The Presidential Leadership Door includes briefing papers on: performance analysis, academic structures, curriculum, institutional structure and analysis, financial performance, management skills, and other topics.
This paper addresses the factors that constrain a college president from constructing an efficient and effective system to achieve its mission. This paper aims to help presidents understand the factors that stymie operational strategies and plans, and how to mitigate...
by Michael Townsley & James Gaddy As small colleges across the country face mounting challenges—declining enrollment, financial instability, and increased operational complexity—many are rethinking what effective leadership looks like. Between 2010 and 2021,...
By Michael Townsley and Jack Corby In higher education today, boards of trustees and presidents must know if their college is doing what it claims to be doing in its mission statement and its curriculum. Financial operations use an auditor to determine if the college...
Push and Pull-on Authority between President and Board of Trustees in a Financial Crisis Presidents and boards of trustees often respond to a financial crisis with a destructive contest in which a board resists the president for greater authority. The president takes...
Observations, Tools, and Tactics Edits and forward by: Jack Corby Support by: John A Stevens of Stevens Strategy, LLC Contact for Further Information or Questions: mtownsley@stevensstrategy.com or mtown@dca.net. Table of Contents Forward Tip #1: Communications Tip #2:...
Most non-professional bachelor degrees are typically structured around a strong liberal art component and include a modest collection of courses aimed at developing a basis for skills that might be needed upon entering the job market. For instance, in a 120-hour...
By Mike Townsley & Bob DeColfmacker, Last year was the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival and an appropriate time to reference Bob Dylan’s 1964 hit “They Times They Are a Changing.” The song was an anthem to the tumultuous 1960’s, and its simple...
Presidents and chief administrative officers need to develop a fine hand at delegating authority. The blog on Scarce Resources speaks to the limited amount of time and energy that the top level administrators have.
The February 2, 2022 issue of Inside Higher Education carried the article “Using College Outcomes to Gauge Risk for Students” by Doug Lederman. [1] The article addressed how to protect veterans from choosing a college that might not survive.
Hiring a college president is fraught with uncertainty about the capability of a president to lead an institution during a time of massive change in higher education…
The Voluntary Institutional Metrics Project has worked for two years designing a common dashboard for institutions of higher education. The purpose of the dashboard is to display the cost of a degree, the default rates for graduates, and the skills attained by graduates…