Two years ago, David H. Turpin, president of the University of Victoria, noticed a troubling trend in the ranks of his fellow Canadian university leaders: An increasing number of them seemed to be leaving their jobs prematurely, whether by choice or involuntarily.
Intrigued, the busy president of the fast-growing university on Canada’s west coast began his own research into presidential departures. He found that 12 Canadian university presidents left office after serving three years or less from 2006 to 2011, compared with only four in the previous five years. While those dozen examples may seem like a small number, they represent an eighth of the country’s university presidents.
What’s more, he also found that the average length of a university presidency has dropped steadily over the past half-century—from 13 years in the 1950s to fewer than six today. In the United States, which like Canada has little reliable data about the tenure of university presidents, eight to 10 years is the commonly accepted average length.
Mr. Turpin’s research has helped fuel a conversation about the role of the university president in Canada, raising what many in higher education here say are important questions: What are the underlying causes of the early departures, and what is the remedy?
The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada is now helping Mr. Turpin expand the scope of his research. “We have felt very strongly there is a need to understand this phenomenon better,” says Paul Davidson, president of the association. He notes that since 2009, 47 of 95 university presidents are new to their positions.
Mr. Turpin is quick to say that his findings are preliminary and that more research is needed to understand the trends and recommend solutions. He does say that the increasing pressures university leaders face today are probably a major factor in the rate of turnover.
“The job has changed dramatically,” he says. “There are far more stakeholders involved, and I think expectations have increased dramatically. The president not only has to be the lead academic but is also responsible for running a billion-dollar or multibillion-dollar operation and has huge external responsibilities to the government and the private sector.”
Indeed, Indira Samarasekera, president of the University of Alberta, who is serving in her second five-year term, says today’s Canadian higher-education leaders are dealing with a variety of new challenges, including having to tighten budgets while figuring out how to develop graduates with skills for a rapidly changing economy. “We are in a period of enormous change, and the action needed is not like anything that has happened in the last 50 or 60 years,” she says.
A ‘Culture of Contempt’
To be sure, the pressures facing Canadian university presidents are similar, if not the same, as those of their counterparts south of the border. And in the United States the tenure of college presidents has also been a hot topic of late, though driven in part by the wave of retirements that is expected as the average age of higher-education leaders creeps above 60. In Canada, the concern has tended to focus on a more sensitive issue: clashes between presidents and governing boards.
“It’s difficult to know what happened, but over the last six or seven years, the number of board-induced departures or terminations has increased significantly,” says Mr. Turpin. He says half of the 12 who left in the previous six years were shown the door by their governing boards; again, a small number, but one that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Canadian higher education, which is smaller than the U.S. system.
Montreal’s Concordia University provides an unfortunate example of high-profile early exits, with two presidents forced out halfway through their first terms in the last six years. In late 2010, the sudden resignation of Concordia’s principal, Judith Woodsworth, came barely two and a half years after she was selected to replace Claude Lajeunesse, who was shown the door after an equally short time. Despite rampant speculation, no formal reason was given by the board for either early exit.
The departures came at a cost, not just in sizable severances to the former leaders, but also to the self-image of the institution.
“Everyone recognized that the last decision to remove a president had such a huge impact on the morale of the organization and its ability to do things,” says Glen A. Jones, a professor of higher education at the University of Toronto. “There was a sense that something was broken about the process.”
In 2011, the university appointed Mr. Jones and two other education experts to an external panel to review Concordia’s decision-making structure. Their strongly worded report, “Strengthening Governance at Concordia: a Collective Challenge,” cited a “culture of contempt” among board governors, faculty, students, alumni, and staff for one another. Shortly after the report was published, Concordia adopted 35 of its 38 recommendations, which centered on reforms to the governing structure, including the composition of the board. It plans to carry out the rest in June.
Mr. Jones, who is also the lead researcher on a study paid for by a federal research-granting agency to examine governance at six major universities in five provinces, says Mr. Turpin’s early findings point to a need for more training of those in oversight positions. “It’s not just about the presidency,” he says. “It is the general question of whether boards understand with clarity their role and responsibility and the division of responsibility and authority between the board and the president.”
Recently, Canadian universities have begun to provide more training to new board appointees. Last fall, for the first time, the Council of Chairs of Ontario Universities, which is affiliated with the Council of Ontario Universities, held a two-day seminar on governance issues, focused in part on helping board members become more familiar with academe.
“All of the members who come from outside get the fact that the board has some fundamental responsibilities,” but they are less familiar with the collegial decision making at universities, says Bonnie Patterson, president of the Council of Ontario Universities. “When you contextualize governance in the evolving complexity of the university,” she says, “that is a different cup of tea.”
Lea Pennock, secretary of the Canadian University Boards Association, says the spate of departures has prompted more boards to consider how they interact with presidents. “The emerging understanding for boards is that this relationship is one that you have to work on,” says Ms. Pennock, who is also secretary of the Board of Governors at the University of Saskatchewan.
Ross H. Paul, a former president of two universities in Ontario, wrote about the changes facing Canadian higher education in his book, Leadership Under Fire: The Challenging Role of the Canadian University President, which was published in 2011. He argues that Canadian boards need to do a better job of vetting presidential candidates. “It’s all about being the right person at the right time at the right institution, and that’s the job of the board,” he says.
Mr. Turpin agrees. “When there are failed presidencies,” he says, “so often it comes down to the issue of culture; the appointee does not fit with the culture of the institution.”
Mr. Turpin himself is leaving the University of Victoria in June, though after 12 years of running the institution it’s an amicable farewell. A plant biochemist and physiologist by training, he plans to use his scientific skills to continue his research into the university presidency in Canada. Despite the focus of the project, Mr. Turpin is enthusiastic in his view that leading a university remains “the best job in the world.”
Correction (3/1/2013, 12:26 p.m.): This article originally said incorrectly that Concordia was still considering the 38 recommendations made in a 2011 report on governance issues. In fact, the university adopted 35 of the recommendations two years ago and plans to carry out the rest by June. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.
