Higher education is in a leadership crisis. Institutions are facing unprecedented challenges. Courageous leadership is needed now, more than ever, and poor leadership has never been more costly.
Many of higher education’s most promising leaders are working harder, overwhelmed, and near burnout. They feel like no matter what they do, they will be criticized from both sides. They are trying to make the needed and necessary changes, while resistance to change seems as high as ever.
To meet the challenges of this moment and lead toward a better future, we must recognize the challenges we are facing, the leadership paradoxes within higher education, and develop the most promising leaders to help us realize better tomorrows for us all.
Unprecedented Challenges Facing Higher Education
Some pressures are familiar and not new, given a broad historical context, but what is unprecedented is how many variety and significant challenges converged at once, creating indefinite uncertainty.
- External Scrutiny
Institutions are under increasing criticism from politicians, media, trustees, alumni, and more. Every stance appears to risk attack, making it hard to lead with clarity without fear of backlash. The criticism doesn’t end with the federal government; institutions are either facing or weary of criticism, scrutiny, and interference from state legislators, trustees, alumni groups, media, and local communities. It seems any approach, stance, or shift faces the potential of criticism from all sides. - Structural Issues
Higher education faces deep structural challenges. Public disinvestment has eroded state funding over decades, shifting costs to students and families and fueling concerns about affordability and access. At the same time, volatile policy environments, shifting federal regulations, and unstable funding models create uncertainty that makes long-term planning difficult, leaving many leaders constantly reacting instead of planning or strategically investing for the future. - Internal Complexities
Operating an institution of higher education has never been as complex as it is today, including enrollment cliffs, soaring costs (health care, energy, legal liability, federal regulations), increased student needs, and shifting and contradictory faculty and staff expectations/demands. Add to this complexity the free speech dilemmas, student protests, gun violence, and all the complexities that have always faced running a city of 5,000 – 100,000 people. - Societal Disruptions
Technological disruptions include phones, social media, AI, and the next technological disruption we don’t even know about. Rising mental health concerns, an increase in polarization, blame, and outrage culture, and cultural and generational shifts are impacting higher education at every level. - Self-Inflicted Wounds
It would be nice to blame everyone else for the challenges higher education is facing, but that wouldn’t be honest or helpful. Some of the challenges higher education institutions face are due to poor leadership that has been short-sighted, self-centered, and resistant to bold and strategic action. Rather than being focused on the institution, purpose, or students, some leaders have been self-focused, advancing an agenda that protected them from criticism and positioned them to take credit, thereby advancing their own careers. Courageous leaders are purposeful and focused on being of service. - Reimagining Needed
We must see not only the challenges but the possibilities beside and within these challenges and strategically lead toward better tomorrows for us all. We can lead with and through these challenges. Rather than focusing on responding better to the next crisis or working even longer hours to keep up, we need transformational approaches. With greater intentionality, clarity, alignment, and integration, better leadership capability lightens the load, reduces crises, better utilizes resources, and empowers innovation and solutions-focused approaches.
Which of these challenges are the most pressing for your institution?
The Leadership Paradoxes of Higher Education
- Leadership Vacuum
More than half (55%) of college presidents say they will step down in the next five years – and that was 2 years ago. Few institutions are prepared with a succession plan or investing in the next generation of leaders. Many experienced, seasoned, and capable senior leaders are transitioning out of their roles due to generational change and the pressures of the job. There is no cohort of experienced and seasoned leaders to take their place. Rather than wait for a new generation of leaders to arrive, we need to invest in a new generation of courageous leaders to meet this moment. - The Expertise Paradox
Despite higher education’s expertise and value of learning, institutions tend to treat leadership as a fixed trait rather than a capability that can be learned and must be developed and practiced. Many academic leaders are appointed based on their scholarly achievements and collegiality. Administrative leaders are often promoted because of their functional expertise and successful project management. These leaders often enter leadership positions without formal or informal leadership development, especially for their new level of influence. This results in gaps in capability in areas such as people management, decision-making, and organizational change, resulting in staff turnover (10-15% annually), unclear decisions, and stalled initiatives. These gaps can limit the effectiveness of leaders, create challenges for those they lead, and limit the institution’s potential to serve students, communities, and society. - Promotion Paradox
The expertise and skills that made a leader successful as a leading academic or a skilled functional area manager will not be the skills that will help you be successful in these more executive-level higher education leadership roles. These leaders will need to embrace the discomfort of learning new knowledge and skills, as well as developing unfamiliar leadership capacities. It is challenging to let go of the knowledge and skills that made you so successful and earned you years (or decades) of praise and affirmation to embrace new skills and capacities that are not yet comfortable and push you to your learning edges – yet that is often what is needed as leaders move up.
How do you see these leadership paradoxes playing out on your campus?
Impact on Higher Ed Leaders
Given all of this, if you are a leader operating from a fear and scarcity mindset, there’s plenty of evidence to justify that perspective. Many leaders are working longer and harder than ever trying to just survive and minimize the losses and harms to their institutions. We can lose ourselves in arguing that the challenges we are facing shouldn’t be, longing for a return to normal, and hoping that the world around us will shift to make leadership easier and our institutions successful. This approach makes sense, is completely understandable, and it won’t work. Leading from fear and scarcity will not help us move our people, institutions, or students forward.
A Call to Invest in Leadership to Advance Higher Education
Courageous higher education leaders don’t argue with this reality. They embrace the challenges of today to lead with and through them toward better tomorrows for their teams, students, institutions, and society. They move beyond their established expertise to develop a broader knowledge of higher education, as well as a deep leadership capacity. They are able to remain grounded and centered so they can be nimble and adaptable. They can engage in the most challenging situations and problems collaboratively through shared leadership, involving faculty, staff, and students. They are able to engage with courageous humility to lead with and through the uncertainty.
Institutions of higher education need to invest in and empower a new generation of leaders to reimagine higher education leadership to move people and organizations from surviving to thriving; increasing outcomes for faculty, staff, and students; and courageously co-creating transformational change to move higher education forward.
Colleagues and I are building something awesome, coming soon, to help higher education executive leaders, emerging executive leaders, emerging leaders, and those leading for equity. If you are ready to invest in leadership for better tomorrows for your leadership teams, let’s connect.
