Should Sasse’s Résumé Have Raised Red Flags?

When The Lincoln Star profiled 17-year-old Ben Sasse in 1989, the story revealed the contours of a politically savvy young conservative—much of which remains in place some 35 years later.

Sasse—then a high school athlete and treasurer of his church youth group—was fresh off a stint as congressional page in Washington, D.C. He told the newspaper about his East Coast college visits and his experience seeking an internship at a Wall Street brokerage.

“When I got there, I just walked right past the guard, went to a computer and typed in the name of the person I wanted to talk to,” Sasse said, noting he was emulating a character in the film The Secret of My Success played by Michael J. Fox, who poses as a business executive and climbs through the ranks by pretending he belongs and knows what he’s doing.

That, explained teenage Sasse, is how you cut through the bureaucracy.

Sasse has since navigated numerous bureaucracies through his career in government and academia. He became a Republican when he was 8 or 9 and, with the help of his grandfather, started buying stocks in sixth grade, according to the Star profile. His many careers have included consulting, leading an evangelical group and representing Nebraska as a Republican in the U.S. Senate. Sasse has also been, in his own words, an “occasional professor” and served as the president of two higher ed institutions before resigning abruptly from the University of Florida in late July. He’s also authored two national best-selling nonfiction books, one with the aid of a ghostwriter.

But a close investigation of Sasse’s résumé and background reveals that he has both embellished and omitted parts of his professional life.

The fallout from Sasse’s sudden resignation—which he attributed to his wife’s health but which may have been forced by the board, according to UF’s student newspaper, The Alligator—is ongoing. And questions remain about Sasse’s rampant spending and his hiring practices.

In the wake of his resignation, some critics have said red flags were apparent all along, and they question why UF took a chance on a political figure with such a varied and opaque résumé.

A Surprise Hire

UF hired Sasse on the heels of a change to state law that scaled back transparency in presidential searches at public universities, allowing institutions to keep the names of candidates quiet until the finalists were announced. UF trustees have said Sasse was the only one of the six finalists for the job who was not a sitting university president.

As a U.S. senator who had been re-elected in 2020, Sasse emerged as a surprise candidate and the sole finalist in October 2022. Students protested his views on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, and the UF Faculty Senate voted no confidence in the search process. But the Board of Trustees approved him unanimously anyway.

Sasse’s short presidency was marked by runaway spending; his office racked up more than $17 million in his first year, which prompted calls for an investigation. Sasse has denied wrongdoing and argued that driving new initiatives at UF required major investments.

During his interview for the presidency, Sasse publicly promised “political celibacy.” But when he took office, he stocked his cabinet with Senate staffers and GOP allies, some of whom had driven across Nebraska with him in an RV during his campaign. UF has since dismissed at least six of those hires.

Kevin Danko was a graduate student at the University of Florida when the board named Sasse as the finalist. He thought it was odd that UF didn’t publish the president-elect’s allegedly high-powered curriculum vitae, so he compiled his own research on Sasse’s background, which he shared with Inside Higher Ed.

“It was weird that UF wouldn’t distribute his CV up until his actual confirmation, and I was just curious because this guy was supposed to have this elite consulting and Ivy League background, but UF was not broadcasting it,” Danko said.

But as he looked into the résumé, Danko soon found a series of anomalies.

Incomplete Résumé

Sasse’s résumé, as presented to the Florida Board of Governors, which finalized his hire, omits some positions and provides limited details on other roles.

One key position listed in his work history is his presidency at Midland University from late 2009 through the end of 2014. But his time at Midland was marked by unusual financial circumstances, among other things. While Sasse is credited with saving the college from bankruptcy, his own financial dealings raise questions.

Sasse has long-standing family ties to Midland, which is located in his hometown of Fremont, Neb. His grandfather Elmer Sasse, who taught him how to buy stocks, worked at the small Lutheran college for 33 years, serving as its vice president for finance and in other roles, according to local news clips.

Facing failure in 2010, Midland officials called Sasse.

“I largely grew up on campus,” Sasse told hometown newspaper The Fremont Tribune in 2009 when the board announced the hire, nodding to his grandfather’s long tenure at the college.

