McLarty Becomes Harding University’s Fifth President

It was a big deal – and a rare event – when Dr. Bruce McLarty, 56, was inaugurated as Harding University’s president Friday. The Searcy-based school has had only four other presidents in its 90 years, and representatives from universities across the county attended. Despite being the star of the show, McLarty said before the inauguration that he wasn’t nervous.

“Inauguration to me feels an awful lot like getting married,” he said during an interview Tuesday before speaking to the Rotary Club in Little Rock. “As a preacher, I’ve probably felt less pressure at my own wedding than I’ve ever felt at another wedding because basically, I’m not responsible for it. I show up, I give a speech, and I shake hands for two hours – a lot like a wedding, except for the speech part, and the speech was written a month ago.”

McLarty, whose appointment was announced last Nov. 1, is taking the helm of the state’s largest private university with 6,238 students enrolled this fall. It currently offers about 100 majors.

McLarty, who replaces Dr. David B. Burks, comes to the presidency not from the world of academics or finances. Instead, during the previous eight years, McLarty was the school’s vice president for spiritual life, which meant he oversaw lectures, chapels, and spent the first three years as the school’s Bible college dean. During cabinet meetings, he said, “My primary job was to keep my eye on the spiritual mission of the university, to keep us focused on what is at our core. With all the business and all the activities of a college, are we being true to who we are?”

McLarty said that the Church of Christ school’s focus on faith is a big reason why it has continued to grow in recent years. He said that faith-based schools “have a tendency to drift away from their founding mission.” He said that part of the school’s growth can be attributed to its national faith network. It educates students from 50 states – 70 percent of its students come from outside of Arkansas – and 46 foreign countries. Seventy-five percent of its students come from the Church of Christ.

The school’s American Studies Institute has brought 16 heads of state and four U.S. presidents to the campus in addition to other mostly conservative speakers. On Sept. 16, pundit George Will spoke at the college. Prompted by a question, McLarty said the school has considered the need to avoid becoming too closely associated with the Republican Party.

“I believe there is place for us to be a conservative institution without being partisan,” he said, “and we need to find where that line is, and to hold to that because I think it’s important for our spiritual mission that we never communicate that one has to be a conservative Republican in order to be a Christian. That runs counter to our Christian mission.”

A year’s education at Harding costs $22,500 not counting books, though almost all students receive some type of financial aid. McLarty said that university officials are aware of the increasing attention being paid by policy makers to the value of a particular school’s education. Twenty-five percent of Harding students have been awarded federal Pell Grants, and President Obama has been pushing higher education toward verifying outcomes.

McLarty is concerned about what those metrics will be. The school has contemplated what it would do if federal requirements became too onerous for it to continue accepting those dollars, though it has not yet made concrete plans.

“For me, one of the most frightening things in the future is that you know that things are coming, but you don’t know what they are because the codes have not been written yet,” he said. “So just being vigilant is always part of the job.”