The News and Non-News about Turnover in Private College Presidencies

The arrivals and departures of college presidents is a hot topic these days. / iStock Image

February 20, 2024 / By Roland King

The arrivals and departures of college presidents has been an especially hot topic for a few years now.  The controversial departure of two Ivy League presidents in recent months has thrown an even brighter spotlight on college presidents and their tenuous positions.  In a December congressional hearing, Penn’s Liz Magill, Harvard’s Claudine Gay, and MIT’s Sally Kornbuth all gave evasive answers to whether calling for Jewish genocide would violate their schools’ policies, and the first two have since departed.

Political pressures, declining enrollment, and shrinking financial resources challenge even well-endowed and highly ranked institutions, but especially smaller, more rural, and less well-known colleges. 

Political pressures, declining enrollment, and shrinking financial resources challenge even well-endowed and highly ranked institutions, but especially smaller, more rural, and less well-known colleges.  It seems reasonable to expect an uptick in turnover, with more college leaders heading for the door.  Now that we can fully summarize the 2023 private college turnover, though, the numbers don’t show that happening.  Still, there are other trends beginning to emerge.

Some brief background:  For 15 years I worked with private nonprofit college presidents at a national association in Washington, D.C.  When I retired, I used that background and resources to build a richly-detailed database.  Since 2017, the file has grown into more than 3,000 records of nearly all leadership changes over that period, with details on each individual.  While I don’t track presidents in the for-profit or public sectors, I do have extensive information on virtually all presidents at  private nonprofit institutions.

Turnover Numbers Are Actually Lower
For 2023, I found 132 private college presidents taking office over the year as permanent appointments.  That is well below the four previous years, when new permanent appointments averaged 146 a year.  (I’ll address interim appointments separately.)  Over  2023, I also found 134 permanently-appointed presidents left office, a bit lower than the average  of 140 for the four preceding years.

Private College Presidents Don’t Seem to Be Leaving Sooner
Closely related to the turnover issue is longevity:  how long are sitting college presidents staying in office?  The average tenure for departing private college presidents in 2023 was 8.4 years in office, well above the average time in office for all currently-serving permanent private college presidents:  7.9 years in 2023.

When It Didn’t Work Out:  The Untold Story of Short-term Presidencies
Based on actual time in office, I have tagged departing presidents who served less than five years (about two-thirds of the average private college president’s tenure) as “short-term presidents.”   The number of short-timers jumped dramatically in 2023, reaching almost a third of all departing presidents.  Previously they had accounted for an average of less than a quarter.  The stories behind these early departures are most often sad.

In 2023, the reasons for the 43 early departures included health or other personal issues (7), retirement (6), to take another position (8), or as a result of publicly-acknowledged issues with the board or campus constituencies (9).

Even more common, though, were another 13 early departures that were simply unexplained by the president, the public relations office, or the board.  At least some of these may have resulted from board or constituency tensions.  Others may be driven by unpleasant surprises a new president finds when taking office.  While rarely stated directly, many of these mystery departures reflect the pressures on today’s presidents and boards.

Gender and Minority Shifts Make News
Historically, around a third of incoming private college presidents have been female.  In 2023, however, the proportion of permanent female appointees advanced to 37 percent – a new high.

Also hitting a new high at 18 percent were newly-appointed permanent presidents whose race is other than white non-Hispanic.  That is five percent higher than the average minority representation over the four previous years.  As in past years, the largest minority groups are Black/African American and Latinx.

The Public/Private Highway:  Almost a One-way Street
Of all current private college presidents, nearly 90 have largely public higher education backgrounds.  There is very little traffic, however, in the other direction.  In searching my entire database of current and past presidents, I could find only 10 who had left the private sector for a position at a public institution in the past seven years.  Why the discrepancy?

In many cases, the funding publics get from their state government is their primary revenue stream, and one that is increasingly at the mercy of state legislators.  Maybe more so today than ever, the control of public universities has become a pawn in our vehemently divided society.  In some states, governors and legislators have become hyper-political, making even more politically-driven board appointments than in the past.  While that is an issue worthy of further discussion, the point here is that this often confrontational environment is a disincentive for many presidential candidates to consider searches at the publics.

Interim Appointments:  Temp Work or Presidential Tryouts?
The percentage of interim appointments has been creeping up in recent years, now accounting for nearly a third of all private college presidential appointments in 2023.

These temporary, short-term appointments have long been a less well-known path to a permanent presidency.  Ultimately, about 10 percent of these interims are named president.  With the pressures of the past few years, boards now may be less interested in place-holder interims and more likely to choose candidates they hope might prove worthy of being named as the permanent president.

What Lies Ahead
All of the above point toward a shifting future for institutions that have largely remained unchanged for, in some cases, centuries.  The effect of this shift will most likely not be cataclysmic, in spite of the many sky-is-falling projections, nor will it be evenly distributed across the higher education spectrum.

Along with tracking presidential transitions in recent years, I gather information on the state of the institutions they head.  I have turned to third-party reports – mostly news stories in local and student newspapers – to identify what I call “troubled colleges.”

The list now stands at approximately 200 private colleges and universities.  While they are scattered across almost all Carnegie category classifications, most are baccalaureate or master’s colleges, followed by lesser numbers of doctoral institutions.

Among these most at-risk institutions, the challenges fall into four categories:

• Enrollment Decline and Low Retention:  Especially affecting smaller colleges given the shrinking pool of traditional age college students.

• Leadership:  Intrusive or dysfunctional boards; inept leadership, controversial remarks or malfeasance by the CEO; high leadership turnover.

• Regulatory Issues:  Most commonly, being placed on probation by an accreditor.

• Finances:  Faculty/staff layoffs or furloughs; salary cuts; program eliminations; budget shortfalls

It is the last one, finances, that is most immediately threatening to an institution’s survival.  Of the 200 troubled colleges, I have also traced those that have suffered apparent economic stress since 2022.  There are currently more than 60 on that list, including eight that have already closed or have announced closure plans in the past two years. [Download the list of colleges at jeopardy as a PDF]

Still, small private nonprofit colleges are a resilient bunch.  Many have already begun to reinvent themselves, either alone or as part of a group, in efforts to survive.  Some concepts include:

• Variations on the bilateral merge-or-close decision are appearing.  The University of Bridgeport is now part of Goodwin University, but will retain its name and have its own president.  Gwynedd Mercy University and St. Charles Borromeo Seminary share the Gwynedd Mercy campus but otherwise “maintain separate identities, programs and governance.”  The College of St. Benedict and St. John's University  (Minn.) now share a president and a website.

• Cooperative ventures are expanding.  A consortium of more than 100 colleges has built a catalog of online courses taught by top faculty and available to each participating college’s students.

• Some institutions are fundamentally changing the traditional academic structure.  Hampshire College’s revamped curriculum does away with majors and instead organizes courses around contemporary issues.  A number of colleges are moving away from serving traditional-age residential students entirely, reinventing themselves by partnering with for-profits, offering alternatives to the two-semester campus model,  or serving a particular industry.

All of these changes, and many more to come, will require visionary leadership at private nonprofit colleges and universities.  Tomorrow’s most successful presidents will have to be far more than just the keepers of an institution’s legacy.

About the author:
Now retired, Roland King served for 15 years as Vice President for Public Affairs at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C.  NAICU’s members are the presidents of more than 1,000 private colleges and universities, as well as the leaders of more than 70 specialized private college associations.  Roland continues to work with colleges and universities as a senior consultant with PhairAdvantage Communications, LLC.