A recurring theme in higher education is the rise of the “nontraditional president.” We increasingly hear about politicians and businessmen – they are usually men – who reach a point in their careers where they want to “give back.” A college presidency beckons. Their appointment is saddled with the allure of new ways of thinking, of doing business, of making the institution more innovative and less hidebound. And perhaps conflict with codgers or mistrustful faculty. I had not given gave the trope much thought until I read Scott C. Beardsley’s Higher Calling: The Rise of Nontraditional Leaders in Academia. It’s a surprisingly complicated theme to unpack. 
Beardsley, Dean at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, came to academia after climbing the slippery pole at McKinsey & Company for more than twenty-five years. In the book he recounts his work at McKinsey, the skills he honed, the tremendous opportunities working for a consulting firm offered, the politics of the position, and his decision to move into a different arena – higher education. He writes about the academic presidential search process as an anthropologist might, explaining the role of headhunters, search firms, and the gantlet of committees. Beardsley made the topic – presidential searches – the subject of his education dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania. He credentialed up to be a better candidate and more effective academic leader. For those that have not experienced the search process, Beardsley’s perspective as a candidate and neophyte in the ways of higher education is insightful.
The core of Beardsley’s book is a reworking of that dissertation. He studied 248 liberal arts college, examined the presidents and their backgrounds, and analyzed those factors with other relevant data such as endowment size, board composition, appetite for institutional risk, and so on. Nontraditional presidents, who Beardsley eventually defines as those who never held full-time faculty ranks, are present at all sizes and kinds of institutions. However, a few key factors are indicators of the likelihood of a non-traditional president.
- Colleges with small endowments are more likely to have non-traditional presidents.
- Colleges with extremely large endowments are less likely to have non-traditional presidents.
- Low graduation rates, small enrollment, and religious affiliation all corresponded positively with the presence of a nontraditional president.
Interestingly, while Beardsley forecasts a rise in nontraditional presidents, he finds the term unhelpful. He wants to see more attention to issues of fit. What does the institution seek in a leader? And what skills can a leader – regardless of their former positions – bring to the institution.
Undergirding Beardsley analysis is the assumption that boards of trustees are rational actors behaving rationally. It is a reasonable leaping off point for this kind of work. Speaking as an historian, however, and as a witness to more than a few presidential searches, it rarely works that way. Decisions are often developed in a context of preconceived aspirations or fears. In other words, do we have any clear idea of what drives board of trustee selections? What makes for the “best” candidate who happens to apply rests on multiple factors. I would wager that for more than a few of the institutions that Beardsley studied, the decision to hire within academia or nontraditional was made long before candidates submitted letters. Or candidates were asked to submit letters. Figuring out the why of those internal board dynamics, or at least proposing models of decision-making would go far in strengthening Beardsley informative work.
Higher Calling offers a helpful overview of an important – and all too rarely questioned – trend in higher education.
David Potash