The Portal

What this episode covers

At North Carolina State, it’s the NCAA. At the University of California, it was a brokerage firm. At the University of Pittsburgh, it was a health plan. For hundreds of other schools, it’s private search firms. More and more public universities are using private “portals” to house documents that otherwise would be public -- shielding them from open records laws. Instances hinting at this practice have surfaced during scandal, investigations, and in lawsuits. But it’s hard to track how widespread this has become, since the practice is inherently secret. It’s designed to be hidden. However, Why Don’t We Know reporters, have found that one of the most prevalent uses of these portals happens when universities are in search of a new chief executive. “In many cases, the contracts for a search, the contract between the university and the search firm specifically state that the search firm owns the data,” said Judith Wilde, a professor at George Mason University who has been researching secret presidential searches. “They collect their CVs. They collect the letters.”

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