Boston University students exercised their right to free speech to shout "obscenities" at a commencement event that would have been "the precursor to a fistfight" back in President Robert A. Brown's youth, according to a statement.
Among the batch of hires and exits, one leader suddenly passed away after her health took a turn only two hours prior. Elsewhere, before becoming president, at least two leaders have served higher education in an academic or administrative capacity for more than 25 years.
Some of these school board members chose to hire—or part ways with—presidents based on their ability to enroll and recruit students as enrollment becomes a more significant challenge for higher ed.
While the role of college president has sometimes been referred to as “an impossible job” in the headlines, it certainly doesn’t have to be. Here are a few specific helpful tips gained from my own experience.
Ron Patterson's record cultivating strong enrollment numbers made him a ready appointment at Chadron State College. One of these president's decisions to step down, however, is hard to decipher.
Mergers, acquisitions, partnerships—oh my! Alliances can be highly individualized depending on each institution's unique set of challenges. However, these trends can help explain what's going on.
With a smaller pool of available students, a growing wake of attention to mental health and a swelling public skepticism of higher education, these small private college and university leaders in Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and Maine are redefining their job to guide their schools in murky waters.
North Texas has 1,200+ trained employees, from administrative assistants up to the president, using their AI-assisted analytics software suit to take huge swaths of data and create visual data models in order to form clear, intentional decision-making.
The American College President Study (ACPS) 2023 Edition found that the majority of today's leaders still fit the status quo of nearly 20 years ago: white, 60-year-old men. However, the rate of women at an institution's helm has increased by almost 12% since the turn of the century.
Aside from some bittersweet endings to some long, healthy careers, one president of a major university left following two "embarrassing" mishaps, and another didn't make it into his first year before resigning.
