Doors to Academia

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

by | Aug 30, 2025 | Presidential Leadership, Uncategorized

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.

Go to Doors to Academia for More Posts on the

Current State of Higher Education

  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. ↑

Surviving and Budgeting in Modern Higher Ed: A Three-Front War Amid Enrollment Uncertainty

by | Aug 16, 2025 | Financial Strategy and Operations

by Michael Townsley and Jack Corby

College’s chief financial officers may be facing the greatest budget uncertainty in their lives: shrinking student markets due to the looming demographic cliff, potential deep cuts in federal and state student aid, and major changes in technology that disrupt how institutions operate and compete.

Here is a partial list of these uncertainties are:

  • Demographic Cliff – student markets will start to shrink dramatically in 2026 and will not provide the scale increases in enrollment to generate more tuition revenue
  • Increasing tuition Rates – not be possible without corresponding increases in unfunded financial aid, which are counterproductive because they reduce the amount of cash flowing from enrollment
  • Pell Grants – could see a potential loss of $1,655 per student
  • SEOG – elimination of this grant;
  • College Work Study – large cuts in the grants with the amount undetermined at this time.
  • Student Loans – colleges would be partially responsible for students who failed to repay their loan; predicted large growth in the number of defaulters will provide further justification for Congress to approve requiring colleges to partially pay for defaulted balances;
  • Indirect Cost –indirect costs from federal grants would be cut to 15% of grants;

Together, these forces require a shift in how institutions plan, budget, and implement strategy. This guide combines two essential perspectives — survival strategies for long-term stability and budgeting tactics under uncertainty — to assist institutions in navigating the years ahead.

  1. Cut Expenses, too many colleges wait to cut expenses until they are in a deep financial crisis. That is the worst time to consider this option because cutting tends to be done without forethought and results in a machete approach. Cutting expenses should be done strategically to yield a college with offers marketable academic programs and has the services to support academic programs and operations. However, when determining what to save, the college leadership must ask this question – Does this expense serve the strategy, while not weakening its long-term financial condition.
  2. Containing Enrollment Risks by Banding Enrollment
    • Budget enrollment forecast should use current enrollment; do not increase enrollment for the budget forecast.
    • Compute the standard deviation for enrollment for the prior five years;
    • Compute for the prior five years including the current fiscal year; the first and second standard deviation;
    • Only use the first and second negative standard deviation to band the current enrollment; this will capture 34% and 49% of the downside;
    • Compute the enrollment budget using the current enrollment with the first and second negative standard deviations as lower continent bands;
    • Plan enrollment and tuition revenue for all three bands;
    • Design contingent expenses for each band;
    • As the enrollment picture becomes clearer, move from the lowest band to the current enrollment band.
  3. Increase Productivity; This is a very tough nut to crack because it involves faculty and staff workloads that are usually subject to college policies, governance ambiguities, and labor law. Nevertheless, here are several approaches to increasing productivity – decisions based on intuitive analysis or decisions based on data-driven analysis.

Goal: Make significant cuts in expenses that do not support the college’s mission or are not justified because the costs are not covered by revenue.

Intuitive Decisions:

  • End majors with multiple instructors and few students.
  • No longer provide secretarial support for faculty and administrators below the level of chief administrators.
  • Cancel athletic programs that do not generate sufficient tuition revenue to cover expenses.
  • Eliminate superfluous staff from offices and push the work to the administrator, such as
  • Contract out services when the contractor can do the work for less.
  • Eliminate services and activities that do not directly serve the mission of the college.
  • Scrutinize the costs of all benefits for employees and giveaways to student that the college can no longer afford.

Data driven Decisions:

  • Switch to an RCM Model:
    • The Revenue (or Responsibility) Centered Model (RCM) is typically used to identify revenue generating programs that are note generating sufficient net income to cover college operations.
    • The RCM allocates expenses to the revenue centers. It also distributes the revenues when students take courses outside of a revenue center that is also an academic major. The distribution formula represents transfer pricing between multiple majors.
  • Transfer pricing must also take into account general (education or elective) course. Otherwise, these courses may either be overvalued or undervalued. Since most accreditation commission require these courses, they cannot be dropped willy-nilly.
  • Because RCM mainly focuses on revenue generation, many analysts overlook the potential for expense reduction to increase net revenue. For example, a revenue center net performance may fall below goals because direct costs or indirect costs (college operations) may be driving down net revenue for a revenue center.

