Most books on the college presidency are either autobiographies or prescriptions for success. We avoid autopsies, diagnoses of leadership collapses and college president resignations/terminations. Usually no one wants to ...]]>

Presidencies Derailed: Why University Leaders Fail and How to Prevent It; Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, Gerald B. Kauvar, and E. Grady Bogue; The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2013.

Most books on the college presidency are either autobiographies or prescriptions for success. We avoid autopsies, diagnoses of leadership collapses and college president resignations/terminations. Usually no one wants to be the coroner or public health officer. This is too bad, because there are a few dozen serious presidential breakdowns each year.

This book summarizes 16 cases where the new president did not complete the initial contract, resigning or fired oftentimes by the second year. Two “derailed” presidents tell their side of the story, and there are three chapters on the lessons learned from administrative train wrecks.

The book delivers more than the subtitle promises, providing separate chapters with cases at community colleges, private liberal arts colleges, master’s degree universities and research universities. There is no one cause, but many instances of bad judgment by presidents and their boards, alienation of faculty or community leadership, and a few cases of overspending, inappropriate relationships, deception and ethical violations.

Trachtenberg knows the presidency. He was a dean and vice president for John Silber at Boston University, then president first of the University of Hartford and later of George Washington University (GW). He chairs the higher education search practice for Korn Ferry, and has written a candid article for NEJHE on the pitfalls facing search committees. This new volume repeats some of those useful insights. Gerald Kauvar has served as an assistant at GW and elsewhere. Grady Bogue has been chancellor of two southern universities. Several University of Tennessee doctoral students completed relevant analyses of short-term presidencies.

There were too many examples of difficulties created by corporate board members who favored top-down leadership in contrast to an open and participatory leadership style. To make a university “run like a business” runs the risk of sneering at shared governance, tenure and a strong role for faculty members and deans who provide the intellectual content that makes colleges and universities great. Those attitudes can be fatal for a college president.

The remedies include smaller search committees, carefully planned transitions and board support including annual evaluations of presidents, and the use of dashboards with the most important data displayed for all to see. This book should be read by presidential search committees and purchased by vice presidents worried about their president’s success. It provides great cases for discussion in higher education leadership programs. Higher education organizations in Washington D.C., especially the Association of Governing Boards, should recommend this book to members. Trachtenberg remains positive about trustees who share their wisdom and wealth and can be even more supportive of campus values and of new presidents.

Joseph M. Cronin is director of the college consulting company EDVISORS and former president of Bentley University.

"Science courses belong in the liberal arts curriculum for the benefit of both science and non-science majors."

That's one of the main findings in a study released by the Cambridge, Mass.-based American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education warns that the pace of scientific and technological change ...]]>

"Science courses belong in the liberal arts curriculum for the benefit of both science and non-science majors."

That's one of the main findings in a study released by the Cambridge, Mass.-based American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education warns that the pace of scientific and technological change means all adults should be prepared to learn and evaluate new science information after they leave schooling.

Among the report's major themes:

• Without a basic level of scientific literacy, the public cannot rely on even the best science journalism and communications to help them make informed decisions about science issues.
• Science courses belong in the liberal arts curriculum for the benefit of both science and non-science majors.
• Teaching science should convey the wonders and rewards of science but also the limits of science and dangers of misapplying it.
• Science and the humanities have much more in common than is generally appreciated.

In June, I was at an orientation for a major New England university where one speaker was extolling the non-careerist aspect of liberal arts, noting with a wink: "It’s not as if BP is going to go hire a vice president of philosophy … but maybe they should.”

The audience understood his wink. Philosophy is the discipline often invoked to flaunt the non-practical nature of the the liberal arts. And at the time, BP was spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and handling the blame badly.

****

About 10% of the Boston College Carroll School of Management (CSOM) Class of 2011 and 25% of the CSOM Class of 2012 are pursuing a double major or minor in a liberal arts field, according to The Heights, the Boston College student newspaper, which has been running a series on liberal arts.

CSOM administrators observed that "other local colleges, such as Babson and Bentley, which are business-focused in their undergraduate education, incorporate relatively little of the liberal arts into the undergraduate education."

Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy, Boston Globe writer Scott Kirsner, Cape Wind CEO Jim Gordon and Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone will be among speakers at the Progressive Business Leaders Network's 4th Annual CEO Summit to be held Friday, Oct. 8, from 7:45 a.m. to 4 p.m. ...]]>

Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy, Boston Globe writer Scott Kirsner, Cape Wind CEO Jim Gordon and Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone will be among speakers at the Progressive Business Leaders Network's 4th Annual CEO Summit to be held Friday, Oct. 8, from 7:45 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass.

The four major candidates for governor of Massachusetts have been invited to an afternoon forum.

Click here for an agenda and list of speakers.

It's an evolutionary fact of life in higher education. Good courses become programs. Worthy programs become schools. Schools become colleges, and colleges in some cases, become universities.

Yesterday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation that re-branded six state colleges—at Bridgewater, Fitchburg, Framingham, Salem, Worcester and Westfield—as state universities, effective Oct. 26. Massachusetts Maritime Academy, ...]]>

It's an evolutionary fact of life in higher education. Good courses become programs. Worthy programs become schools. Schools become colleges, and colleges in some cases, become universities.

Yesterday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation that re-branded six state colleges—at Bridgewater, Fitchburg, Framingham, Salem, Worcester and Westfield—as state universities, effective Oct. 26. Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts will not change names, but will be part of the new state university system.

Some friends recently reckoned that after all these years writing about higher education, I would be able to clarify what distinguishes a college from a university. The best I could do was point them to the piece that Ken Lemanski wrote for the Fall 2007 issue of NEJHE.

Ken was writing about state colleges, which have their own set of regulations to deal with and their own reasons to change status. My friends were asking more broadly about why a wave of New England private institutions—Bentley, Bryant and Lesley, for examples—had all gone from college to university.

The answer to that is—you guessed it—marketing. Campus officials reason they'll get more students and more research dollars when they're known as universities, and their graduates will land better jobs. (Which makes you wonder why they don't go the whole nine yards and insert the phrase Harvard University into their new names.)

Check out the ceremony announcing the new Massachusetts names on Youtube.