Open Writing

The average tenure of a college or university president in the USA is around 5 years. A few last 8 or 9 years, and some depart after only a year. The search and interview process is costly and exhaustive. It’s also exhausting for candidates and interviewers alike. These gruelling selection processes can take a year or more, and could not be tolerated by business corporations. Some institutions have utilized professional head hunters, and have earmarked their preferred candidate long before the formal interviewing commences.

So given that this protocol is thorough to the point of being almost farcical, why is it that senior administrators are generally short lived? At least a part of the problem lies in the fact that the final decision on a new appointment is made by the board of trustees, however collegial the preliminary interviews might have been.

An educational board of trustees is a strange beast by many standards. The members arrive there by a variety of routes. Obviously one would think that a prospective trustee should have a distinguished educational background, have demonstrated outstanding leadership and managerial skills, and be an influential presence in the community or even nationally. Not unimportantly, a trustee should either be expected to contribute generously to the institution’s endowment, or at the very least be a conduit for the contributions of others.

The reality is often quite different. Some board members, though successful in their own field, have no formal, higher education; the, so called, self made men or women. The pitfall in such an appointment is that the appointee usually hasn’t a clue about the workings of an institute of higher education. They are not accustomed to collegiality, consultation, or the delicate choreography of dealing with tenured faculty. Pragmatism is a laudable quality, but not in an endeavor that has the complex and sensitive task of launching the careers of thousands of students.

Then there are the political appointees: the crony of a senator, the father of an up-coming state representative, and so on. Not only do these candidates often lack higher education credentials, but they are disinterested in their board responsibilities to the point of being little more than warm bodies. Institutions of higher education want to be seen as proactive in matters of political correctness, so some board members, though distinguished in some way, are appointed to demonstrate diversity rather than for the relevance of their qualifications or skills.

The likelihood that a board with this cross section of members will make a wise decision about the appointment of a new president is slim indeed. Aside from their lack of knowledge about how colleges and universities operate, their expectations are often conflicted. The Ivy League universities, on down to the most modest state institutions of learning, place enormous importance these days on a healthy, some would say bloated, endowment.

The ability to raise funds is therefore high on the list of criteria for hiring a president, though one might ask why in the case of several prestigious schools. To quote a few examples: Harvard leads with a 22.6 billion dollar endowment, followed by Yale with 12.7 billion, then Princeton with 8.7 billion, and on down. And the sheer size of the endowment isn’t the whole story. Princeton actually leads the pack in terms of the highest proportion of endowment per student at 1.32 million dollars.

Typically, the boards also have a hiring wish-list that reflects either the current needs of the institution or some long range plan, often conceived by the outgoing president. Most wish-lists are beyond the capability of any, one candidate to execute, so the new president is doomed from the start.

As stated earlier, fund raising is paramount, but at the same time most boards want their president to raise the profile of the institution as a center of excellence for certain specialties. Along with that, they require this paragon to weed out unproductive faculty, many of whom are tenured and union members, and to increase the efficiency and productivity of the undertaking. In their spare time, they may also be expected to move whole sections of campus across town to allow for expansion.

Somewhere in all this is the almost forgotten responsibility to ensure the very best education for the students, some of whom are paying annual tuition fees that poor people would be happy to have as their yearly family income. Aside from the sheer impossibility of satisfying a board’s requirements, it is often the case that the board has not articulated those requirements accurately from the outset, primarily because they lack the understanding necessary to do so.

So it comes as no surprise, after the honeymoon is over, to find a newly appointed president blundering about the campus, treading on toes, trying to satisfy everyone and satisfying no one. It isn’t long before the rumblings begin and the board becomes disenchanted.

Frank Rhodes, Cornell University’s President from 1977 to 1995, was one of the most successful fund raisers of his time, but fell into disfavour with the board for spending too much time away from the campus raising funds! The current president, Jeffrey Lehman, has just resigned after only 2 years in office due to “Disagreements with the board over how their vision for the future can be achieved.” Everyone else apparently thought he was doing a great job.

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