W(h)ither the University Presidency? Part II
What Kind of Leaders Do You Need? The Presidency is a tricky role to fill.
This is certainly a moment when universities should be thinking carefully about their current and future leadership, and there is a risk that many mistakes will be made in the process—some out of an exaggerated sense of urgency, some by taking too short-term or too presentist a perspective, some simply because they do not recognize what is needed, or because what they need implies a change in board-president relations or the preferences of certain board members—meaning, in all likelihood, difficult changes at the board level as well.
More on that another day, but for the present, part of the challenge is that being a college president may no longer be a particularly attractive position for the kind of person you might actually need. Beyond the fact that college presidencies are getting shorter and shorter, particularly in public universities, they are often more conflicted, with growing levels of involuntary turnover in recent decades, meaning that potential candidates face a higher probability of dismissal.1
Choosing a president now is intimately tied with rethinking university identity and autonomy, and their relationship to trust, as discussed in recent posts. Old models of presidential recruitment, and the perspective from which they have been developed, may need to be altered just to bring to the table the kind of candidates who are suited to the future.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind that will help.