Higher education continues to find itself in a palpable crisis of leadership in at least two ways. First, we are seeing a significant loss of continuity as more and more college presidents go through revolving doors. Second, regardless of how long they are in the role, very few actually have the skills, traits, temperament, etc. for the role as it exists now. Presidents and chancellors whose preparation and competence may have been adequate 20 years ago, and certainly 30 years ago, find themselves thoroughly unprepared for what they are facing today. One outcome of course, is simply that they are out of the job much more quickly and thus unable to make an impact regardless of their intentions.

Depending on whose recent numbers you use, the average college president tenure has fallen from about a decade to either 5.9 years (American Council on Education) or 4.5 years (the Chronicle of Higher Education). However, even the lower Chronicle number overstates the average tenure because it purposely excludes presidents who stepped down for reasons the Chronicle could not identify, what they call “job hoppers,” and interim roles (which were caused by turnover). Although it’s difficult to land on an exact number, the average tenure, including all presidents in all sectors of higher education, leaving for all reasons, is probably closer to three plus years.

So, what’s going on?

First of all, in some cases, presidents are doomed by governance structures, political realities, and strategic and operational challenges that almost no one could survive. Many colleges are now rife with highly politicized and inflexible camps embodied in faculty, students, alumni, boards, unions, legislatures, and even outside groups that actually have nothing to do with the institution itself. In many cases these groups are motivated by narrow agendas that they see as more important than the institution itself and will engage in activities that are designed to weaken or remove college CEOs. In other cases, presidents are faced with years of mismanagement and/or financial exigency from previous administrations or interference from regents and other political figures that either must be addressed with extraordinary means related to survival or are simply not “fixable” within the mechanisms available to the CEOs.

Secondly, even in situations which are not insurmountable, very few leaders are equipped to meet the challenges their schools actually face. There is frankly a profound misalignment between the traits, skills, behaviors, and experience that most college leaders need vs. what they actually bring to the job. And a badly broken executive search process continues to produce the same inadequate candidates through a very expensive protocol that is pricey on the front end and devastatingly expensive on the back end. So, presidents and chancellors are shown the door because they were either set up or don’t have the capacity to do what they were hired to do, then they get replaced by folks who are equally incapable of meeting the actual challenges of the job. Presto. Average tenure drops to a little over three years, compromising continuity, while cycling through many leaders who are not right for the job to begin with.

How do we break the cycle?

As noted above, some amount of churn is now inevitable no matter what because certain stakeholder groups are willing to “destroy the village to save it,” and some institutions are foundationally unviable regardless. Having said that, there are also many cases where the right person in the right institution can be game changing. To get there, colleges and universities have to abandon the traditional search process, because in most cases it is frankly incapable of delivering the right candidates, and at worst, it is culpable in supporting a fraud on the institutions using it. While there are some individuals who have been “raised in higher education” who are capable of effective leadership in today’s reality, they are unicorns and represent a tiny fraction of what is needed. Colleges and universities have to look outside of the academy, and even then, truly exceptional candidates are few and far between.

Wherever future college presidents and chancellors come from, they will need to bring value in ways nearly foreign to most institutions of higher education. They must be extremely skillful in management of constant change; they must relate to people in their institutions and organizations with empathy and care; they themselves must be self-aware and comfortable with vulnerability, transparency, and humility. They must be genuine and believable, even in the midst of skepticism and cynicism. Ultimately, they must leverage human capital as the institution’s most powerful asset and competitive advantage. They must recognize that their success comes through the directly supported success of others. They have to ensure that the people they lead have clarity around mission and purpose—a reason to be fully engaged and committed. They must drive a shared, powerful vision of why the institution matters and what is possible. And, when it comes to discreet skills, it is no longer about what college CEOs knew or were able to do in the past. It is now about business and revenue development, ROI, marketing, partnership, negotiation, political skills, building culture, crisis management, innovation, change management, and execution. Even skill with strategy is no longer adequate. Leaders today must be able to lead transformation and reinvention as a perpetual process, with strategy as a tool, not a discreet outcome. And doing that in cultures typically found in IHEs is not for the faint of heart. Effective leaders have to be successful in spite of environments that are typically not structured to support that success. Astonishingly, if one just looks at the numbers and dynamics related to school closures and mergers over the last 15 years, it appears that many colleges and universities will actually choose failure over change, which itself requires very unique leadership to overcome.