Posts Tagged “leadership”
America’s colleges and universities are in the early stages of dramatic change. For many, the concentration has been on the development of new academic programs, designed to differentiate academic offerings among institutions and create new revenue streams. For others, efforts to find efficiencies internally or through participation in consortia have improved the bottom line on the expense side of the ledger. These efforts to work within the framework of the existing financial model have been fruitful, especially since it is unlikely that substantial increases in revenue from tuition are likely to occur.
One thing is clear. It’s not enough to say that we should throw away the old financial model. In fact, it can be dangerous. Colleges and universities prefer to move prudently and methodically, with sometimes painfully slow attention to process. In shared governance, there are three groups that must be recognized – trustees, faculty, and administrators.
Coordination and buy-in take time. Otherwise, it’s the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Colleges must have a solid foundation to thrive and upon which to implement change.
College Fiefdoms Can Hinder Change
The biggest problem is likely to be on the administrative side. Higher education institutions are like small cities with all of the complexity and potential for confrontation that exists in these political environments. Each administrative division often operates as an individual fiefdom. This is particularly problematic when trustees do not understand that their role is to put their noses in and fingers out of the tent as Cornell’s president, Frank H. T. Rhodes, once said.
The role of faculty can also be complicated, especially if faculty governance is weak or dominated by a few individual voices. Friendships among all parties can muddy the necessary distance between them when the difficult and sometimes unpopular administrative decisions must be made.
The first step, arguably more important than issues like strategic partnerships, any decisions on outsourcing, or participation in cost-saving consortia, must be to determine how best to integrate the various fiefdoms into a common institutional sense of self.
College Leadership Needs Authority to Make and Manage Change
It mandates that the senior leadership have both an ability to manage change and the authority to make it. And it starts with the value proposition. Based on the mission and history of the institution, colleges must ask themselves who are we and what image do we present to the world beyond the college gates?
These questions presume that a common platform exists through and by which all campus groups can communicate effectively. Writing in University Business a year ago, American University’s provost Scott A. Bass noted that the University “utilizes more than 36 databases for different student-related administrative and learning management functions . . . Yet, there is little or no integration among these discrete data elements.” American University is right to call the question and smart to do so strategically since most institutions finds the same circumstances on their campus.
Dr. Bass asks the question: “Do these systems facilitate effective support for a student who has complex issues and who experiences multiple touch points throughout a given academic year?” The answer is clearly “no.” The effect can be to reduce student retention and graduation rates as frustrated students leave or transfer elsewhere.
In short, the haphazard approach to fiefdoms claiming multiple uses of technology across the campus does not support the student. It also fails to serve the institution well.
Coming Together Around a Common Institutional Database
For change to occur, there must be renewed concentration on how to build a common platform. At the institutional level, diverse databases encourage institutional bureaucracy. They are expensive to install, upgrade, and maintain. They often do not adapt well to solution upgrades. Further, the efforts to connect them are always difficult at best and can impair critical strategic decisions based on multiple inputs of research that must inform these decisions.
The overall point is that while change must occur on college campuses, it is not necessarily a bad or troubling moment. It requires that fiefdoms in critical areas like enrollment, financial aid, advancement, student affairs, career services, and athletics give up a little to support an institution now often at cross purposes with itself.
Change further assumes that a college or university understand its value proposition and be prepared to take the steps internally to support it. And it mandates that the board of trustees and faculty see integration as a way to connect the dots to develop a coherent strategy.
In the end, the integration of a college’s databases is an opportunity for the college community to come together. It is the right kind of efficiency designed to help a college create a more unified, service-friendly, and better-orchestrated database that serves its stakeholders. It is a strategic decision that must be led by the president.
On campuses suffering from cultural inertia, it must break with the older traditions of “we’ve never done it this way before.” And in the end it can be a seminal moment in the tenure of a president who has the courage to lead.
Higher education is misunderstood and struggling financially, but the majority of college and university presidents are increasingly confident that their institutions are financially stable. These seemingly contradictions were found in Inside Higher Education’s annual survey of 706 campus leaders.