He was 37 at the time, and his career up to that point included consulting, posts in two federal agencies and a brief stint as chief of staff for Nebraska Republican representative Jeff Fortenberry. When he was hired as Midland’s president, Sasse was working as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, though he noted he was “almost always on leave”; his time there, from 2004 to 2009, overlapped with his appointments in the U.S. Departments of Justice and the Health and Human Services.

Sasse had also led an evangelical group in California, served as executive vice president for Westminster Seminary California and later on its Board of Trustees, edited a book about the need for church reform, and worked on the editorial staff of Modern Reformation magazine from 1997 to 2004, eventually becoming executive editor. None of that appeared on his résumé when he applied for the UF job. (Sasse also left off a past role as a visiting scholar at the left-leaning Brookings Institute think tank.)

A Westminster Seminary California magazine from 2015 noted that Sasse’s ties to the seminary stretched back more than a decade and a half, when he “stepped in and worked closely with the staff and Board of Trustees to help them through the time of transition and installation of new administrative staff,” following the death of then-WSC vice president Keith Vander Pol in 2000. Sasse resigned from the board upon his election to the Senate in 2014, the magazine noted.

Though Sasse speaks frequently about his faith and often meets with religious organizations, he has largely downplayed his background in evangelical leadership; it is not mentioned in either of his books.

John Pelissero, director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, said Sasse’s résumé at UF should have included his full body of work.

“If you’ve had a variety of roles in higher education, as a member of a Board of Trustees or, obviously, serving in some faculty or leadership post at a university, you should be inclusive of all of that. If you’re going to include that in your résumé, even if you downplay it or just make a simple mention of the fact that you also served on a Board of Trustees of the university, it shouldn’t be incomplete, in a selective way that is designed to make you look better,” he said.

Pelissero emphasized “the importance of clarity” in crafting a résumé.

Installed at Midland in 2010, Sasse shaved $500,000 from the budget and didn’t draw a salary directly from the university. Instead Midland paid $422,000 to Platte Strategy Consulting, a company that Sasse owned, according to university financial documents. Midland did not list a conflict-of-interest disclosure on its taxes.

“Ben Sasse initially served as acting president of Midland in a consultant capacity, not as an employee, and his compensation was paid through a consulting firm, Platte Strategy Consulting,” Joe Harnisch, chief financial officer at Midland, told Inside Higher Ed by email.

Harnisch added that after Sasse was named president by Midland’s Board of Directors and officially began the role in 2010, “no further payments were made to Platte Strategy Consulting.”

As president, Sasse added new athletic programs, oversaw a name change from Midland Lutheran College to Midland University, doubled enrollment from 590 to almost 1,300, launched an M.B.A. program, and initiated the purchase of nearby Dana College, which brought an infusion of students to Midland when it later closed.

Celebrated as a local leader driving a major turnaround at Midland, Sasse soon faced calls from former Nebraska Republican Party chairman Mark Fahleson to run for a Senate seat that was opening up. Fahleson, an attorney, would later serve on Midland’s board and negotiate Sasse’s UF contract.

As he launched his Senate campaign in 2013, leaning on his HHS credentials to wage attacks against the recently passed Affordable Care Act, Sasse took “operational leave” from Midland. Despite that status, Sasse earned more than $300,000 from Midland in 2014, according to university financial records. He collected another $81,304 in January 2015, in his first year in the Senate, which Harnisch said was the final amount owed.

Midland officials did not respond to questions about Sasse’s salary while he was on operational leave.

One anonymous search firm insider, who was not part of the effort that hired Sasse, said UF’s board should have raised questions about his résumé, Midland’s finances and the unusual operational leave status.

“The $300,000 in his last year as president of Midland, while on operational leave to run for the Senate—that’s really unusual,” the source said. “The ones that we’ve dealt with where they were on leave had to do a clean break, not be hanging on with a salary during that time. That he earned money from Midland while he was a sitting senator, highly unusual.”

The search firm insider added that Sasse’s résumé should have included his complete work history and that his early exit from Midland and the Senate should have raised questions: “What you’re describing is a pattern. And negative patterns worry search firm consultants,” the source said.

