by Howard Gardner
This piece is an excerpt from an On Leadership roundtable on higher education and the 21st-century leadership challenge for university presidents.
As the story goes, when James Conant of Harvard went to visit Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the White House, the wags in Cambridge said “the president is in Washington, visiting Mr. Roosevelt.”
Yet long gone are the days when university presidents—the likes of Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard or Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia—reigned supreme. Perhaps it is not as dire as you’d think listening to the current wags’ quip: “The president of the college is someone who lives in a big house and begs.” But college and university presidents are indeed running huge multi-million-dollar or multi-billion-dollar operations and are responsible to numerous constituencies, whose interests are often diametrically opposed to one another.
On top of that, we live in a decidedly non-heroic time (witness the current political mess in Washington and most state capitals). Against this background, the call for university presidents, individually or corporately, to get their act together to solve the financial problems, make students accountable and speak out bravely on the issues of the day seems unrealistic.
And yet it is equally apparent that the current situation, with roughly 4,000 institutions of higher learning in the United States, is untenable. The apparent lure and efficacy of online education will inevitably lead to a thinning of the ranks. And this survival of the fittest will play out based in part on financial resources (Princeton is unlikely to go out of business), in part on distinctive programs (there may always be a place for quirky offerings, à la St. John’s great books curriculum), and in part on outstanding athletic or artistic programs.
Having sketched a depressing picture, let me offer a few positive suggestions.
Yes, university presidents who remain at the helm for several years, and who manage to build up a reservoir of good will, can make and consolidate sensible changes in curricula, pricing, scheduling and faculty recruitment. And universities that strive to align the interests of the various constituencies can forge ahead in a promising direction.
This piece was originally published in full in The Washington Post.