Let’s set aside the obvious political concerns among presidents about the Trump Administration or the selection of the new U.S. Education Secretary that underscored many of the questions put to the presidents in the IHE survey, which was conducted in January and early February.
It’s really too soon to tell what the new policies will be toward higher education or what rollbacks of disliked Obama Administration programs and dictates are likely to occur. President Trump has paid scant attention to higher education during the election, the transition, and the first months of his tenure.
The higher education community will have a lot to say as positions and platforms become clearer. But these comments should be seasoned and informed after the fact and not anticipate the best hopes or worst fears before the first steps occur.
The findings that address the climate facing American higher education are the most fascinating.
Disconnect Between Academe and Much of American Society
Perhaps the most interesting finding is that the “2016 election exposed a disconnect between academe and much of American society.” Seventy percent of the presidents sense a growing level of anti-intellectualism in American life. Two-thirds of the presidents agreed that campus protests created optics that the American public interpreted as unfriendly to conservative views.
The presidents were especially concerned that the current political climate works against consensus views on science, including but not limited to areas like climate change.
A majority of the presidents agreed that higher education suffered badly in public perceptions, including in areas like campus diversity and inclusion. They believed that campus racial unrest “led many prospective students and families to think colleges are less welcoming of diverse populations than is really the case.”
Campus Leaders Frustrated with Media Focus on Wealthy, Elite Schools
These concerns extend to the heart of the higher education enterprise. Eighty-four percent believe, for example, that media attention to the rising levels of student debt makes a college education seem less affordable than it actually is. These presidents are also frustrated by the media obsession with a few institutions with large endowments that paints all colleges as wealthy when in fact most of them are not. The majority of presidents also agree that the construction of Taj Mahal-like facilities in rising competitive consumer wars contributes to these perceptions.
In addition, the presidents were concerned about the attitudinal gulf between their concentration on students as individuals who graduate as educated citizens and the “graduates as workforce” focus of most of American society.
Alison Kadlek, senior vice president and director of higher education and workforce engagement in higher education at Public Agenda, notes in the IHE survey release: “What we’re hearing is that the tight connection between education and socioeconomic mobility has been weakened for the public, and confidence in college as a certain path to economic security is waning….”
In other areas, there were signs of improving perceptions. Public college and university presidents were increasingly confident, for example, in the financial stability of their institutions. But among the uncertainties and anxieties faced, the one dominant feature remains a weakening public perception of American higher education.
Leaders Have Not Made Strong Enough Case for Value of Higher Education
One lesson seems obvious from the IHE’s survey. American higher education is not building a case that is sufficient – or, more troubling, even compelling — for the role it plays in American society.
Higher education leadership has failed to capture the narrative succinctly to explain the value proposition to American families and their children, politicians, business leaders, and the wider public.
The belief in the bedrock principle that higher education is the best path into the middle class seems increasingly at risk.
Leadership carries with it considerable risk. But if America’s colleges and universities lose control of their own narrative, they subject themselves to a broad-brush analysis that no longer resonates with key stakeholders, like the American families upon whom they depend for tuition and other means of support. Higher education also runs the risk of being painted less than comprehensively, defined instead by one issue or perception rather than the whole of its parts.
In a sense, the best solution is to violate the principle that all politics is local by thinking about how to craft perceptions beyond the college gates.
While it is heartening to articulate a series of high road value statements about the lasting importance of a college education that will always ring true, the message must also account for the realities that colleges and universities face in the 21st century.
In today’s climate, it may be as critical to stress how colleges and universities transform lives, meet workforce needs, and shape the development of American society as to rely on older arguments about educated citizens.
The goal is the same. It’s just that the language needs to be re-imagined and re-stated more clearly.
One of the most unfortunate results of the overheated political rhetoric that consumed the presidential election, transition, and early days of the Trump presidency has been the unwillingness of either side to see the opportunity for reasoned intellectual debate with those with whom they disagree and perhaps don’t even respect.
Protesters Force Speaker from Middlebury College Campus
The most recent example took place last week at Middlebury College where conservative author and activist, Charles Murray, faced a hostile crowd that forced his speech to be relocated to another site. According to the New York Times, “When Mr. Murray rose to speak, he was shouted down by most of the more than 400 students packed into the room…. Many turned their backs to him and chanted slogans like ‘racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away!’”