While on the campaign trail, Sasse soon faced questions about his résumé. Media outlets called into question whether he had worked for Leavitt Partners, a consulting firm that helped states implement elements of the ACA, which Sasse was running to overturn. Sasse’s campaign denied the charge, noting he spoke frequently at health-care conferences—earning $10,000 to $15,000 per speech in 2013, according to public records—and simply provided free strategic advice to the firm. Conservative critics accused Sasse of waffling in his stance.

The New York Times also called Sasse out for “stretch[ing] the point” on his ties to McKinsey & Company by claiming in media interviews that he worked “for” the firm, when he had been an adviser, never an employee. And when Politico asked Midland officials for a résumé for Sasse in 2014, a spokesperson said he did not have a résumé or CV available. Sasse has since reframed that experience as working “with” McKinsey. Recently Sasse has come under fire for paying McKinsey $7 million for UF consulting services.

Sasse did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

A Soft Landing at UF

Experts wonder how Sasse, the only finalist who wasn’t a sitting president, ascended to the UF presidency. His many critics suspect state and national politics were at play; under Republican governor Ron DeSantis, Florida hired multiple GOP figures to lead state institutions, and DeSantis himself was gearing up for a 2024 run for the White House.

The University of Florida did not respond to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

The board members who ultimately selected Sasse appear not to have been aware of the questions surrounding his résumé and financial dealings.

“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” said Amanda Phalin, a UF faculty member who was on the Board of Trustees when Sasse was hired and is now on the Florida Board of Governors, when Inside Higher Ed asked about payments Midland made to Sasse’s firm and to Sasse himself while he was on leave.

While she noted that “his résumé was unconventional,” she believes the search was legitimate.

“From where I sat, I did not see anything that indicated political interference. If you look back at the Board of Trustees meeting where we interviewed President Sasse, I asked him directly if he had contact with the governor or the governor’s office? And he said, ‘No.’ I pressed him directly on these issues of political interference, and he told me to my face, privately and publicly, that there was no involvement of the governor’s office or the governor,” Phalin said.

DeSantis has said he wasn’t “involved necessarily” with the pick. His office did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

Others see Sasse’s hire at Florida as a soft landing for a senator who had put himself at odds with his own party by publicly challenging former president Donald Trump—initially over Trump’s divisive remarks on the campaign trail—and later voted to impeach him in 2021. (Despite his objections to Trump’s behavior, Sasse largely supported the president’s legislative agenda.)

“Sasse was known in our state for being a contrarian, and he loved being in that role and then writing a thought piece in The New York Times or some other place in order to stay in the media and, quite frankly, sell more books. But he was increasingly at odds with the base of his party,” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party.

With the state party drifting further to the right and Sasse drawing a line on Trump, Kleeb argued that his support was beginning to erode; he was making fewer public appearances in Nebraska and seemed unlikely to win re-election in 2026. She believes Sasse did not intend to run again, particularly with former Republican governor Pete Ricketts angling for his Senate seat. Ricketts, who left gubernatorial office due to term limits, was appointed to the Senate vacancy by his successor, Republican governor Jim Pillen, whom Ricketts donated to and endorsed in the 2022 gubernatorial race.

The Nebraska GOP did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

Kleeb was one of several sources who suggested that Sasse was picked at UF because of his political appeal to DeSantis. Others said the governor believed Sasse could be useful in delivering the Midwest if DeSantis were to become the Republican nominee, and as an ally against Trump, who ultimately prevailed in the primary.

Though his UF presidency reached a sudden end and he faces a potential investigation into his finances, Sasse will remain at the university as president emeritus and a tenured professor. He’s set to make a base salary of at least $1 million a year through 2028 unless he takes a job elsewhere.

To Danko, the former UF grad student who is now in a master’s program at Hunter College, the Sasse saga illustrates a major problem with how Florida’s public institutions pick presidents now. Ultimately, he believes, the situation could have been prevented with proper public vetting, which should have started with a critical look at Sasse’s winding résumé.

“This could have been avoided if academics with experience reviewing other academics or candidates’ CVs would be given access to the CV of the person they’re hiring. If that is hidden from people who understand what they’re looking at and decided on by people who don’t have the vocabulary to understand what they’re reviewing, you end up with bad decisions,” Danko said.