Harvard University is looking for a new leader. So is the University of Pennsylvania. And Yale University. And Stanford University.
While plenty of college presidents retire or resign every year, it’s rare for so many prestigious research universities to be simultaneously hunting for replacements. And leading these schools is not the same job it was a generation ago. Bill Funk, founder of higher-education executive search firm R. William Funk & Associates, likened the position to being a professional fundraiser and public relations executive combined with the mayor of a city.
Today, Funk says, university presidents are also “carrying the flag for higher education” at a sensitive moment. Conservative activists and politicians are taking credit for ousting the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in the past month, and have called for a broader overhaul of colleges nationwide. Elite schools are lambasted for hoarding multibillion-dollar endowments, as well as for fixating on diversity and moving so far to the left that they shut out conservative voices. Meanwhile, many Americans have begun to doubt whether a college degree is still a good investment.