Good morning, and welcome to Monday, September 23. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.
Paths from the presidency
We scrutinize pathways to the college presidency to understand who’s holding these important roles and what skills they might bring to the job. But what do former leaders have to offer colleges after they step down?
Our David Jesse takes a look at presidents who return to the faculty.
Relatively few college leaders plan on becoming serial college presidents, the American Council on Education has found. Only a quarter plan to seek another presidency, and nearly 40 percent anticipate doing consulting work.
Almost 15 percent of college presidents say they’ll return to the faculty when they leave their job.
That’s a high-stakes transition, personally and for the institutions they lead.
- Former presidents are often expensive. Contracts can pack platinum parachutes guaranteeing tenured positions, high salaries, and other lucrative perks.
- They can retain soft power, which can be beneficial if they’re able to serve as interpreters between faculty members and administrators. But it also threatens to undermine successors.
- Their personal and professional lives change drastically. Departing presidents must catch up in their academic disciplines even as they adapt to not having executive teams. And suddenly, they’re not the most important person in most rooms.
“It’s a moment of identity reformation, both professionally and personally,” said Lisa Jasinski, president of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, who wrote a book on returning to the faculty.
Preparation can ease the change. Many leaders keep one foot in their academic disciplines, attending conferences, making time for research, and thinking about courses they’d like to teach. Contractual terms might seek to head off governance problems by stating whether a former president can weigh in on institutional decisions.
But leaders can never really go back. “Once you’ve been president, you’re not ever really a regular faculty member,” said M. Roy Wilson, former leader of Wayne State University, in Detroit.
The bigger picture: With the average tenure of a college president continually declining, more former leaders are in line to return to instruction and research, instead of embarking on early retirement.
Read the full story: ‘You Become a Mere Mortal': What Happens When Presidents Go Back to the Faculty