A New Career Path for Someone Aspiring to Become a College President

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, college enrollment in the U.S. dropped by approximately 15%, placing pressure on institutional budgets and prompting some colleges to downsize, merge, or close altogether.^[1] These realities demand a shift away from the traditional notion of the college president as a purely academic figurehead. Today’s leaders must be as fluent in financial strategy and organizational management as they are in institutional mission.

This does not mean that academic credentials are irrelevant. On the contrary, a terminal degree remains essential for credibility in the academic community and for understanding the core values of higher education. Although the traditional career ladder for an aspiring college president remains the traditional path to rise up the academic ladder to become a president, it may be time to consider another path because, in these parlous times, the traditional path may not provide a president with the skills needed to manage a complex college structure.

Effective presidential leadership, as colleges pass through a long-term period of enrollment and financial distress, requires decisiveness and adaptability, when they make decisions. ^[2] Decisiveness and adaptability depend on an aspiring president developing a deep understanding of the policies, procedures, and daily operations that drives a college. Yet, they still need to appreciate and respect academic culture. A terminal degree in academic discipline helps reinforce this understanding and ensures that leaders can engage credibly with faculty, accreditation bodies, and external academic stakeholders. However, as Christensen argues, many of the most persistent leadership failures have come not from a lack of academic knowledge, but from weak financial oversight and poor institutional strategy.^[3]

This paper proposes a new career path which resolves the Christiansen dilemma of leadership and failure. The new path asserts that an aspiring president should spend time intensively working in each operating department so that they can become proficient in their policies, procedures, coordinating relationships, operational budgets, operational constraints and potential efficiencies.

Many readers may be put off by a new path for aspiring presidents that is common approach to developing managers in business. It is imperative that presidents know the ‘nuts and bolts’ of their college as these factors drive their colleges to the brink: demographics, new federal funding regulations, higher endowment taxes, reluctance of banks to continue to increase short-term cash loans, and economic forces like aggressive price competition, excess supply of classroom seats, inflexible fixed costs, auxiliary services that no longer pay for operational and capital costs. When a president understands the details of their operation, they will also know, how to reorganize the college and respond to opportunities in the market.

The alternative career path, which the author believes will develop strong presidents with the foresight and management skills to accomplish the mission of a college, is laid out below.

Givens

• The model assumes that typical degrees will still be needed as the aspirant climbs the ladder to a presidency, such as,
• a doctorate degree – Ph.D. or Professional or DBA;
• Small colleges the starting point for most new presidents will continue to face severe financial pressures requiring presidents who have the skills to understand all segments of the operations of a college.
• Colleges, in particular, private colleges will need presidents who understand the operations of a college, so that they can make reasoned management choices based on their experience as they prepare for a college presidency.

Alternate Career Path

• Rather than using the traditional academic path to prepare for a college presidency, the aspirant will follow a path in which they are assigned to each significant operational department.
• Alternate Career Path will involve learning the skills, policies, and procedures of these departments: admissions, registrar, financial aid, bursar, enrollment management, academic affairs, IT, academic services, student affairs, finance, and building and grounds.
• Goal of the Alternate Career Path is to develop aspirants who understand the deep operations of the college its markets, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, along with the vision to develop strategies and the capability to identify problems that need to be fixed.
• This path will require the assistance of the president and senior administrators to schedule work. As assignment to a department should take at least a month, and in some cases, may take a semester.
• Specific skills to be learned in each department (this is a sample of skills):
  • Admissions – enrolling students, preparing class schedules, collecting transcripts and other documents, preparing a student portfolio, and passing the student onto the registrar and financial aid
  • Registrar – record enrollment;
  • Financial Aid – preparing an aid package for a student to include: governmental aid and loans, institutional aid copies of the enrollment and financial aid package to the registrar bursar.
  • Bursar – recording new and continuing student method of payment and providing the student with a statement of their account with any balances owed, and the dates for payment.
  • Enrollment Management – reviewing past data to estimate enrollment by major and degree level, estimate sources of financial aid, and identify target markets for enrollments. Design marketing campaigns for target markets by: reviewing past performance, sources of data on potential students, means of reaching the students, costs of the campaign, and the campaign schedule. Establish goals by major and degree level and average cost of enrolling student. Submit enrollment budgets to the business office and to the president.
  • Academic Affairs – work on the development of class schedules, assignment of faculty and classrooms; request and review syllabi, prepare lists of instructional materials to be ordered and list of books for the bookstore; notify building and grounds of class schedules. As an exercise, design new academic processes to improve the efficiency and lower the costs of academic operations.
  • IT – learn the IT and communications network structure of the college and shadow IT personnel as they work with administrative and academic networks and systems. Learn how to pull down IT data and produce spreadsheet reports.
  • Academic Services – work in the library and other academic support services to see how they organize and carry-out their work.
  • Student Services – this training set could involve a variety of services such as: student counseling, residence halls, food services, nursing services, and athletics. Time should be spent in each section to learn how they plan, deliver services, and their challenges.
  • Finance – training in finance is an imperative because a president must understand: the structure of the accounting system, the audit schedules, monitoring expenses; generating financial performance reports, and scheduling budget planning and analyzing proposed budgets, and preparing regular and end-of-year financial reports. By the end of training in finance, the aspirant should be able to read and understand budget, financial, and audit reports.
  • Building and Grounds – this is an interesting center that an aspirant should understand in the following detail: debt structure for the college, depreciation allocations, space allocation for instruction, support services, and offices; electrical and other utilities, building ages and physical condition, deferred maintenance, custodial services, and security services.
  • Additional Notes:
    • Train yourself to analyze operational problems and create solutions;
    • This path will require a considerable amount of time to complete, but, at the end of the training, the aspirant will have developed the skills to be a valuable leader of a college.

