But Nikias had bigger plans-he dreamed of turning the school into an intellectual powerhouse that would achieve “undisputed elite status,” mirroring the ascent of Los Angeles on the global stage. Financial aid was at an all-time high, the endowment was flush, the student body’s test scores had, at long last, surpassed those of its crosstown rival, UCLA. Nikias inherited a school on the rise, and it was already superior, financially and academically, compared to any time in its history. When the highest fundraising goal his advisers supposedly came up with was $3 billion, he impulsively doubled the figure-earning the nickname the “Six-Billion-Dollar Man.” He would meet that milestone 18 months ahead of schedule.

As soon as Nikias took over as USC’s president in 2010 he launched an audacious campaign to raise money and finally enshrine the school as a top-tier institution. He came to USC as an engineering professor in 1991, and by 2003, he’d managed to coax a $52 million donation from a cofounder of Qualcomm.

He learned early in his career how money could fuel his aspirations. Educated in Athens, he loved to play off USC’s mascot, the Trojan, and drolly referred to the school as “Troy.” He often talked of USC as “a new Rome of the West”-and aggrandized its importance at the center of an academic empire that spanned the United States and across the Pacific Rim. A Greek-Cypriot engineer, Nikias was an ambitious, self-confident salesman comfortable hobnobbing with billionaires and fond of quoting the classics. But respect proved elusive.Įnter Chrysostomos Loizos “Max” Nikias. A few strong leaders, one with a knack for fundraising and PR, eventually turned the university into a research and academic behemoth that began to shoulder its way among more established East Coast rivals. It had a nearly 70 percent acceptance rate. had finally become a global capital, and the real estate moguls and Hollywood execs that ran it were eager to have a university that could hold its own among the Ivies.įor much of its early life, USC was most famous for its athletic programs and affluent student body-by the early 1990s the Princeton Review noted that the school was best known for its festive fraternity parties and sports teams. Founded in a mustard field in 1880 when Los Angeles was still mostly ranchland, the evolution of the University of Southern California has mirrored that of the Southland: It grew, got wealthy, struggled with a flaky reputation among the East Coast elites it so badly wanted to impress, and finally started to matter when it began to accumulate serious money and influence.

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