Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
Advice

Sorry, Headhunters, but the Healthiest Presidential Searches Are Open

By Sam Glick and Kevin Dettmar July 2, 2019
Sorry-Headhunters
Getty Images

A decade ago, members of a campus search committee pretty well knew the game plan for picking a president. Hire a search firm to help develop the applicant pool. Screen the applications and conduct a round of off-campus, “airport” interviews with promising candidates. Invite a shortlist of three or four finalists to the campus for daylong interviews. And finally, recommend someone (or present a ranking) to the full Board of Trustees.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

A decade ago, members of a campus search committee pretty well knew the game plan for picking a president. Hire a search firm to help develop the applicant pool. Screen the applications and conduct a round of off-campus, “airport” interviews with promising candidates. Invite a shortlist of three or four finalists to the campus for daylong interviews. And finally, recommend someone (or present a ranking) to the full Board of Trustees.

But at some point in the last decade — in the time since 2003, when our institution, Pomona College, hired its ninth president, and 2016, when we began a search for his successor — an important step in that process had changed radically across higher education. So radically, in fact, that it’s just gone.

Increasingly, institutions of higher education select a president without the candidates ever having met with any faculty members, students, and staff members beyond the few who sit on the search committee. In 2003 it would have flown in the face of convention to argue that the identities of finalists should be kept confidential. Today, however, the default setting of most presidential searches seems to be “closed.”

And while a closed process conveys obvious benefits for finalists — and, arguably, collateral benefits for search firms — we believe it’s a very bad way to hire leaders for colleges and universities.

In his recent commentary, “Sorry, Professors, but Presidential Searches Should Be Secret,” Matthew Tzuker goes to great lengths to defend a foregone conclusion. He “revisits” all of his arguments against open searches only to discover … that he was right all along. But his arguments miss the point. By focusing on his own professional process, Tzuker loses sight of what presidential searches really represent.

Tzuker insists that the choice of an open or closed search rests with boards (or more properly, the search committees empaneled by boards), yet he goes on to blame faculty members for insisting on open searches, accusing them of mistrusting their colleagues on the search committee and holding an antiquated view of how academic institutions should be run.

In positioning the choice of open versus closed as one of risky public spectacle versus sensible hiring process, Tzuker reduces a presidential search to nothing more than a series of job interviews. Yet it is much, much more.

Undoubtedly, closed searches are easier, and seemingly lower risk:

  • The search committee doesn’t risk losing candidates.
  • The candidates don’t risk reputational damage.
  • And the search firm doesn’t risk an uncontrolled process, or damaging its relationships with candidates by repeatedly exposing them as “on the market.” The risk mitigation in all of those instances, however, is illusory. In the end, the biggest risk to the campus, the candidate, and the search firm is not a breach of confidentiality, but rather, a failed presidency owing to a bad fit.

Our recent leadership search at Pomona turned into a hybrid. While our previous presidential searches had been entirely public, at the outset of this endeavor we agreed on a different approach: Candidates would be told that (1) the initial stages of the search would be conducted in confidence and (2) the committee had not yet decided whether or not the final campus interviews would be open to faculty, students, staff, and alumni. If a candidate had concerns about confidentiality, they could drop out at any stage of the process.

By the time we had to make a decision, the search committee agreed that an open process was the only mechanism consistent with the values of our institution. It was a conclusion that emerged quite organically. Three highly qualified finalists came to the campus, and met in town-hall meetings that were open to all interested faculty members, trustees, staff employees, alumni, and even students but closed to the news media (to protect the candidates from blowback at their home institutions).

ADVERTISEMENT

The conversations that ensued — substantive, existential conversations about what a liberal-arts education should be — both reflected and subsequently helped to shape our culture. We asked everyone to respect the risk these candidates were taking by not publicizing their visits via email or social media, and to refrain from conducting their own “reference checks.” And despite literally hundreds of people meeting our three candidates, we heard not a single report of a leak. We respected our community, and they respected our candidates in turn.

