Some of the best-known college-ranking schemes have for decades put the wealthiest and most-selective institutions at or near the top. A new ranking puts Harvard University at 441st — fifth from the bottom.
The list, which comes from a recent American Enterprise Institute study, highlights universities in a very different way — by ranking their presidents based on improving student outcomes.
AEI, a libertarian think tank, rewarded efforts such as cutting tuition, boosting the graduation rate, and increasing the racial and socioeconomic diversity of undergraduates. The higher the percent change on student-success measures, the higher the ranking for the college president.
College rankings commonly consider metrics like graduation rates and student debt, but the AEI list took an unusual approach by tying those outcomes to a president’s tenure. Using federal data, the study considered the tenures of nearly 450 presidents who served at least four years leading doctoral-granting institutions between the years 2000 and 2023. The No. 1 president, according to the analysis, was Gary Thomas, president of the University of Missouri at Rolla (now Missouri University of Science and Technology) between 2001 and 2005. Thomas, who died in 2008, received a particularly high student-success score.
Only 134 of the ranked presidents are currently in office. The top performers of that group were James T. Harris III, of the University of San Diego, who was ranked second; Renu Khator, of the University of Houston, ranked sixth; and Heather A. Wilson, of the University of Texas at El Paso, ranked seventh.
Cody Christensen, a doctoral student in higher-education policy at Vanderbilt University and the study’s author, acknowledged the limitations of his work. But he said there was no reason that leaders earning seven-figure salaries shouldn’t be held accountable for student success. And he argued it was valuable to compare presidents to their peers.
“We act like those changes happen in a vacuum without any tie to who was in charge of the institution,” Christensen said in an interview. “I wanted to tie individuals to outcomes, which happens in every other sector.”
College leaders these days are facing accountability challenges on many fronts, as elected officials threaten repercussions for the protests over the war in the Middle East; boards scramble to shore up finances and flagging enrollments; and the public continues to question the price and value of higher education.
Higher-education experts say a focus on institutional metrics is important, but they are not enough to judge the full measure of a president’s worth. In addition, few leaders are assessed on such direct outcomes, said Robert E. Myers, who works with college presidents and governing boards as a consultant for the Casagrande Institute for Higher Education Effectiveness.
If boards aren’t considering these outcomes, Myers wonders whether they are really that important to the institution. “If they’re not assessing presidential performance to include these three metrics, does one then infer that they’re just not strategic priorities for the institution? I’d love to toss that hand grenade into the boardroom and watch how they wrestle with that!” he wrote in an email to The Chronicle.
But there are limits to what the numbers can show, he warned. “Many of the outcomes these measures rely on are influenced by external factors — a regional downturn, shifts in state funding — that presidents have little control over,” he said. “If boards focus too narrowly on these metrics, they might miss the bigger picture.”
‘A Whole Team’
Presidents who ranked highly in the study were happy to tout their universities’ successes, but eschewed any individual adulation. (However, at least one campus promoted their president’s ranking in a news release.)
Khator, who has been president of the University of Houston for more than 16 years, said her board does assess her performance based on student outcomes, as well as the amount of sponsored research the institution conducts.
The AEI study found that the University of Houston excelled at improving its diversity, increasing enrollment of first-time undergrads from underrepresented racial groups by an average of 0.6 percentage points per year.
Khator deflected any praise for her own performance. “No president does all of this alone,” Khator said. “You have a whole team behind you.”
At the University of San Diego, the average out-of-pocket costs undergraduates pay for tuition and fees fell an average of $735 per year, adjusted for inflation, during Harris’s first eight years as president, according to the study.
Institutional affordability is a reasonable way to evaluate a president, Harris said, but that’s only a small portion of what presidents are responsible for on campus. He suggested that leaders could also be evaluated for the recruitment and retention of their staff.
Wilson, who has led the University of Texas at El Paso since 2019, said her institution’s unusual status — a research university that accepts all students who apply — requires a broad focus on student outcomes in a way that may not be needed at highly selective institutions.
Wilson said that she and her team take an even more rigorous approach to student success, considering “persistence” — the share of all undergraduates who continue their studies each year — rather than the federal data on “retention,” which only considers first-time, full-time students.
During Wilson’s tenure, UTEP’s six-year graduation rate has improved by an average of more than 2.5 percentage points each year, according to the AEI analysis.
Graduation rates increased by about 2 percentage points every four years for the average president, according to the study, while net tuition increased about $400 over the same period. There was a 1-percentage-point decline in the share of first-time, full-time students receiving Pell Grants.
In the study, many leaders of selective colleges fell into the middle or lower ranks. For example, Lawrence S. Bacow, who led Harvard University from 2018 to 2023, was ranked at number 441. Two spots below him was Robert J. Birgeneau, chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley from 2004 to 2013.
At the bottom of the ranking was the late Kenneth Starr, who was president of Baylor University from 2010 to 2016. Among the 10 lowest-rated leaders, Sarah C. Mangelsdorf, president of the University of Rochester, is the only one still in office. The university did not respond to a request for comment.
Thought Experiment
Some higher-ed observers may cheer this kind of demotion for a handful of the nation’s wealthiest universities, but it underscores a possible flaw in the approach: Presidents at those institutions will not necessarily score as well because the analysis considers percentage change in outcomes.
Harvard’s graduation rate is already 98 percent, according to federal data, and even if the institution reached 100 percent, a 2-percentage-point increase would not rank well. Harvard’s net price is below $6,000 for students whose family income is less than $75,000, so affordability is also not much of an issue for most students.
With the growing attention on higher-education leadership, more researchers are starting to examine the necessary skills to succeed as a college president. It’s somewhat harder to assess the impact of presidents, especially at well-resourced institutions that already attract the most financially and academically prepared students, said Christopher R. Marsicano, an associate professor of educational studies and public policy at Davidson College. It’s equally difficult to compare those institutions to public colleges that are heavily reliant on state appropriations, he added.
Marsicano, who has worked with Christensen on other research projects, said the study was a good thought experiment. But Marsicano cautioned that any assessment of leadership and institutional outcomes should consider how different colleges value different outcomes.
“What this system does is put everyone on the same playing field,” Marsicano said, “but doesn’t differentiate by institutional mission.”
Jorge Burmicky, an assistant professor of higher-education leadership and policy studies at Howard University, said the study doesn’t take into consideration the amount of time it takes to enact change at a university. “It takes years to improve an institution’s retention and graduation rates,” he wrote in an email, “and presidents’ tenures are often not long enough to see this type of change.”
The average length of a college president’s term is now less than six years, according to a 2023 survey from the American Council on Education.
“The more we stay away from rankings, the better, in my opinion,” Burmicky wrote. “We need a more holistic approach for assessing performance, and one that doesn’t put the onus on one person.”