Police were able to clear the crowd after considerable effort. A professor accompanying Mr. Murray was injured by protestors as she was escorting him from campus.
Bill Burger, Middlebury’s vice president for communications and marketing, reported that they were “physically and violently confronted by a group of protestors [who] violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and trying to prevent it from leaving campus.”
Charles Murray co-authored The Bell Curve in which he held that there are biological differences in intelligence between racial groups. Murray’s opponents argued effectively that this was bad science and widely discredited. They reasoned that Middlebury’s campus should not host a discussion on topics where one side’s opinion was intellectually unsound and rhetorically weak, only further reinforcing some of the worst biases in American social and cultural history.
A New Litmus Test for “Informed Discussion”?
In doing so, Middlebury’s protestors established a litmus test for informed discussion. Their actions played into the hands of their opponents – especially on a political level – who use their own litmus test to brand debate on college campuses as narrowly ideological, heavily biased, and part of a larger propaganda effort to indoctrinate American students in left-leaning policies and positions.
On one level, Americans can admire the passion that has brought us to the positions that Americans hold on either extreme.
On the other hand, there is a case to be made for more seasoning, maturity, and balance in how America’s colleges and universities foster and encourage political debate about science or any issue on their campuses.
Further, there is real danger in playing out the cards in the wrong sequence.
America’s colleges and universities must remain the place where we nurture the best ideas to protect, incubate and develop new ones.
Some fresh ideas will not stand competing research or the test of time. But it shouldn’t stop anyone from expressing them, providing that the expression is civil.
Colleges Must Practice What They Preach About Tolerance
American higher education must avoid being stamped by their detractors as the intolerant home of limited free speech whose campus communities fail to practice what they preach about tolerance. Why hand the opposite extreme a political weapon with which they will bludgeon you, whether you identify on the left or right politically? Either higher education advocates tolerance or it does not.
Tipping Point in Intellectual Debate
In these days of growing intolerance, we have reached a tipping point in intellectual debate. The U.S. college campus symbolizes what we cherish most about global ideals that transcend even American core values (to the extent that these exist).
American higher education cannot lose its lead as the home of creative inquiry, even when the ideas occasionally have little merit in the eyes of many.
The next months are likely to produce even more heated rhetoric and bigger street protests across college campuses and throughout the country on a variety of proposals that illuminate this growing spirit of intolerance. For those in higher education, demonstrations like the one at Middlebury weaken the moral higher ground that will be necessary to hold positions that will resonate with the American public. At the very least, the guiding spirit must be Dr. King’s non-violent approach to promote an activist agenda.
Upholding Tolerance Requires Leadership
Standing up for tolerance will also require courageous leadership. In this regard, there was a very hopeful moment that emerged from Middlebury’s uproar. Laurie L. Patton, Middlebury’s president, issued a strong moral statement, demonstrating the value of a president who has the courage and maturity to lead a campus.
“Last night we failed to live up to our core values. But I remain hopeful,” wrote Patton. “Last evening, several students, faculty, and staff representing a large spectrum of political perspectives remained in Wilson Hall to discuss the events and to talk about building bridges. Their ability to reach across differences in a rigorous but respectful way was a stark contrast to the events that preceded it. I firmly believe these are the Middlebury values that we have lived so long and that we must strive to embody in the future.”
Teachable moments about tolerance come to us in numerous ways. Let’s hope that the dialogue occurs, and a lesson, long since learned at Middlebury, is now remembered.
In September 2012, I chose to begin to contribute to the national conversation about higher education by tackling the concept of leadership in one of my first blogs for the Huffington Post.
In that article, I suggested, “the job has evolved, but the national imperative for presidents to lead as well as govern remains constant.” As leaders of institutions who incubate ideas, college and university presidents are ideally positioned to make a significant contribution.
