Why an Outsider Is the Right Choice to Be UNC’s Chancellor

There has been much concern in recent years about the rise of nontraditional college leaders and what that portends for higher education. The announcement last week of Lee Roberts as chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill kicked off a fresh round of debate about whether someone from outside academe can be effective at the helm of a university. Roberts is an experienced executive with a public-policy background but hadn’t served as an academic administrator before accepting the role at Chapel Hill.

There’s a reason those outside pathways to leadership have become more common across the country. My experience selecting and working alongside public-university chancellors — I’ve nominated eight since I became president of the University of North Carolina system — suggests there is no traditional, gold-standard résumé for these roles. Higher education is simply too diverse for that.

The 17 institutions within the UNC system are distinct, with their own strengths, challenges, and cultural quirks. Their leadership needs are as varied as their histories, academic programs, and student bodies. Any well-run chancellor search shouldn’t begin with a generic job description, but with a thorough and honest assessment of where the institution excels, where it struggles, and what issues will be most important for a new leader to address.

Most of the chancellor picks I’ve made have held Ph.D.s; some have not. Most have had extensive careers in higher education; some have not. But they’ve all brought a skill set and vision that is well suited to their particular university at its particular moment.

Fayetteville State University, a strong but historically underfunded HBCU that sits next door to one of the largest military bases in the world, has been well served by a charismatic and ambitious chancellor who brought much-needed resources and attention to the campus.

At East Carolina University, I championed a leader with strong local roots, impressive experience at the American Council on Education, and a pragmatic vision for raising academic standards while staying true to the institution’s mission of broad access.

A brilliant marine scientist at UNC-Wilmington. A French-literature professor and experienced academic leader at UNC-Asheville. An accomplished engineer at North Carolina A&T. A skilled higher-ed administrator at Winston-Salem State. And a proven reformer from another UNC campus to help elevate North Carolina Central University, an HBCU in a fast-growing, tech-heavy city.

Were these traditional picks? Nontraditional? I have no idea, and I don’t think most of our policymakers or state leaders think about university leadership in those narrow terms.

Academic experience is valuable, and there’s a reason our society admires the accomplishments of scholars and rewards the expertise of researchers. But chancellors’ responsibilities — the ways they must spend their time — bear little in common with the work of tenured professors.

Chancellorships, especially at public universities, are a mix of diplomacy, crisis management, fund raising, complex budgeting, advocacy, and sports commentary. Chancellors who are lucky or very good at delegating may still get to spend some time in the lab or the classroom, but the day-to-day work of university leadership involves vanishingly little academic labor.

At UNC-Chapel Hill, the nation’s oldest public university and one of its most politically lively, we just named a successful business executive with plenty of public-policy experience but little academic track record. That’s because his job won’t involve teaching or researching but will focus on longstanding needs around infrastructure, business operations, thoughtful enrollment growth, and other priorities that emerge from a $4-billion enterprise. What Chapel Hill needs right now is operational excellence to match its academic prowess, so that was a priority in searching for a new leader.

When it comes to chancellors and academe, what really matters is that chancellors respect the work of the faculty and hold a bedrock commitment to academic freedom. In North Carolina, my esteemed predecessor Bill Friday is often held up as one of the last century’s most prominent champions of higher education, having fought the infamous “Speaker Ban” law barring communists from campus and defended the rights of faculty to advocate for civil rights. He cherished the university and loved professors, despite not being one himself.

Friday held a law degree and a bachelor’s in textile manufacturing, but his lack of a doctoral degree detracted not one bit from his commitment to public higher education. In many ways, it made him a more effective bridge between the university he loved and the state we’re bound to serve.

That’s the other reality that college leaders must confront. Public support for higher education, so long taken for granted, has cratered in recent years, and not just among Republicans. There is a pervasive sense, plain to read in the survey data, that higher education has drifted from its core mission, fostered an intellectual monoculture in some disciplines, and simply forgotten how to convey its worth to ordinary citizens.

When we search for a new chancellor, I’m looking for someone who can earn public support and trust in one of the fastest-growing, fastest-changing states in the nation. North Carolina is the second-most-rural state in the country and home to some of the most dynamic metro regions in the United States. It’s a place both steeped in tradition and attracting newcomers so quickly that nearly half the adults were born elsewhere. And it’s politically nuanced, with a voting public that selected a Republican president and a Democratic governor on the same ballot in the last two elections.

Leading high-profile public institutions in that environment is not for the faint of heart. I’m happy to work with chancellors — traditional or otherwise — who bring broad experience and a compelling vision for our society’s most important institutions.