USC President Carol Folt, who calmed the scandal-ravaged university, boosted athletics and expanded student access but also drew sharp criticism for her handling of pro-Palestinian protests this spring, has received a five-year extension to her contract, the university confirmed Tuesday.
USC did not disclose the terms of the contract extension, including its length and any changes made. It was not clear whether the extension was short-term while the Board of Trustees conducts a thorough review of whether to offer Folt a longer-term contract.
“President Folt’s contract remains in full force and effect,” the university said in a statement Tuesday. “Like all university officers, the president is subject to annual review and reappointment, which occurred last spring. The Board remains pleased with the strong direction of the university under President Folt’s leadership.”
Folt, 74, took over on July 1, 2019, with a contract that gave him compensation similar to that of former president Max Nikias, according to Rick Caruso, USC’s board chairman at the time. He said then that he expected Folt to serve in the role for at least a decade.
Folt was hired with a primary mandate to restore trust at the university, which had been rocked by one scandal after another. She replaced key administrators, negotiated a $1 billion settlement with former students who were victims of a sexually abusive gynecologist and authorized the removal of the name of an anti-Semitic, eugenics-supporting former president from a landmark campus building.
The first woman to lead USC since its founding in 1880, Folt also worked to open access to more low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students of color. In one of her most touted initiatives, Folt directed USC to eliminate tuition for families making $80,000 or less a year and to no longer consider home equity in financial aid calculations. The estimated annual cost of attendance for 2024-25 is $95,225 for students living away from their families.
He attracted national attention for his major initiatives to reshape USC's athletic program, including the hiring of a nationally renowned football coach, Lincoln Riley, to a $10 million annual contract (one of the highest salaries in the sport), along with a major investment in new and improved athletic facilities and the move to the Big Ten that ultimately resulted in the demise of the Pac-12 Conference.
But those actions were overshadowed this spring by the enormous controversy over his handling of pro-Palestinian protests.
In particular, his decision to cancel pro-Palestinian student Asna Tabassum's speaking engagement at USC's main graduation ceremony sparked widespread outrage. Folt justified the decision by citing unspecified security threats.
The unrest escalated when Folt cancelled the graduation ceremony on the “main stage,” depriving students and their families of a precious ritual. Folt and his team called in the police to dismantle a tent encampment that students had set up in support of the Palestinians, leading to 93 arrests.
She made no public statements for two weeks, prompting criticism that she was missing in action during the most explosive issue of her tenure.
Such actions cost Folt the support of key faculty. In May, the USC Academic Senate voted to censure her and Provost Andrew Guzman for their handling of events surrounding graduation. Among the 44 members of the senate, representing about 4,500 faculty members, 21 supported the censure motion, seven opposed it and six abstained.
William Tierney, a university professor emeritus at USC's Rossier School of Education and an expert on university administration and governance, called Folt's handling of the protests a “total failure” and said the university needed a new leader capable of addressing these issues without his “sticking our heads in the sand” approach.
While he credited Folt for taking on the presidential leadership role at a “difficult time” of serial scandals, he was bitter about his pivot to sports advocacy. He also criticized what he saw as a lack of fundraising prowess by past presidents, who allowed financial largesse for ambitious academic and research projects, including the hiring of two star brain researchers from UCLA.
USC should reorder its priorities from seeking top donors (as Johns Hopkins University did in securing $1 billion from Bloomberg Philanthropies for free medical education for most students) to seeking top football coaches, Tierney said.
“We are not a football university,” he said. “We have professors who aspire to change the world. I don’t see the president providing intellectual or financial leadership in that way.”
“When I think about what USC aspires to do in the next five years,” he said, “I don’t think it will be with Carol Folt.”
Anna Krylov, a chemistry professor, said she was “neutral” about whether Folt should be granted a long-term contract renewal. She said she appreciated Folt’s decision to dismantle the pro-Palestinian camp, which she said fueled rabid anti-Semitism. But Folt and campus leadership had not done enough to combat anti-Semitism more broadly, which had become “serious and pervasive” in recent years, she said.
Krylov also said Folt focused too much energy on the “wrong issues,” including what he called performative efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Like Tierney, Krylov said USC’s leadership needed to focus more on its core mission of education and research.
But Folt’s supporters noted that the president had created a new advanced computer science school and boosted mental health services. She also presided over a record number of applicants — 82,000 by fall 2024 — driving the admissions rate down to a record low of 9.3 percent. The admitted students, a fifth of them the first in their families to attend college, had a 3.89 grade point average.
In her first six months as president in 2019, Folt set out to reshape USC’s athletic department. She replaced Lynn Swann, a Trojan football hero who resigned as athletic director in September of that year, with Mike Bohn, the first outsider to lead USC’s athletic department in a quarter-century.
But Bohn abruptly resigned last May after The Times sent questions to him and USC about his conduct as athletic director and the management of the department. In his place, Folt hired Jennifer Cohen, the university's first female athletic director.
Earlier this year, USC began construction on a state-of-the-art football performance center that is just one of several capital facility projects currently in the works.