Obstacles to Presidential Leadership
I chronicled a number of obstacles to experienced presidential leadership, asserting that:
- the training for how to be a president was spotty, episodic, and inconsistent;
- there is no carefully cultivated farm team from which to pull promising future leaders into the major leagues;
- there is little evidence of trustee-initiated succession planning; and
- shared governance values process and consensus over outcomes making it more difficult for “change agent” presidents to succeed.
Crisis in Shared Governance
While the reception the post received persuaded me to continue to publish and speak out on issues of higher ed leadership and governance, there was something missing from my argument. The recent dust-ups among college presidents, boards of trustees, and faculty reinforce the continuing crisis in shared governance.
The cold fact is that there is no evidence to suggest that presidents seeking to lead have any incentive to do more than preside.
It’s dangerous to put your tenure on the line and imperative that you know when to fall on your sword. What I missed in that first blog, however, was that there is a practical side to college leadership.
Shared Governance Suffers from Lack of Education
The biggest failure in shared governance is the lack of broad-based education about the issues facing those who govern America’s colleges and universities. Trustees are the most poorly educated. There is a corresponding need to keep faculty fully informed, especially on issues that affect higher education beyond the college gates.
All parties should be watching the platform positions taken by the two presidential candidates, for example, to determine how the potential implementation of these positions will affect their institution.
But there is a practical dimension to leadership. What you know, how much you know, and where and how you educate yourself has a direct relationship to the quality of shared governance on a college campus.
Education begins with the presidents, given their role as chief spokespersons and chief executive officers. A president must be an informed generalist on almost any subject that affects higher education. It’s hard to be transparent in a university community when you don’t know much about the subjects that most affect it.
New Book is Must-Read for Senior Leadership in Higher Ed
A new book by George Boggs and Christine Johnson McPhail, Practical Leadership in Community Colleges: Navigating Today’s Challenges, is a must-read for senior leadership at every level – including faculty, senior staff, trustees, and presidents.
The authors, both seasoned higher education leaders, use field experiences, reports, news coverage, and interviews with leaders and policy makers to review some of the challenges facing college leadership and offer advice on how best to navigate and succeed against the crosscurrents that leadership faces. They offer case studies to show in practical terms how the job gets done.
Where the Theoretical Meets the Practical
Drs. Boggs and McPhail have performed an invaluable service because they offer a readable primer that is also a continuing resource, especially for new leadership. Its value extends across American higher education, although the concentration is on America’s community colleges. Their book is where the theoretical meets the practical.
In a recent interview with George Boggs, I asked why practicality would resonate with leaders whose day job is to be “big picture” oriented. Boggs replied that higher education leadership emerges unprepared from a variety of backgrounds. He argued persuasively that the range of topics, venues, and constituencies presumed a deeper understanding among new presidents than exists today.
Dr. Boggs believes that the most important contribution that the book can make is to encourage leaders to “think about issues before they have to deal with them.”
Greatest Challenge is Helping Students Succeed
You come away from a book like Practical Leadership asking about the policy behind the advice. Boggs suggested that he and Dr. McPhail view helping students succeed as the greatest challenge facing American higher education. They remain encouraged that major foundations and national policy makers are tackling pieces of the foundation upon which student success is built.
Perhaps that’s what’s best about this new primer. It’s optimistic and hopeful – a kind of “roll up your sleeves and get the job done” approach to leadership. In that blog four years ago, I suggested that presidents must have the courage to lead. Boggs and McPhail now demonstrate that it is also important to know how and why.
Here we go again.
Late last month, the board of trustees fired Suffolk University’s president, Margaret McKenna, for cause. She is the fifth president in five years to depart the school.
The six-month saga had more thrills, spills, and missteps than the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and has become something of a spectator sport in Boston. Ms. McKenna, a civil rights lawyer, foundation head, and former university president, is much respected and widely known throughout American higher education. The Board hired an independent investigator and found breaches in her employment agreement and fiduciary responsibility that justified the termination, according to an email from the board.
Ms. McKenna released her own statement saying that she was given three reasons for her termination. The Board complained that she had inadequately communicated with the board about university accreditation officials, improperly provided information to the accreditors, and participated in a meeting with the Boston Globe’s editorial board when the first effort to oust her occurred in February.
