My only concern in these matters is faculty rebellion/respect. A lot of academics only respect other academics. If they don’t cooperate with the president, that’s a huge problem for the university. But for any school that can manage that issue, there’s no reason a manager/fundraiser/politician can’t do the job well.
My chief worry is that these non-academics will fail to see the value of the humanities and will slash funding for these programs.
Marty Meehan did a good job at Lowell. Seems to be doing a good job at UMass Amherst.
President Wilson was the president of Princeton before he was the president of the USA…
In any case, the job of the President of a university is to schmooze, bring in money, and, if possible, set up some agenda that will, preferably, leave the university in better shape that it was when they came.
WPI had one admiral and two generals as presidents at different times. One Lt. General general also had a PhD in Physics. All three non-academics established solid reputations as University presidents. One of the less successful Presidents was a very highly regarded academic scientist. The current President has extensive background in NASA and academia.
@Massmomm The Lt General was a West Poniter with a PhD in Physics and was impressed early on with the new program that was forming at Harvey Mudd as WPI was launching its new “plan.” He was pushing very hard to discover how to get science/engineering students more involved in the humanities.
I’m guessing it depends on the individual’s organizational and leadership skills rather than extensive career exposure to academic administration. They also need to work with a good board of trustees.
Several schools have dropped majors in order to focus resources on more popular majors or to develop new majors, such as adding a new foreign language or computer science. It didn’t make sense for Goucher to offer a full major in math or physics when there were 3-4 students graduating in those majors (not 10, and even 10 might not be worth it). If a student (or 3 or4) are interested in taking an advanced course they can go to Towson or Hopkins for that one class and still be a student at Goucher.
Small schools can’t offer everything and still do a good job. Both physics and math have courses that have to be taken in sequence and if the school can only offer the class once a year or even once every 2 years, it’s going to take a long time for a math major to graduate if they get off sequence, especially with the study abroad requirement.
But don’t go to Goucher if you don’t like what they offer. Easy.
Started a new thread for the off-topic threads deleted by moderator (Goucher eliminating math and physics majors): http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2119987-survival-of-a-wide-range-of-liberal-arts-at-small-non-elite-colleges.html
So, to bring it back to the specific incident that triggered my inquiry, would you be concerned about your kid going to a school that just hired a non-academic president? Or is it unlikely to impact the day-to-day life of the average student?
@Corinthian probably it will not impact the day to day life of the student but market forces might. I think it is smart to look into a college’s finances before enrolling. IF the president was chosen as a last-ditch measure to reform the school and put it on better financial footing, that might be a red alarm that the school would be rumbling with faculty dissatisfaction and budget cuts. If it was just in keeping with the school’s culture, size and focus, I don’t think it would mean anything at all.
My kid knew the president of her college…actually two because there was a change during her undergrad years. She had conversations with him.
My second kid never set eyes on the President of the university.
As long as the person is a good leader, that’s what matters. For most students…this just won’t matter.
There are a lot of people running universities who are not academics. There are people elected to the board of Regents who are not academics. They are more concerned with the business side and paying the bills. Most departments handle their own hiring with President/Chancellor approval
The president coming from a pure academic background should be the least of your worries when selecting a college. Yes, there will be turmoil in the first two years, but that will happen regardless.
I think it might be okay for a college president to not previously have had an academic position, but I also wouldn’t assume that people with business experience will be good at dealing with the business side and paying the bills. In my state, people are being appointed to the board of regents as payback for supporting the governor, not because they have proved themselves as competent CEOs.
But Wilson was an academic first and a politician later. He got his undergraduate degree at Princeton and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, then taught at Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and Princeton before being appointed President of Princeton. He was later elected Governor of New Jersey and finally President of the United States.
A possibly cautionary tale: former U.S. Senator Bob Kerry from Nebraska was appointed President of The New School in 2001. He raised a lot of money and expanded the faculty and student enrollment but ran into a lot of faculty and student opposition to what was perceived as an autocratic leadership style, spending priorities that he imposed on the school without much faculty or student input, an ambitious reorganization plan, again imposed top-down without buy-in from faculty or students, and what many perceived to be an exorbitant presidential salary, the highest in the country at the time. The faculty gave him a vote of “no confidence,” but the trustees backed Kerrey. That was followed by a series of student occupations of buildings, demanding Kerrey’s resignation, but he held on until 2010.
