1. the average tenure of a university president s 5.9 years......you add in the fossils like Turner at SMU, the former presidents at UTEP, UTSA, and Texas State that have recently left (that average is in the USA, but those are LONG service and way past their time presidents I am familiar with) and a president leaving after 5 years is not unusual
2. looking at what Turner made and considering that a lot of people give him credit for "building a lot of fountains and buildings" and not much else I can see them offering $4 to $4.5 million per year especially to "poke at Texas" and that is about 3X what he was making at Texas and with no state income tax that shit goes a long way.....and I am sure he still have plenty of friends that will let him sleep on their futon if he wants to visit Austin and go to the lake or hang out in one of those nice casistas
3. the AAU is about a lot more than just research....they value specific types of research with competitively awarded, nationally and internationally relevant, life sciences, engineering, and medical research being preferred and they also like research into the fundamentals of things not research into taking known things and making them useful or more useful......they weigh all of that on a per faculty member basis so one needs to look at faculty count when comparing to other private schools that do not have a medical school.....they like National Academy members and Nobel Prize winners and other similar awards on faculty and they place a lot more value on a university where faculty win those awards while on faculty vs. a university money whipping a bunch of them to come work there like some schools try to do
I think the biggest issues SMU will have is being compared to other private schools already in or on the cusp, finding a place to set up research facilities on a campus that is stuffed full and in a high cost of land area (even across the freeway), they are more business and law than life sciences and even their engineering is relatively new in terms of universities, and they are not a small university for a private one and again a lot of their enrollment is business students and areas outside of fundamental sciences so they will have to add faculty in areas of low enrollment and or grow the enrollment in those areas on a stuffed full campus....or turn over their student mix which could help some rankings provided they do not cut faculty in programs if they lower enrollment in some to grow enrollment in others.....they will need to grow graduate enrollment as well and probably trim down their MBA enrollment to do so
4. I would think that Guy Bailey the president of UTRGV would be a candidate for Texas and before anyone says anything he was at Tech a while back and did a lot of good things for them (that have since been allowed to slip), but he left of Alabama (I know not an academic powerhouse, but where he and his wife met) and then his wife got terminal cancer and passed away and that job fell to shit when he need time off to be with her after just being hired.....to their credit Alabama was very generous to him......after it was all over the merger/formation of UTRGV was taking place along with their med school and he jumped on it
I thought the UTD president might be a candidate, but I just read he is 73 and has stepped down earlier last year (after being there since 2016)....I would imagine of Texas struggles to get who they want for a bit he might step in for a couple of years.....but I don't see that being an issue
I would not be surprised if Guy Bailey declined the job he has things on automatic down there and I believe he is pretty well liked still
I would imagine there will be plenty of candidates and some from places that might surprise people