For Community-College Presidents, a Challenging Role Yields High Turnover

University presidents aren’t the only campus leaders whose employment status may be feeling a bit tenuous. Community-college presidents say unusually high turnover in their sector reflects the complexity of the job and the evolving set of skills needed to perform it well.

“You didn’t used to have as much turnover as you’re having now,” said Walter G. Bumphus, president of the American Association of Community Colleges. Mr. Bumphus likened the number of presidential transitions to a tsunami.

A 2015 report by the League for Innovation in the Community College suggested that community-college presidents have been leaving their posts after shorter lengths of time. More than 40 percent of the 280 community-college leaders surveyed had been in their position between one and five years. In 1997, by comparison, the average community-college president’s tenure was just over nine years, while the most commonly cited tenures fell between 11 and 15 years, according to the report.

The community-college association keeps its own data, which suggest that the average president’s tenure has held relatively stable at about six years. But Mr. Bumphus acknowledged that he has been hearing about presidential searches on a lot of campuses over the past few years.

What’s behind the turnover? The skills needed to be a successful community-college president have changed since the 1990s, past and current presidents said. A role that was once considered a local position now involves more than just convincing the community of a college’s value. It now typically means advocating for the institution’s needs at the county, state, and federal levels, and meeting new accountability metrics that officials want to see, all while garnering the trust of students and faculty members. Combine that with the fact that many longtime college presidents have hit retirement age in recent years, and you have what Karen A. Stout, president of Achieving the Dream, called a perfect storm.

“We’ve been discovered,” Ms. Stout said of community colleges. “I think we were always visible locally in our communities, but the national attention has increased people’s awareness of and, honestly, expectations around the way the local community college performs.”

Ms. Stout, who served as president of Montgomery County Community College, in Pennsylvania, for more than 14 years, said there are plenty of potential land mines a president can step on while trying to please everyone who has an interest in his or her college.

“You’re at the local Chamber of Commerce breakfast, to going back on campus and fielding calls from local politicians, to the evening when you’re at the Rotary dinner,” she said. “In between that there’s a faculty meeting where you’re talking about reducing a program.”

Stewart E. Sutin, a clinical professor of administrative and policy studies at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Education, knows that challenge firsthand. In 2003, when he became president of the Community College of Allegheny County, in Pennsylvania, the college’s operating budget was several million dollars under water, and its accrediting agency had warned that the college wasn’t meeting all 14 of the agency’s standards, Mr. Sutin said.

“My job was to sound the alarm,” he said. Four years later, the college was operating at a surplus, and the faculty had developed new student-outcome goals, as required by the accrediting body. But getting to that point involved making unpopular decisions like increasing tuition in the nursing program and reducing the travel budget, which created “a lot of tension,” Mr. Sutin said.

“We didn’t have a lot of years to mull things over,” he said. “The actions were working, but it was now time, if you will, for the Marine Corps to leave the beachhead and turn things over.”

What’s wrong with high turnover? In some cases, it may be a good idea for a college president to step down. But Joshua Wyner, vice president of the Aspen Institute and executive director of its College Excellence Program, said that it takes a minimum of five years for a president to develop a plan for change and see it through.

“Sustained improvement in student success requires longevity in the presidency,” Mr. Wyner said.

Focus Turns Outward

Declining state funding and tightening budgets mean a greater portion of the president’s job is now about raising money. Mr. Wyner pointed to a 2013 Century Foundation study showing that while per-pupil spending increased by almost $14,000 from 1999 to 2009 at private research universities, it rose only $1 at public community colleges.

George R. Boggs, a former president of the American Association of Community Colleges, said that when he became president of Palomar College, in San Marcos, Calif., in 1985, he was able to focus on internal tasks like professional development and improving the institution’s hiring procedures.

“As my tenure went on, I became more and more focused outside,” Mr. Boggs said. His responsibilities increasingly included “fund raising for the foundation, also spending time at the Capitol, [and] going to Washington, D.C., to advocate for certain bills.”

Meanwhile, community colleges that focus on technical and vocational training have to adapt as new technology automates some jobs and changes the skills needed to qualify for others.

“The equipment that you need is changing rapidly,” as is the demand for faculty members who can teach with it, Mr. Wyner said.

Since social media has become ubiquitous, college presidents must be able to respond to crises in real time. Just like four-year university leaders, community-college presidents have to be prepared to deal with shootings, sexual-assault charges, or professors who make public statements that anger some people.

“It used to be that if you have a crisis on campus, you could think about crafting a response,” Mr. Wyner said. “Now there may be tens of thousands who know the information before you do.”

In addition to the challenges forcing some presidents out, many are also simply retiring. Mr. Bumphus noted that presidents who hit retirement age in the years following the recession may have held off on leaving because their 401(k) accounts had taken a hit. Now that the economy has improved, he said, more presidents are announcing their retirements.

Need for Training

In the last five years, the community-college association has stepped up its training and professional development for college presidents, Mr. Bumphus said. The association began offering executive coaching to presidents about two years ago, and recently stepped up the number of programs designed to prepare administrators to move into leadership roles.

Anne M. Kress, president of Monroe Community College, in Rochester, N.Y., said that in recent years she’s seen an uptick in community-college leadership programs, such as the one at the Aspen Institute and doctoral programs offered by research universities. But she said the best preparation for her job, which she has held for eight years, was the opportunity to observe a good leader at work. Her model was Jackson N. Sasser, who since 2002 has been president of Santa Fe College, in Florida, where Ms. Kress was provost and vice president for four years.

Ms. Kress said she’s judged the high turnover of community-college presidents by another metric: calls from executive-search firms. Not a week goes by that she doesn’t hear from one such firm, trying to fill a vacancy. But like Mr. Wyner, Ms. Kress thinks it takes years to leave a lasting impact on a college. She plans to stay put for now.

“What I don’t want the message to be is that it’s an impossible job,” Ms. Kress said. “This is a possible job, but you need to really focus on what skill sets are necessary, and they’re changing over time.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.