U of I chancellor Herman quits amid scandal

University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman resigned Tuesday following months of pressure over special attention the school paid to politically connected applicants at its Urbana-Champaign campus and news that some were admitted over more qualified students.

His resignation from the $400,000-a-year chancellor’s job is effective Monday. The 68-year-old Herman will remain with the central Illinois school as a tenured math professor, the university said, earning $244,000 a year.

The Faculty Senate last month called for Herman, who is in charge of the Urbana-Champaign campus, and university President B. Joseph White – chief executive of all three Illinois campuses – to step down amid the admissions scandal. President White plans to leave his post in December.

In e-mails released by the university and in news reports since May, it became clear that Herman played a key role in what the university called its Category I list – students with political connections whose applications for places at the flagship Urbana-Champaign campus were closely tracked. Some of those applicants were admitted over more qualified ones.

In some e-mails, Herman pushed for the admission of underqualified applicants to the university’s law school and agreed to provide scholarship money in exchange.

He has apologized for his role in the scandal, which also led to the resignation of seven members of the board of trustees.