Are those things right or are they just perceptions that have no basis in reality? Or do people even know Oberlin at all? We have to get our own message out about what makes this place special.
I think one thing that is going to come out of the recent student loan scandal is the idea that this corruption is what is making tuitions go up and the idea that the high prices of places like Oberlin are somehow related to the practices of these student loan institutions. There are lots of less glamorous and exciting reasons that tuition goes up, but it has been virtually impossible to explain how the financing of private education works in the U.S.…and journalists and politicians don’t really seem interested in getting to the bottom of it.
I think, however, that you’re going to start to see a lot more resentment about the costs of going to a place like this among middle-class parents who would love to send their kids here, but can’t because in real terms their income has not gone up for the last decade or more. That’s the looming problem for our kind of education.

What kind of relationship do you anticipate maintaining with the College?
I will always be close to the College, if not necessarily geographically. I have loved being Oberlin’s president — some days I have loved more than others, of course — and I can’t imagine a more interesting job. The nice thing about having a house in Lakewood is that Griff and I can still come to campus for various and sundry things, so it’s not really a complete break, which is nice. So if you’re in Oberlin, you’ll no doubt see me from time to time.