Effective University leadership must be supermen or superwomen – the skills, knowledge, and experience required to be an effective leader of a higher education institution are unlike that of nearly any other profession.
We now have five generations in the workplace and those who are coming into leadership positions have virtually NO formal leadership training. One implication of leadership that we’ll address in a future Change Leader blog is the importance of succession planning.
College and university closures. According to a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, closures of four-year, private, not-for-profit universities and colleges in 2017 are expected to triple from the current average rate of five per year.
Higher education leaders are seeking to create meaningful change at their colleges and university, and while continuing to face demands to be more accountable. At the national level, the U.S. Congress is considering the Higher Education Reform and Opportunity (HERO) Act, parts of which move accountability to the state level. This proposal, if passed, would give individual states the responsibility to create accrediting systems, curricula, apprenticeships, programs, and individual courses.
Tuition increases have become the norm, but they’re not sustainable. Student loan debt is out of control and a hot topic in politics as well as driving down enrollment. From where will the money come to keep your institution enrollment at a sustainable level? These days, institutions of higher education are susceptible to economic uncertainty on multiple fronts. A decline in international student enrollment during the Trump administration could reduce revenues at both private and public universities. Despite a slight uptick in the rate of public funding over the last few years, state economies are still recovering from the last recession, and the slightest hint of economic uncertainty could plunge those figures back into negative territory.
The greatest challenges facing Higher Ed according to those on the inside. Presidents of Higher Education Institutions have a unique insight into their institution’s problems, and it’s no secret that higher education is facing a sort of crisis.
Discovering the fundamentals of leadership through observing Navy Seal Hell Week. No, you don’t have to crawl under live machine-gun fire or lay prone for hours in the freezing surf to learn the value of leadership, but there’re lots that we in academe can learn about leadership from the Navy Seals’ Hell Week.
In this organizational evolution case study, we’ll explore what an evolved organization looks like. Is organizational evolution easy to recognize? What differentiates evolved behavior from behavior in transition?