A matter of presidents

With a pocket full of scholarship money, Likins bought his wife Patricia an engagement ring the night before he turned 18. Nearly 50 years later, he said, "she is my passion."

He doesn't have hobbies, he said, just work and his family.

When Likins arrived on campus in 1997, the university was in recovery from a decade of budgetary stresses: stresses that destroyed student programs, stresses that damaged the relationship between faculty members and the administration. It's logical, therefore, that a man with a background in private university school administration, would commit so much time to discussing the financial situation of the UA, from student union renovations to corporate relations.

Part of being the president, Likins, 62, said, is talking about money. From tuition to the Nike contract, money is on Pete Likins mind. Because money is what institutions of higher learning are made of, whether donations or federal government grants, state support or student fees.

Pete Likins grew up poor after his father left the family when he was about 7. He, his mother and three siblings, were briefly homeless as they bounced from house to house.

"Those were very, very hard years. My mother was just a high school graduate and she had to take care of four kids." he said. "But my mother's four kids have 10 college degrees and it kind of motivates you to realize you've got a hole to crawl out of."

When he graduated from high school he was sixteen. By 21, Likins had an MIT masters' degree. "The motivation of depravation," Likins called his rapid matriculations.

As a community, we don't want to always talk about money; we want to talk about ideals. We want to be unsullied by cash. That's what higher education, in a classical sense, is all about.

Yet, when one listens to Pete Likins discuss tuition, for example, one can't help notice his commitment to affordable education and the way our university system sets young men and women up to fail.

"There are students working 40 hours a week, trying to go to school full time and their prospects of success are really jeopardized by that work schedule," Likins said.

Truly, to begin to understand Pete Likins, one must understand his respect for those students and for institution s higher learning. His priorities, our priorities, come into sharper focus.