To the Editor:
As president of the New England Commission of Higher Education and former college president for 15 years, I’m in a pretty good position to weigh in on what’s a very obvious trend in our industry: the increasingly short tenure of college presidents (“Portrait of the Presidency,” The Chronicle, April 14). According to the American Council on Education, the average presidential tenure was 8.5 years in 2006, then dropped to 6.5 years in 2017. ACE’s 2023 report was just released and the latest number begins with a 5. I expect when ACE issues its next report, that number will decline even further. In Massachusetts alone, 11 institutions had open presidencies last year. When I was hired as President of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta in 2005, I was obviously the rookie among the 60 college presidents in the state. When I left fifteen years later, every other Georgia institution had turned over a presidency at least once and many, several times. Beyond today’s average of 5.9 years, we’ve seen story after story of breath-takingly short tenures. Temple University’s president resigned after just two years, the Scripps College president left after a mere seven months, and most recently, the Vermont State University president after nine months. All this is not good news.
No one should feel sorry for college presidents. Serving as president is an incredible privilege and typically well-compensated. Those who resign or retire almost always land on their feet. This is not a plea on their behalf. Rather, it’s a statement on behalf of institutions. From my seat today, overseeing the accreditation of more than 200 institutions across the globe, if I had to point to one factor that leads to institutional instability it would be the instability of leadership. It’s almost impossible for an institution to make forward progress when its leaders turn over in a handful of years.
Much has been written about exactly why the tenure of presidents has declined. Of course, no single factor is to blame. Certainly the stresses of the pandemic have been a factor of late, but that is too simple an explanation. The changing nature of presidential searches is a real issue. As more and more searches are conducted in less than an open fashion, the ability to make the right match decreases. I can recall at least two searches I participated in where, after a few days spent on campus, I concluded it was not the right place for me. I also know that there were others where the college community decided I was not the right person for them. These were both examples of decisions made with at least a modicum of personal interaction. Just 20 years later, it’s quite rare that a candidate gets this kind of exposure to constituents before they are hired. I know “crapshoot” is not a technical term, but hiring someone who will have such a powerful impact on the institution after a committee spends a few hours with the candidate in an airport hotel conference room begins to resemble that gamble. The changed nature of presidential searches is not the only factor — perhaps not even the most critical one — but I believe it has had an impactful and negative influence.
I’d also suggest that while serving as a college president has never been an easy job (it has always been difficult to ensure that all the different constituencies one serves remain reasonably content), the task today has never been more challenging. Again, there’s no one reason for that, but some clear contenders leap to mind. Trying to balance competing priorities when budgets are increasingly tight certainly makes the job harder and often leads to the dissatisfaction of faculty, in particular. Votes of no-confidence happen now with much greater frequency and while such votes don’t always lead directly to presidential turnover, in the end, most presidents don’t survive such a measure. It’s also quite clear to me that many presidents no longer expect to serve a long tenure and begin to look for the next best opportunity a few years into their term. While this is understandable at some level, it is deeply unfortunate. To lead something as complex as a college or university takes commitment as well as a lucid understanding of how long it may take to accomplish meaningful goals.
Unfortunately, our new world of social media can very quickly turn pockets of displeasure into a tsunami of personal attacks. It takes a tremendous amount of self-confidence to withstand these onslaughts and quite understandably, a beleaguered president might look for happier pastures elsewhere. Finally, the increasingly unforgiving nature of people today makes it quite common for a single misstep to bring an end to a job or even an entire career. And of course, the range of things that are now considered unforgivable has changed, and the way the internet amplifies those missteps has grown exponentially. Even positive social movements like Black Lives Matter and MeToo have sometimes made leadership more challenging and complex.
I certainly don’t have a proposal that will magically stem the ebbing tenure tide that has been building for a long time now, but I believe incremental improvement can shore up these ACE numbers. Search committees ought to have very serious conversations about how open the search process can be, though I suspect most search consultants these days will push back very hard on that idea. I believe Boards need to understand that their role in leading an institution has to be more than hiring and firing presidents. The multitude of issues that institutions face today cannot be solved by one president alone and certainly not when presidential tenures last only five years. Very difficult decisions that often must be made should be driven by the Board and the President, in coordination and mutual support. And finally, I will make two pleas: one to presidents and one to their constituents. Presidents, please appreciate both the honor and the responsibility that come with accepting your privileged appointment. You should always expect to remain in the position for more than five years, knowing that sometimes things might turn out differently. To all the varied constituencies of higher education — boards, faculty, staff, students, and alumni — try to support your president in his or her efforts, and understand how debilitating it is to your institution to have leadership turn over in short order. There will be times, of course, when that is necessary and in the best interests of your college or university, but those ought to be the exception. Not the rule.
Lawrence M. Schall
President
New England Commission of Higher Education
Wakefield, Mass.