Regardless of who you think was right (or less wrong) in those particular disputes, sometimes there’s just a basic culture clash when a hotshot non-academic comes in at the top, thinking he’s the CEO of a corporation in which everyone must jump when he cracks the whip. Our academic institutions don’t usually work like that. There are strong traditions of co-governance in which faculty, and to some extent students, have substantial opportunities for input, though not the final say, in major institutional decisions. And resentments boil up when people feel those traditions aren’t respected, and they’re being treated as mere underlings whose job is to just shut up and follow the orders of a boss who doesn’t himself have intimate knowledge of and experience with the academic world. That doesn’t always happen, of course, but it’s a risk, more so with a non-academic at the helm than with an academic.
At the other extreme, Dwight D. Eisenhower was pretty unsuccessful as President of Columbia University for quite different reasons. Eisenhower seemed to view the position as an undemanding and largely honorary one that would allow him to devote his energies to more important pursuits, like building NATO, advising the government on defense policy and the merger of the Departments of the Army and Navy into the Department of Defense, promoting the virtues of citizenship, and golfing. He didn’t devote much time to fundraising or administration, and by all accounts the university suffered for it. As an outsider, he simply didn’t understand what the job entailed, though a more charitable interpretation is that he was misled in this regard by some trustees who sold him on the job by arguing it wouldn’t interfere with his outside interests. They apparently thought the prestige Eisenhower would bring to the university as arguably the nation’s preeminent war hero would more than compensate for any shortcomings in his skill set or his lack of interest in the actual demands of the job. Many people at Columbia say he was the worst President in the school’s history.
I already posted: “MODERATOR’S NOTE: I deleted a few off-topic posts. Please stick to the post’s original topic.” Moderators’ instructions aren’t to be taken as optional. Please stay on topic. I deleted a few posts and issued warnings. Please don’t make our job more difficult than it needs to be.
@Corinthian - to answer your question - I would not have a problem sending my D to a college with a non-academic president. Actually, I think because he is a Hope alum will serve him well because he know what the school is all about, what they value and what kind of students are drawn to the school. In this day where smaller schools are increasingly having a tough time filling in their classes and raising money for scholarships, his finance background will be helpful to keep Hope on the map. And he seems pretty down to earth from what little I’ve read, so he may be very well suited to being approachable by staff, faculty and students.
Thanks for the information about the Eisenhowers as college presidents, correcting my previous error. I did not know that.
The difficulties that non-academic presidents tend to run into with faculty come more from the president not understanding the work of the faculty and lacking respect for them, rather than from the faculty not respecting a non-academic.
A person whose university experience is limited to undergraduate work, perhaps supplemented by post-graduate work in law school or medical school, will not have had experience with the effort that it takes to generate new knowledge. Degrees such as the M.D. and J.D. are based on learning an existing knowledge structure–not trivial, to be sure, but not the same as adding to current knowledge in a significant way.
A non-academic president who is willing to take the time to understand faculty efforts will come off fine. One who is not is likely to do poorly.
There are certainly business aspects of running a university. When one regards a university as a business, though, I become concerned. The story is told of a class at the Harvard School of Business, early in the students’ programs, where the students are asked, “What is the purpose of a foundry?” After hearing a lot of answers that in fact state the purpose of a foundry, the HBS prof reveals that the purpose of a foundry is . . . to make money.
The purpose of a real university is the creation, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge. If that gets shifted into making money, the university will not function properly. Moreover, its status as a non-profit entity would be in jeopardy.
Some posters have suggested that the academic side of things can be left to the academic Vice President. Countervailing to that, most large universities have a Vice President for Finance and Operations (or a similar title), who is responsible for the “business” side of things. Giving the business side primacy would be of concern to me.
All of that being said, I don’t have a problem with a non-academic president who listens, and comes to understand the nature of the work of the faculty.
Yet again, I think it will be a long time before Caltech appoints a businessman, rather than a scientist, as its president. You can survey the backgrounds of the presidents of the top universities and draw your own conclusions.
Running a college, like any other large organization, is about leadership. agenda, priorities and communication. Making sure the mission is clear and getting the right people in the boat to execute the plan. I imagine much of the pure academic side is handled by the Provost.
However, universities and other non-profits need to pay attention to their finances if they do not want to go out of business.
Universities under financial stress are probably more likely to have internal conflict because making money or avoiding losing money rises to the top of the priority list, often leading to no win choices, any of which will cause the affected constituents to vocally protest. Non academic presidents may be less likely to anticipate such protests or manage them in less destructive ways when they occur.