PROFILE JOHN FRY: Financial affairs keep Fry busy

Lafayette College is only an hour and a half away from Penn by car, but for John Fry, the journey from there to here took him over a decade. Fry, a 1982 Lafayette graduate, has been the executive vice president of the University for the last five months. As executive vice president, Fry has the all-encompassing task of dealing with public safety, finance and computing at the University -- among other departments. "I would say that the executive vice president is basically responsible for all the non-academic, non-fund raising functions of Penn," Fry said. While Fry has only been working at the University for a short time, he can hardly be considered a neophyte in college matters. Fry made the decision to work in academia while a student at Lafayette. He was president of the student government and he served on many major academic committees. From there, he landed a job at Peat Martwick, a consulting firm. By night, he worked toward receiving his MBA. Before coming to campus, he spent the last 10 years consulting with universities as partner in charge of higher education and not-for-profit consulting services for Coopers and Lybrand. At the prestigious firm, Fry visited more than 200 types of institutions on both coasts of the United States for all types of projects. However, he noted that managing a 35-person consulting practice is much different than managing $2.2 billion for the University. As Fry settles into his new role, he already has been working on several projects to better the University as a whole. Fry said his department is currently preparing to start a complete restructuring of Information Systems and Computing and other computing organizations. "This will be a comprehensive University look at computing," he said. Fry will also be looking at ways to save more money for the University. Currently, the University spends about $640 million on goods and services per year. "A couple of percentage points of improvement can be a huge gain," he said. Lately, Fry has been somewhat concerned by the appropriations bills that have had trouble passing through Congress. The bills call for an increase in federal college loan costs. "What we will do is continue to innovate," he said. "If one source of funding closes down, we will go through other ways." He was, however, pleasantly surprised by the latest U.S. News and World Report "best buy" rankings -- which listed the University as 15th in the country for its "discounted sticker price." "People are legitimately concerned about the cost of higher education," he said. "I believe the ranking shows that people making a significant investment are getting a significant return. You get what you pay for. "As for the overall and graduate school rankings, I was not surprised," he added. Fry also said the University is at a competitive disadvantage because it receives little endowment support. "We are committed to an aggressive financial aid policy," he said. "But, if we want to continue to move up in the rankings, we need more endowment."