Estimated Time Commitment for the Alternate Career Path

An aspiring president should plan to spend at least academic and financial cycle in each major department. The total time commitment could take 36 months. However, the financial cycle could require two three-month cycles for budget development and for financial/business training. Obviously, this is not a trivial amount of time, but the aspirant needs to approach the time commitment as an opportunity to build managerial skills that will outrank other competitors for a presidential opening.

Conclusion: A More Effective Leadership Model

Small colleges are at a crossroads. It has become obvious in the past two years, that colleges are failing because many presidents did not understand the financial and operational fragility of their institutions. There is no evidence that the forces that have adversely shaped colleges will change. For instance, the demographic cliff will not end anytime soon, new federal regulations will make it more difficult enrolling and keeping students, higher taxes on endowments will reduce payouts, cuts in indirect cost recovery will further undermine the operational capacity of research institutions. In other words, college and university presidents will no longer be able to depend on traditional sources of funding, or moving chess pieces in an ambiguous decision game, or finding new and richer donors to keep up appearances

To survive and thrive, they must move beyond outdated leadership models that prioritize academic prestige over operational readiness. This isn’t a rejection of academic values; rather, it’s a realignment of leadership roles to meet today’s complex institutional needs.

Presidents must be selected for their ability to manage change, secure resources, and lead strategically—while partnering with provosts and faculty to uphold academic excellence. A balanced approach—business-minded presidential leadership paired with empowered academic governance—offers the best path forward for small colleges seeking long-term sustainability.

Some may see this alternative path as being too much like a like a trade guild apprenticeship. Yet, the apprentice-master relationship is an interesting trope in education because it is how professors were certified as masters to join the professoriate. Nevertheless, colleges will only survive, if presidents manage their college like a business and understand every operation in their institutions. It has become obvious in the past two years, that colleges are failing because their presidents did not understand how financial and operationally fragile their institutions were. There is no evidence that one of the main factors, the demographic cliff, in the demise of these colleges is going to end anytime soon. New federal regulations will make finding and keeping students even more challenging. Furthermore, higher taxes on endowments and cuts in indirect cost recovery, even the strongest research universities will face greater risks to maintain credible research programs. In other words, college and university presidents can depend on traditional assumptions about revenue, or moving chess pieces in an ambiguous decision game, or finding new and richer donors to keep up appearances. In conclusion, private colleges and universities must have presidents who have developed strong managerial skills if they want to survive and strengthen their financial reserves and their position in the student market.

In conclusion, colleges and universities must take on the hard discipline of management if they want to do more than survive on a meager financial margin with a piece-meal changes to operation while watching cash reserves dwindle to nothing.

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1. Christensen, C.L. (2024); “A crisis in leadership: Examining the successes and failures of university presidents”; American Enterprise Institute. ↑

2. Roxas S.P. (2021); “CEO skills that ae needed to be successful in implementing a planned IT project”; Research Gate; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359570306.

   Ibid; Christensen C.L. (2024). ↑

3. ↑