A Public Executive Should Get a Public Search

This season’s search for university presidents is winding down, and the executive-search industry is now gearing up for next year. So it comes as no surprise that one of their own has put forward yet another anecdotal defense of the industry — this time a passionate argument for keeping presidential searches secret. In fact, the author is so fervid in his position that he referred to one of our statements against secrecy as “advancing perhaps the world’s worst argument for the open search.” So allow us time to respond.

The author has worked for eight years in the executive-search industry, according to his LinkedIn profile. Beyond this limitation, he’s spent less than three years working in a university — not as a faculty member but as an “outreach coordinator/academic advisor.” It’s doubtful that in this role he participated in or had an opportunity to study the search process at any level. Yet, somehow with this background, and based only on personal experience, he seems confident in speaking with great authority on the need for secrecy in presidential searches.

Governing boards that use his argument to justify secrecy will do so at their own peril. Let us point to just three of the many reasons that any advice supporting secret searches should be viewed with great skepticism, specifically in the context of public universities.

First, the president of a public university is a public executive. They are among the most highly paid, if not the most highly paid, public employees in a state. Virtually every public-university president is paid more than a governor, cabinet official, agency head, legislator, or judge. All of the individuals in these positions are subject to public scrutiny during the appointment process — whether an election, a confirmation hearing, or an open search. We’ve yet to find an instance of these senior government executives being appointed as the result of a secret process.

For some reason, governing boards have recently decided to treat the search for public-university presidents differently. The author’s statement that faculty want open searches in order to perform “a ritual of sacrifice,” and “wanted the applicants to want to be their president so badly that they would bleed professionally for it,” is not just hyperbole but an insult that demonstrates either ignorance of, or contempt for, the well-grounded and longstanding practice of shared governance.

Second, the author states with absolute certainty “that an open search will fail to attract the best candidates.” His evidence in making this claim — “spend just a few days trying to recruit a president, you will learn this.” Such a statement ignores the fact that until the last several years, there was no such thing as a secret search for a college president — public or private. It also fails to address the inherent tensions among the search firms’ profit motives, the candidates’ desire for privacy, and/or the interests of various stakeholders — not the least of which is the public. The issues arising from such tensions should be addressed in a transparent and deliberative process among all stakeholders before leaping to such an unfounded conclusion.

Finally, governing board members would be well served to read our piece on the due diligence clauses we examined in our study of search-firm contracts. As we stated, “One of our assumptions was that given the fees being charged — over $150,000 in many cases — the firms would have a contractual obligation to conduct thorough background reviews of those candidates actively being considered for the highest-ranking and most important posts at any university. The data proved us wrong.”

For example, the only due-diligence review that was included in more than half the contracts was contacting on-list references. That requirement was in only 51 percent of the contracts. In many cases, various aspects of due diligence (for example, affirming the candidate’s degree), were checked through only “publicly available sources,” with the findings “not warranted.” We would also note several recent cases in which aspects of a president’s background came to light after the search process was over and caused them to step down, and/or the search firm’s reputation to be damaged. In one recent case, a firm was actually barred from conducting any further searches for the University of North Carolina system due to a failure of due diligence.

The author, representing a widely held view in the search industry, seems to fear that without secret searches, candidates would be exposed to “the inevitable social-media mob, the torchlights of which would flatter no candidate.” Not only would he and others do well to remember the admonition of Justice Louis Brandeis, that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” but they should look back to James Bryce, from whom Brandeis took his inspiration. In 1888, Bryce wrote:

The executive-search-firm business in the U.S. is a $7 billion industry, according to the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants, with the nonprofit and education sector projected to grow this year by 11.7 percent. We’ve estimated the market for these presidential searches to be worth $20-$25 million per year, with fees ranging from $30,000 to more than $300,000 per search. This does not include reimbursement for expenses or costs absorbed by the universities. With so much at stake, it seems time to pull back the curtain on an industry that has virtually no public accountability and has all but taken over the search process for college presidents in the last 50 years.

James Finkelstein is professor emeritus of public policy and Judith Wilde is the chief operating officer and professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.