Michael Bernstein, a veteran of five higher-education institutions, has been named as The College of New Jersey’s 17th president.
TCNJ, based in Ewing Township, was in search of a new president since last June, when preceding President Kathryn Foster resigned.
At that time, Bernstein was brought on for a two-year interim term, and over the past year was able to make a case for himself and his initiatives to TCNJ’s Board of Trustees. The result was his permanent appointment to the president’s job by the Board in June.
“I’m very grateful to the Board for their vote of confidence, which also comes with a set of expectations, which I am eager to embrace and will strive to fulfill,” Bernstein said.
“Dr. Bernstein is an extremely accomplished educator and a transformational leader,” said Rebecca Ostrov, chair of the TCNJ Board of Trustees. “Over the past year, he has mobilized our community to think creatively about how we innovate and extend an unparalleled TCNJ education to new audiences.”
An east-coast native, Bernstein was born in New York and spent most of his grade school education in Long Island. He finished high school in Connecticut. For the last several years, he has lived in California, but has now come full circle with his new TCNJ position.
The students of TCNJ are familiar with Bernstein and his initiatives—during his time as interim, he has been communicated his plans through a number of monthly e-mails.
He has also talked to many of the students directly and has been a frequent interviewee by the college’s student-run newspaper, The Signal.
In an interview with the Ewing Observer, Bernstein said that now the position is permanent, the initiatives that he pursued as interim are continuing to thrive and expand.
The biggest of these—the LIONS Plan—is set to balance a sustainable budget and strategize for the continued evolution of the college. LIONS stands for “Linking Innovation with Operational Nimbleness and Sustainability,” and was prompted by financial hardships the institution has been facing in recent years.
For example, the college had been overly optimistic in its financial forecasting, Bernstein said in an October 2023 budget update on the college’s website.
“Tuition, fee and housing revenue fell short of projections,” he said. “We also inaccurately estimated the amount the college could expect to be reimbursed by the state for employee fringe benefits. All totaled, this revenue shortfall amounted to $20 million, or approximately 7% of our budget.”
To address the situation, the school reduced operating costs by $11 million, which included salary savings from a hiring freeze and making cuts across all divisions. It also reduced the physical plant asset renewal budget by $4 million. Another $5 million was taken from reserves.
TCNJ’s fiscal uncertainty will present a challenge for Bernstein to overcome, but the Yale alumnus has served academic leadership in times of trouble before.
As the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs of Tulane University from 2007 to 2016, he served as part of the New Orleans institution’s rebuild team after Hurricane Katrina.
In addition, Bernstein also helped Long Island’s Stony Brook University through the COVID-19 pandemic as interim president in 2020.
Bernstein believes the sum of his experience, which also includes stints at Princeton University and the University of California San Diego (where he was dean of arts and humanities from 2005-2007), will help him secure the college’s finances.
A former professor of history and economics who began his teaching career at Princeton, Bernstein has served at all levels of higher education administration, including department chair, dean, provost and interim president.
Bernstein earned four degrees from Yale University, including a bachelor’s, doctorate and two master’s degrees, all in economics. While ‘minors’ for subjects of interests for students were not officially available at the time of his enrollment, Bernstein did spend a lot of time learning about history and authored two history textbooks.
Adding to his busy schedule, Bernstein will be travelling for both personal and business reasons. His interim contract included airfare compensation for visits to his family, which is still on the West Coast.
“I do have some personal commitments that will bring me back to California from time to time, but home base at this point is Ewing,” Bernstein said.
He also expects that he will be traveling to raise funds, attract alumni and interact with elected officials on behalf of TCNJ.
Bernstein says his appointment as permanent president will be helpful in that regard. “Having the so-called ‘permanent’ title enables me to pursue engagement with alumni and elected officials on a different level because they know I’m going to be around for a while.
“When you’re interim, alumni and elected officials might say, ‘Well, that’s great, it’s nice to meet you, but how long are you going to be around? How much time and energy should I be investing in this relationship?’ That all goes away now.”
Bernstein said the titular change helps on campus as well. He feels that students and staff will be more willing to engage with him on ongoing projects and initiatives. These include the LIONS plan, which will begin its second phase this summer. The first phase, which was conducted over the course of the last year, involved examining budgetary goals.
One of the first initiatives in the first phase included the hiring freeze. According to Bernstein, this second phase will focus on student housing.
Freshman housing is generally contained in two 10-story towers that were built in 1971, and there have been a number of complaints and concerns reported to the college in recent years. TCNJ also has an affiliated residency for upperclassmen called Campus Town—a 2015 project with apartment-style living over commercial/retail uses on the ground floors.
The project has been somewhat controversial due to the high cost to live there, but Bernstein sees the project as a “great amenity” based on the quality of living for the students and the connection between the Ewing community and campus that the ground floor businesses have contributed.
Bernstein said he plans to evaluate a strategy to improve freshman living conditions, whether that be renovation or destruction of the 1971 buildings, or something entirely different. He believes that improving living conditions for students would not only improve student life but could also help on the financial end due to its ability to help attract potential students.
But the newly appointed president said he intends to do more to attract revenue and students than improving housing.
In an “opportunity to serve a wider array of students,” TCNJ plans to open a new school of graduate, professional and online education under Bernstein’s instruction. TCNJ has a large number of undergrad students, and while Bernstein also plans to improve their needs, the inclusion of students looking for other types of degrees will expand TCNJ’s campus and revenue.
“I think this is a chance for the college to broaden its mission in the region and in the state, with the added benefit for us that it will generate increasing amounts of revenue for us. What we do and do well is expensive, so resources are always welcome,” he said.
The LIONS plan also had teams of working groups under Bernstein’s instruction that compiled reports with some of their ideas. The president says another goal this summer is to analyze and digest all the reports and eventually communicate their findings to the students and faculty of TCNJ.
When asked about his primary economic initiatives, Bernstein mentioned “stabilizing our budget, ensuring that it is sustainable in the long term and being in a position to always innovate and strategically access the opportunities ahead of [the college].”
In another attempt to increase revenue, Bernstein had briefly suggested differential tuition pricing based on major. This idea arose from what he called an “instinctive question from anybody trained in economics,” but Bernstein and other officials his associates concluded that the idea would not be beneficial or easy to manage.
“I don’t think differential tuition pricing is an issue for us to focus on right now, I think we’re more concerned given our tuition structure, how do we ensure programs of instruction remain high quality, competitive, and attractive to potential applicants,” he said. “That’s something the college has been very successful at over the past decade, and we want to continue to be successful at that.”
While there have not been many final decisions made to implement these initiatives yet, the president said he is confident about the future of the institution.
The “prime directive” of the school, in Bernstein’s eyes, is “anticipating the interests, needs and goals of our students” with high-quality degrees on a consistent basis. He has expressed great pride in the institution’s community and the challenges it has overcome.
But, overall, Bernstein’s favorite thing about his newly appointed position seems to be the ability to continue to advocate for TCNJ. “This past year, as I neared the sort of mid-year mark, I felt we were making progress, but I also felt concerned about how to maintain this momentum,” he said. “I think now, with my appointment, we can maintain that momentum, because I don’t have a stopwatch on, which is great. I am very excited about that and focused on the work at hand.”
TCNJ President Michael A. Bernstein ,
