He faces a degree of skepticism

Bruce Benson does not have the standard resume of a university president.

His formal education ended with a bachelor’s degree. Unlike those who made their name in academia, he made millions in oil and then invested his energy and money in Republican politics. He was chairman of the state GOP and national co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, and helped fund an interest group that aired attack ads against Colorado Democrats in 2006.

When the University of Colorado’s board of regents appointed Benson as the university’s 22nd president last month, the move riled many professors and students, especially at the flagship campus in notoriously liberal Boulder. The faculty assembly voted down a motion to support his presidency -- four professors were in support; 40 opposed.

Benson’s politics gave extra heat to the debate, but the main objection among the faculty was his lack of an academic background.

“We felt he was not appropriate for that position, given the quality of our campus,” said physics professor Uriel Nauenberg, chairman of the faculty assembly. He added that, nonetheless, the faculty hopes Benson succeeds and looks forward to working with him.

According to a 2005 survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education, fewer than 1% of all university presidents and chancellors have no advanced degrees. Benson earned his bachelor’s in geology at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1964.

He said in an interview that he knew he was an unorthodox choice but that he could help his alma mater, which serves 65,000 students on its campuses in Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs.

“I know how to make decisions,” Benson, 69, said in an interview, citing his four decades of business experience. He has connections to help get more funding -- a crucial issue for the system, which draws less than 8% of its money from the state budget. “I bring a lot to the table a lot of people don’t bring.”

Benson, who is suspending his political work, also has a long history of working on matters of public education. He is a major donor to the university; an earth sciences building on the Boulder campus bears his name. He is the chairman of a committee to improve Denver Public Schools and spent five years as chairman of the board of trustees at Metropolitan State College of Denver. He chaired a prior governor’s panel on higher education.

He has vowed to stay away from academic decisions and rely on the chancellors at each campus to handle curricular matters. “I’ve always in business hired people who know more and have fancier degrees than I have,” Benson said. Being president of the $2-billion university system, he added, “just doesn’t have much to do with how do you teach microbiology.”

RL Widmann, an English professor and chairwoman of the university system’s faculty council, said that although many faculty were distrustful of Benson, she was impressed by him.

“Personally, I myself would prefer it if every school had a president who had earned a PhD,” she said. “But that isn’t where we are in education funding today. The president doesn’t have to be the chief intellectual of the university system.”

Benson is one of a handful of nonacademic university leaders hired in recent years as state budgets give less and less money to public universities.

Many locals cite as another example Daniel Ritchie, a businessman who was chancellor of the University of Denver for 15 years and is credited with saving the school.

The University of Missouri recently recruited a former Sprint executive to run its system.

The University of Georgia hired a utility company executive -- who does have an MBA -- as its chancellor.

It’s a pattern that disturbs some academics.

“In business itself, you expect to hire CEOs who have some familiarity with the businesses they lead,” said Jonathan Knight, director of the program for Academic Freedom and Tenure at the American Assn. of University Professors in Washington. “All our eyebrows would be raised if we learn tomorrow Exxon has appointed an academic who has no experience running a corporation.”

When the University of Colorado’s search committee began looking at candidates late last year to replace the departing president, Hank Brown, a former senator and attorney, they wanted someone who could tackle the system’s financial woes.

Colorado ranks 48th in the nation for the amount of tax money per capita that it spends on public education. And university officials are bracing for that sum to shrink as a possible recession kicks in and as funding provided by a ballot measure begins to expire.

“We are in desperate straits for finance, and that has to be our No. 1 concern,” said Pat Hayes, chairwoman of the board of regents. “It’s a difficult time, and you have to do what you need to do to have a stable university.”

When Benson was announced last month as the sole finalist, the reaction on campus was not favorable.

The student government at Boulder asked him to withdraw his candidacy. The regents split on party lines, 6 to 3, in their vote to hire Benson, with Republicans supporting and Democrats opposing him.

Nonetheless, Benson counts many prominent Democrats as friends and supporters, including Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, and has a reputation for being able to work across the aisle.

Democrat Bernie Buescher, a Colorado assemblyman who was the subject of attack ads funded by Benson, opposed Benson’s hiring but said he wished him well. And he believes Benson can make peace.

“He is as good a salesman as I have ever run into,” Buescher said.

Benson said he understood why the faculty wished he had an academic background.

“They want one of their own, and I’m not going to argue with them for feeling that way,” he said in an interview in a conference room in the offices of the Benson Mineral Group, which looks down on the state Capitol from the 19th floor of a Denver high-rise. “You just reach out and convince them you’re doing the right thing.”

He repeated his vow to stay out of academic affairs and then, gesturing toward his office, added: “Of all the briefing books stacked up there, I don’t think there’s anything on academics.”

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nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com