Change in Higher Education: Not Enough, or Too Much?

Abstract

Change is a perennial struggle for campuses. Trustees, presidents, policymakers, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community groups all seek to alter some aspect of colleges and universities. Common wisdom is that higher education faculty, staff, and administrators do not want to change and are slow to innovate. This article examines the challenges of change from a macro perspective, using insights from studies of change and leadership, and the perspective of change agents, to provide a new hypothesis of why change is difficult: the presence of too many simultaneous and competing change initiatives, not the unwillingness of campus constituents to engage in change, prevent progress. Concentrated institutional action is impeded by too many stakeholders interested in different types of change, a lack of synergy among change initiatives, an inability to create priorities, leadership turnover, a pressure for leaders to innovate rather than implement, and the movement away from core institutional purposes in the pursuit of prestige.