We write this having worked with a terrific search firm, Spencer Stuart. Without pushing too hard, and without scaremongering, our consultants did raise the concern that an open search might put off some desirable candidates. And maybe it did — we will never know. But as a result of the open town halls, our final candidates proved that they thought the opportunity to lead our college was worth the risk of their interest in the job becoming public. They had good-enough relationships with their current boards and presidents to share that they were being considered for a college presidency.

Once informed of our decision to hold open town-hall meetings, none of the finalists chose to leave the search. We didn’t “lose” our best candidate: Reader, we hired her.

In asking presidential finalists to participate in open meetings, we were certainly asking them to risk something — it was a big request. But they weren’t the only ones making sacrifices. If we were asking for something out of the ordinary from our candidates, we were willing to give of ourselves in return: Before inviting any finalists to campus, we flew out small groups of search-committee members for individual conversations with a long list of nearly two dozen candidates. We invested time not only in getting to know them, but in helping them get to know our institution in the comfort of their own homes and offices.

ADVERTISEMENT

We did our best to help them experience our values from their very first interactions with us. As a result, when we extended invitations to the campus, they already understood why.

At the end of his essay, Tzuker suggests that closed searches — which he insists on calling “confidential” searches, even as he acknowledges that such legerdemain is essentially “just marketing” — build confidence in the candidate selected. While he’s got the etymology right, we think he’s got the psychology completely wrong.

Presidential searches constitute a moment in the life of an institution in which confidence is at a premium. Whether the departing president is leaving after a long and successful tenure or a short and tempestuous one, the institution — its students, faculty, staff, administration, alumni, and yes, trustees — are anxious about what the future will hold. And true confidence is restored by an open search.

Rather than insisting on “transparency,” Tzuker argues, professors should “have some degree of confidence in parties other than themselves to make a good choice.” We can’t speak to whether the entire campus community had confidence in us as their representatives on the search committee (though the members were all elected by their peers). But they would have had every right to question our decision-making if we had dared to make an appointment as important as president without gathering plenty of data on how they felt about their interactions with the candidates.

ADVERTISEMENT

We concede that this is perhaps more important in a small liberal-arts college like ours than it might be at a large research university: Professors here prize their close working relationship with the president (whereas I, Kevin, literally never met the presidents of the two research institutions where I taught previously for 17 years).

Maybe our presidential-search process won’t work for every institution. Yet there are lessons in it that we believe are broadly applicable. Search committees must design processes that reflect their values, put their shoulders to the wheel in vetting candidates, and resist the urge just to do what’s “industry standard.” They must acknowledge the hard reality that one-on-one or small-group interviews are poor indicators of a candidate’s future performance, and create opportunities to see the candidates in action — including, yes, in unstructured interactions with various campus groups.

With increasingly fractured campus cultures and declining presidential tenures, clearly colleges can do better in picking leaders — including by embracing a search process that is at least partially open.

Kevin Dettmar is a professor of English at Pomona College. Sam Glick is chair of the college’s Board of Trustees.

A version of this article appeared in the August 2, 2019, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Leadership & Governance
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
About the Author
Kevin Dettmar
Kevin Dettmar is W.M. Keck professor of English and director of the Humanities Studio at Pomona College. His forthcoming book is The Department Chair’s Companion: Practical Advice for Faculty Leaders, due out in fall of 2026 and a sequel to his 2022 book, How to Chair a Department. More information about his work with chairs and other faculty leaders is available at his website, kdettmar.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists
ManganGMU-0708 B.jpg
Leadership
The Trump Administration Appears to Have Another College President in Its Crosshairs
Joan Wong for The Chronicle
Productivity Measures
A 4/4 Teaching Load Becomes Law at Most of Wisconsin’s Public Universities
Illustration showing a letter from the South Carolina Secretary of State over a photo of the Bob Jones University campus.
Missing Files
Apparent Paperwork Error Threatened Bob Jones U.'s Legal Standing in South Carolina

From The Review

John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson
Vector illustration of a suited man with a pair of scissors for a tie and an American flag button on his lapel.
The Review | Opinion
A Damaging Endowment Tax Crosses the Finish Line
By Phillip Levine
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin