College Chief Research Articles

Regional public university chief marketing officers' perceptions of best practices for addressing the enrolment cliff

Higher education institutions rely on student enrolments to generate revenue through tuition and fees. The next decade will bring a significant enrolment drop for many institutions because of several factors, including birth-rate declines and demographic shifts. The projected enrolment decline has been called the enrolment cliff due to the impact on colleges and universities that will face a major revenue loss if enrolments decline as predicted. This case study explores chief marketing officers' perceptions of best practices at regional public universities that must be addressed to utilise marketing to help mitigate the enrolment cliff.

Quantitative measures of discrimination with application to appointment processes.

Bias and discrimination in appointment processes such as hiring decisions (and analogous selection procedures for performance evaluations, promotions, scholarships, and awards), are quantified statistically via the binomial distribution. These statistical measures are described and an easily used webapp for calculating them is provided. The measures considered include the likelihood that a given number of appointments arose from a fair process and the likelihood that an existing process would give rise to a fair outcome if it were repeated. These methods are illustrated by applying them to sex (including gender) discrimination and racial discrimination in senior appointments in the Australian university sector; both conscious and unconscious biases are included. Significant sex discrimination is found to have existed in the appointments of university chief executives (Vice Chancellors) who were in office in 2018, but with a moderate chance that current processes will yield fair outcomes in the future. However, there is no evidence of strong sex discrimination in the country's eight main research universities for senior appointments (i.e., Faculty Deans and members of their governing Boards or Senates) for those in office as of 2021. However, at the same dates, extreme racial discrimination was implicit in the selection procedures for both Vice Chancellors and senior appointments in all these universities. The University of Sydney's senior appointments were found to have had the most racially biased outcomes among the country's eight main research universities. Significantly, there is negligible statistical likelihood of achieving racially unbiased outcomes in the future in any of the contexts considered, unless the selection procedures are significantly modified.

Exit strategy or springboard for career development? The case of university executives' remuneration

AbstractThe steady increase of chief executives' compensation in both public and private universities has long been at the centre of public debate and has received a lot of criticism in the UK. As higher education is considered as an industry, a pay for performance relationship is expected. This paper differs by demonstrating that UK Vice Chancellors consider incentives other than remuneration in their career progression. By constructing a comprehensive dataset of UK Vice Chancellors covering academic years 2012/2013 to 2016/2017, we demonstrate that UK university chief executives, especially if young, are willing to accept lower salaries when they interpret their role as a springboard for visible high‐profile positions in the public arena.

The American Council of Education Fellowship: A Pathway to Higher Education Leadership

When considering the opportunities for service in higher education's most visible leadership roles, such as the presidency, multiple pathways internal to higher education exist, including academic affairs, advancement, business administration, student affairs, government relations, and less often, leadership roles originating outside academia. While most institutional leaders do not answer to shareholders, according to the American Council on Education (2023), they are “among the most important leaders in the country.” No matter which pathway to a senior leadership role, opportunities for serving higher education's diverse stakeholders, including but not limited to students, faculty, staff, families, and communities, abound. At the center of academic leadership, 86% of provosts, according to the 2022 Inside Higher Education Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers (CAOs), agree that “healthy undergraduate education requires healthy departments.”

Evaluating the likelihood of the glass cliff phenomenon for female ceos in college and universities

The glass cliff phenomenon (GCP) maintains that women are more likely to lead risky organizations than men. Quantitative measures of risk for assessing a possible GCP exist for leaders in the business sector, but no quantitative measures exist for college or university leadership. This article tests one variable of risk for college and university institutions, the financial responsibility composite score (FRCS), to see if it measures the GCP in college or university chief executive officer (CEO) hires. Using an ex post facto causal-comparative design, gender and FRCS in private American colleges and universities were analyzed using the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System data. Purposive sampling randomly paired institutions with female CEOs with similar institutions with male CEOs. Using the U.S. Department of Education’s FRCS database, the researcher reviewed patterns in FRCS before and after CEO hires over three studies. No statistically significant results were observed, demonstrating that there is no indication that female CEOs are hired into riskier colleges or universities when utilizing FRCS. Future studies should further investigate the GCP using alternative measures of risk.

Strategies of criticism and disapproval in the academic administrative discourse

This article addresses the problem of communicative strategies for conveying criticism and disapproval in statements of appellative genre issued by presidents of American and British top universities. We claim that discursive representation of university chief leaders who are critically evaluating government decisions and incidents forms a linguistic and sociocultural communicative genre system with a set of effective rhetoric and communicative means. In academic administrative discourse, statements of appellative genre are characterized by dynamic application of positive and negative politeness strategies and regular reproduction of value-centered arguments, which update the system of values of the American and British academic communities. Discursive behavior of university chief academic administrators contains the rhetoric that appeals to logic, addressee’s emotions (pathos) and is based on the arguments to ethos, combining this with lexical and stylistic means that ‘threaten’ addressee’ face. Speakers use strategic tautology to increase the significance of the value system of an academic community. The concepts, themes, tasks, and tactical means, identified in the appellative statements of university leaders, contribute to the formation of the concept sphere of American and British academic communities. The results of this present study detail discursive and genre characteristics of the administrative academic discourse and the strategies of conflict (disapproving) discourse in particular. Communicative behavior of university leaders determined, on the one hand, by the value system and, on the other, by strategic aims of communication, can serve as a model of leadership communication and a resource for improving the competence of modern academic leaders.

Editorial: Special Issue Managing Responsibilities for Climate Change Risks

The Special Issue brings together contributions examining concrete case studies on managing responsibilities for climate change risks around the world. It aims to generate new and interdisciplinary knowledge on potential approaches to risk allocation, adaptation and resilience, and explore normative aspects of burden-sharing in the development of rights and obligations to respond to climate change. This Special Issue was coordinated by the University of Sydney Law School and Utrecht University School of Law under the 2019 Utrecht University and University of Sydney Partnership Collaboration Award. The grant recipients and ULR guest editors from Australia are Katherine Owens, Director of the Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law (ACCEL) (Sydney University Chief Investigator), and Madeline Taylor (Macquarie University) Deputy Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Innovation and Transformation (CENRIT). The guest editors from the Utrecht University Centre of Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law (UCWOSL) are Natalie Dobson (Utrecht University Chief Investigator), Herman Kasper Gilissen (UCWOSL Senior Researcher) and Marleen van Rijswick (UCWOSL Director).

Facing a crisis head‐on: Institutional borrowing decisions during times of uncertainty

AbstractThis chapter presents findings from eight interviews with college and university chief financial officers about institutional borrowing practices during periods of uncertainty and crisis.

Making the Case for a University Senior Wellness Officer

Using case study data about the emergence of the university chief wellness officer (CWO), this article discusses the purpose of this niche executive role. Borrowing from corporate wellness models, universities charge this senior leader to improve population health for faculty, staff, and students and promote organizational cultures that value well-being. Findings include participant perspectives on the impetus for the CWO role, key position responsibilities, and organizational response to the changes created by this structural innovation.

Position Training and Succession Planning for Community College International Education Leaders

ABSTRACT Position training and succession planning are important for aspiring senior community college leaders and for university senior international educators. While mid-level administrators are targeted as future candidates, the mid-level position of community college international educational leader as an important administrator function is not included in these discussions. We asked three research questions: a) how the profiles of community college international education leaders compare to community college chief executive officers and university senior international officers; b) what career pathways similarities exist for these three administrative positions; and c) what unique skill-sets do community college international education leaders recognize for leadership position training and succession planning. A national survey was administered to 91 community college international educational leaders to inventory their positions and roles within the institution, to learn about their position training, and to chart their sense of succession planning. When compared to community college senior leadership and to university senior international leadership, community college international educational leaders share similar career pathways that are influenced by intent to move up or by accidental entry into leadership positions and share similar skill-sets for leadership position training.

Realistic egocentrism: caring leadership through an evolutionary lens

ABSTRACT Romanticizing leaders as caring pastors usually benefits followers, by having someone to protect them or to blame if things go wrong. But, why would leaders want to play along and pretend they are carers? This is a theory-building manuscript, which uses a revelatory context, to explore caring leadership from a novel angle, using evolutionary theory to identify an anomaly within caring leadership theory. The revelatory context used for this study was English higher education. Here, 47 interviews were done with government/organizational leaders, including 24 university Chief Executives (i.e. university Presidents). The revelatory context evidenced that leaders sometimes develop cognitions about their impotence to control things. Thus, leaders play along the caring leadership delusion, because it is a mechanism for them to deny their impotence. The paper expands caring leadership theory, by suggesting that this is not exclusively about authentic caring, but also about convergent denial and realistic egocentrism.

Public Participation in Governance of Community College

The purpose of this study was to explored public participation in governance of the community college. The local people established college in their community of their active participation. Community colleges help for the access of higher education in rural area but not being able to fulfill desire of the local people. The study focuses on public participation in governance of community college. The study was carried out in a qualitative paradigm in which a case study facilitated access to in-depth feelings, views, and opinions of community members and educators regarding their participation in providing education. Data were generated through in-depth interview with parents of children in the college, College Management Committee (CMC) members, and the college chief. Data were transcribed and analyzed manually through the cut and paste technique. The study found out that public participation in governance of community colleges is of various types it may be involvement through sending their children to the college and providing fees and stationery, involvement through contributions of physical things & donations from the very beginning of the establishment of the college, involvement through attendance in programs and meetings conducted by the college, participation in real decision making etc. Further, parents financed college budgets, and were involved in college governance.Academic Voices Vol.6 2016: 37-42

Experiences of women of color university chief diversity officers.

Experiences of women of color university chief diversity officers.

‘Gutsy’ university chief to take on China's pollution

‘Gutsy’ university chief to take on China's pollution

The Charter of the United Nations and the challenges of the International Association of University Presidents

The International Association of University Presidents (IAUP) is an international association of university chief executive officers—presidents, rectors, vice-chancellors, and chancellors—from institutions around the world. A recognized non-profit charity, IAUP will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2015. Every third year it holds its general assembly in a different part of the world to discuss important issues in higher education. The first of these triennial conferences was held in 1965 in England; the latest was held in 2014 in the city of Yokohama, Japan. Each triennial conference focuses on a specific theme and provides IAUP membership with an opportunity to discuss the challenges and changes that face higher education worldwide.

Cosmopolitans or Locals: Who Will Lead the Next Generation of Community Colleges?

The impact of cosmopolitan and local latent social roles on different professional occupations and organizational behavior has been studied since Gouldner’s seminal study was published in 1957. This study was conducted to understand the relationship between the latent social role of the public community college chief academic officer and his or her intent to pursue a community college presidency.

Are college chief executives paid like corporate CEOs or bureaucrats?

We study compensation of college chief executives from 1997 to 2004. Although presidential salaries have acquired the attention of the media, Congress, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in recent years, they are much below those of corporate CEOs. Compared with CEOs in corporations with comparable sizes, college chief executives earn on average approximately one-third of the compensation of their corporate counterparts. However, CEO compensation is more volatile than that of college chief executives. Our results show that private college presidential salaries are consistent with the prediction of job complexity and institutional reputation hypotheses. Presidential compensations of public research universities, on the other hand, are more consistent with the prediction of job complexity hypothesis only. Hence, our findings do not support the prediction of bureaucrat hypothesis for both private and public institutions.

The adoption of internal audit as a governance control mechanism in Australian public universities – views from the CEOs

This study draws on the multi-theoretical approach to governance and the views of university chief executive officers (CEOs) to examine the extent to which internal auditing as a control mechanism is adopted in Australian public universities under an environment of change management. The findings highlight negative consequences of change and their causal factors for university management to address towards narrowing the current theory-practice gap of internal auditing.

College chief wants government action on proposed pay cuts

College chief wants government action on proposed pay cuts

Four Decades of Clinical Experience

Foreward This compilation presents a unique look at the first 40 years of the career of a remarkable cardiovascular surgeon. One who has refined surgical skills to an unparalleled degree in addressing whatever different surgical challenges he might encounter in the course of his work. He has maintained a meticulous and comprehensive record of his surgical experience, which stands as a tribute to him, to the surgical standards he set and to which he adhered. As one of many of his cardiology colleagues, I feel privileged to have known and worked with him — as fine a person and physician as I have ever met. Jimmy Frank Howell, known to The Methodist Hospital community simply as “Jimmy,” was trained in cardiovascular surgery under the watchful eye of Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, whose strict discipline and adherence to a high standard of excellence shaped the entire career of Dr. Howell. He accepted an invitation to join Dr. DeBakey on completion of his training and very quickly developed his own surgical following. One of my criteria for assessing the skill of a surgeon is to query nurses in the operating room, intensive care unit, and the surgical floors. “Still the best hands and judgment around,” is the inevitable assessment I hear. We all will look back on a career of the remarkable, the Howells and others, with awe, appreciation, and respect. I know you will enjoy and appreciate reading about the career of a remarkable surgeon — Dr. Jimmy Frank Howell. William L. Winters Jr., M.D. Professor of Medicine Weill Cornell Medical College Chief Education Officer The Methodist Hospital Education Institute Editor-in-Chief, Methodist DeBakey Cardiovascular Journal