Steven Sample is retiring as president of USC this year. He is one of the reasons I wanted to join the USC faculty. I am guessing that no university president has done more over the past three decades or so to transform his institution than Sample; the only comparable academic leaders I can think of are Theodore Hesburgh at Notre Dame and John Sexton at NYU.
One indicator of Sample's influence is USC's ranking based on Avery, Glickman, Hoxby and Metrick's measure of student preferences. Their measure is simple: after controlling for such things as cost and legacy, they look at the propensity of students to choose one college over another. Based on this measure, USC is the 29th most favored college in the country. Every college ahead of USC based on this measure is an excellent institution (the places immediately above USC in this ranking are Chicago and Johns Hopkins). For those that get into both Berkeley and USC, 72 percent go to Berkeley, but for those that get into both USC and UCLA, 89 percent go to USC (once again, controlling for costs). When Sample took over as President, this would have been unimaginable.
Sample also writes gracefully about higher education.
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