The Board released its email to a largely empty campus and terminated Ms. McKenna well before the start of the new academic year. It appointed the provost as the interim president and named a trustee to head the search committee for a new president.
The Boston Globe fired back in a blistering editorial opening with “well, excuse us.” In a fairly balanced opinion, the Globe reported on the achievements of Ms. McKenna and the trustees. Yet the Globe concluded: “But now that the board has fired her, it owns the consequences, and must ensure that the university gets the fully empowered, long-term leader that an institution so important to Boston’s future needs.”
Let’s be clear about the principal issue facing Suffolk University. It’s no longer about shutting down the friendly fire nor is it about contributing further to the ceaseless gossip in the growing “she said/they said” debacle. Indeed, both sides need to get past what happened quickly and reach an accommodation immediately. If all parties love Suffolk University – as they profess they do – then the University community must move forward to understand the root cause of the mess they have created.
The point is that it is pointless to litigate Suffolk’s crisis in the court of public opinion. What is essential, however, is that the shared system of governance at Suffolk – or what is left of it – must begin to function again.
The actions by the University’s board of trustees indicate at the moment that the board does not understand that it is the problem. The board’s actions have been vindictive, exceedingly public, secretive, lacking transparency, and hopelessly insular. Its recent actions are like watching the captain on the Titanic rearrange the deck chairs moments before the ship collides with the iceberg. Anyone could see it coming.
Board of Trustees Has Lost its Credibility
Let’s state the obvious – the board has completely lost its credibility. It is divided, badly factionalized, and hopelessly out of touch with how American higher education works. The terms of the February agreement keeping Ms. McKenna in place for almost 18 months effectively set up her to fail by not crafting a corresponding climate to ensure her authority, and therefore, her success.
To fix Suffolk University, the board must begin by acknowledging its own mistakes. It cannot correct from within by appointing trustees, no matter how well regarded, to begin a new executive search. To regain credibility, the Suffolk Board must also reach out in full transparency to faculty and remaining senior staff – the three legs of shared governance in higher education – to describe a transparent and believable search process around which the Suffolk University community can rally.
It must also conduct a nationwide search that does not presume that local candidates best suit the needs of a national university. These conversations must go well beyond the boardrooms and legal offices populating Boston’s skyscrapers where much of the mischief began. For the moment, Suffolk’s trustees will need to borrow against the credibility of respected national voices to have any hope of attracting a deep pool of qualified candidates.
Perhaps the greatest mistake that Suffolk’s trustees can make in the coming months is to fail to understand that American higher education is watching. They will face difficult, painful angry conversations with faculty, students, alumni, donors, and other key stakeholders. It is likely a given that donor support – especially among alumni and parents — will take a hit.
Damaged Reputation, Loss in National Standing
But what should worry trustees the most is Suffolk’s loss in national standing due to the damage that they have inflicted on its reputation. American colleges and universities take decades to burnish their academic standing among their peers. It usually takes as long for the standing to decline as inattention, board overreach, or weak administrations – or some combination of all three – extinguish the reputational flame.
But Suffolk’s trustees have managed to diminish the standing of the institution that they are obligated to protect with a parochial swiftness that is almost breathtaking in its arrogance and insularity.
In these kinds of crises, you can fix almost anything. Sometimes you can hide in plain sight, wait it out, and confuse the issue. But what you cannot do is fix a broken reputation.
Suffolk University is a good place. It deserves better.
American higher education’s operational model is based on outmoded — and some (myself included) would argue, unsustainable — revenue and expense assumptions.
In a “Futurist” piece in NACUBO’s Business Officer magazine (July/August 2016), I argue that institutions must look inward to develop a budget format that creates a sustainable financial model appropriate to changing circumstances on college and university campuses.
To achieve financial viability, each institution will have to manage change by developing new financial models after evaluation its own set of strengths and weaknesses. Many institutions will succeed; some will not. …The biggest variable is the experience and innovative capacity of the leadership.
Specifically, it will be critical to match changing financial practices with modernized, streamlined and better informed governance — beginning with how trustees see their role in shared governance.
Click HERE or on the image below to read and/or download the article.
Click HERE to read the article and the entire issue on the Business Officer site.
