Sheffield Nelson says no to being UA System chairman, cites strained relationship with Bobbitt

University of Arkansas System trustee Sheffield Nelson said today that he will not serve as the board of trustees’ next chairman because he doesn’t want to work with UA System President Donald Bobbitt. The news first appeared in today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

In an interview with the Arkansas Times, Nelson cited Bobbitt’s botched and secretive push to seal a deal with the University of Phoenix as well as Bobbitt’s failed effort last year to hire a different UA-Fayetteville chancellor than the one the board ultimately chose.

“As a matter of principle, I just don’t feel like I’d be comfortable working with [Bobbitt],” as closely as a chairman must, Nelson said today. “I’d have to work with him weekly.”

“It’s a matter of principle. I can’t do it,” he said. Nelson is currently the board’s vice-chair.

Nelson is not the only trustee to complain about Bobbitt’s lack of disclosure. Former trustee Cliff Gibson III and trustee Steve Cox have mentioned not being told nearly enough about the Phoenix effort until late in the game, if even then.

Nelson said Bobbitt and others were aware early on of details about the effort to create a nonprofit that would affiliate with the UA System and then buy the University of Phoenix. They “carried a lie … for over two years,” he said.

A lie can exist in what’s not spoken as well as what is, Nelson said.

“I think [Bobbitt] knows if we found out the magnitude of the money and the parties he was dealing with, we would have voted it down right then,” Bobbitt said.

The board vote in April on the proposed resolution endorsing the Phoenix purchase was 4 in favor and 5 against, with one abstention. The board’s current chairman, Morril Harriman, was among those voting against the Phoenix plan.

Sources have told the Arkansas Times that the deal’s price tag was an estimated $500 million to $700 million in private funds but the UA System would get $20 million a year from Phoenix under a licensing agreement.

The Arkansas Times first reported on the planned deal in January 2023. That came almost two years after Bobbitt was first contacted about the possibility of buying Phoenix in March 2021 according to a record obtained by the newspaper.

“Nobody had the knowledge about this that we got from you, and that was a very sore point,” Nelson told the Arkansas Times.

UA System trustee Ed Fryar, who supported the Phoenix proposal and had been named to the affiliated nonprofit’s board of directors, did not immediately return a phone message.

Fryar earlier told the Democrat-Gazette that he first learned in May 2021 that a broker had approached the UA System about the possibility of acquiring Phoenix. The University of Phoenix was one of the nation’s largest online universities but was tainted by its history of regulatory problems.

“Dr. Bobbitt talked to the board in June or July, a month or two months after that, and let the entire board know,” Fryar told the Democrat-Gazette. “Sheffield was on the board at the time.” Bobbitt regularly updated the board, Fryar reportedly said.

Nelson, however, told the Arkansas Times that he has had board minutes checked for the two years in question. The minutes do not contain “a single reference to this,” he said.

Either “they lied” or the matter came up during an executive, or closed, session in which the state’s open-meetings law places limits on what can legally be discussed, he said. “I think they got caught in their own lie,” Nelson said.

“That secret [had] kept us from knowing just how bad this situation was. Phoenix was just a dog,” Nelson told the Times. The affiliation and purchase “would have had a dramatic negative impact” on the UA System had it gone through, he said.

“Subterfuge is [the] main word I really think of when I think of Bobbitt the last two years. Bobbitt spent a tremendous amount of time” on Phoenix,” Nelson said. “He was acting like the Lone Ranger. He sure wasn’t telling us about it … like he said he did.”

In an email today, UA System spokesman Nate Hinkel said, “It’s possible [the Phoenix matter] was discussed at an annual summer retreat, and I’m not sure there are minutes for those more informal settings.”

Hinkel said the retreat was during the right time frame but said he was not confirming such a discussion happened.

In a separate statement Bobbitt said, “We’ve shared information and ideas about our aggressive online growth plan with trustees and the public in different stages for many years as it has evolved. Some trustees have asked a lot of questions and lent expertise in various ways. In this case, I had a long conversation on the phone with Trustee Nelson answering his questions about the potential affiliation. I respectfully disagree with the notion that anyone was intentionally uninformed. Throughout my decade of service as President I have always strived to keep board members aware of any issue and have had an open door for communication, and the Phoenix affiliation is no different.”

Hinkel said in an earlier statement today that in “complex negotiations,” the UA System does not always “share specific details of negotiations or plans until they are complete and at a stage to begin meeting obligations for approvals and appropriate public and internal discourse. In this case, conversations were had with various people, including trustees, at different times over the course of the negotiation back to when it started nearly two years ago.”