Resources:

  1. Sell Down Assets; simply means getting rid of assets that carry operational and capital costs but do not directly support academic programs nor directly support the academic needs of students. The most difficult aspect of assets aspect of the prior productivity conditions is that any costs can and often are justified to support instruction programs and students working toward a degree. The only resolution of this conundrum is to rigorously test what would happen if underutilized property, classroom, building, or piece of equipment is declared surplus and sold.
  2. Borrow from Endowment; the colleges in deep financial distress with endowments have two choices – figure how to access endowment funds to provide funds to survive long enough to stabilize the college; or close the college and leave the endowment unused and on the table. This option requires a good legal team to work with the state department of justice and with the courts to be authorized to access endowment funds. In most cases, the court and department of justice will only approve a loan from the endowment, if they can be convinced that the college has a strategy to stop bleeding out the last dregs of the college’s financial reserves.

The coming years will demand both strategic transformation and tactical agility. Long-term stability will depend on making tough decisions about programs, staffing, and assets today, while short-term survival will require flexible, risk-banded budgeting and constant vigilance over cash flow. Colleges that combine these approaches will be far better positioned to weather the demographic cliff, funding cuts, and economic uncertainty ahead.

Go to Doors to Academia for More Posts on the Current State of Higher Education

Performance Analyst

by | Aug 16, 2025 | Presidential Leadership

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 is following standard accounting procedures and accurately reporting its financial position. However, the academic and operational programs do not have anyone comparable to a financial auditor to assess their administrative operations, and their academic programs. When colleges do not have a third party assigned to assess their administrative operations and academic programs, the college may falsely assume that the absence of complaints means that all is well with its administration and instructional program.

Colleges and universities can no longer afford the luxury that no news is good news because inefficiencies add unsustainable costs to the college, while ineffective delivery of academic services leads to graduates who are unhappy with their degrees. For instance, recent articles, for example, by Forbes magazine report that many graduates are finding that they do not have the practical skills for the job and the market.[1] If a college wants to survive the crushing demands of the demographic cliff, the loss of federal funds, and the changing preference of potential students for a degree, it cannot assume that all is well. They must test operations and academic programs to ensure that they are efficiently and effectively delivering their services.

This brief paper has suggested that the boards of trustees and presidents should fund a performance analyst to ensure that academic and administrative operations are efficient and effective in delivering on its mission and curriculum. The following outlines the role of the Performance Analyst:

Performance Analyst: reports directly to the president and has full authority to access data, review policies and procedures, examine the efficiency of operations, and make recommendations to improve performance

Duties (this is only a partial list, and it could differ by institution):

  • Analyze policies, processes, and outputs for operational and academic departments;
  • Analyze the policies, processes, and relationships between IT and academic departments;
  • Analyze the interface between: administrative departments, academic, plant, IT, finance, athletic, and other substantive departments;
  • Analyze the relationship between governance structures, for instance: board and administration, board and faculty, administration and academic governance, and other governance structures in the institution;
  • Analyze the interface between the college and external parties with which the college has a quasi-legal or contractual relationship;
  • Analyze the college’s student flow from marketing to admissions, to registration, to class assignments, to bookstore, to courses, to graduation, to alumni affairs;
  • Analyze college performance in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency of skill development by major;
  • Annual Reports on enrollment, graduates, retention, finding jobs post-graduation, moving on to graduate degrees or professional degrees, cost per student credit hour, net revenue for revenue-generating departments, and efficiency of the allocation of assets to instruction and operations.
  • Provide the president with detailed recommendations on changes to improve efficiency and effectiveness for each area studied.

In summary, the main goal of the performance analyst is to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the institution and to suggest changes that improve effective and efficient operations.

  1. Mark Perna (January 28,2025); “New Data Shows Just How Deep the College Crisis Does”, Forbes; New Data Exposes the Depth of America’s College Crisis ↑

Market Strategies

by | Aug 16, 2025 | Enrollment and Marketing

Below are marketing strategies that private colleges and universities are currently using or could consider. Marketing directors need a wide range of options to effectively attract students. The list includes common marketing strategies, with the last option being very aggressive.

  1. Traditional – the college uses the same strategy for decades, even when yield is dropping dramatically.

  2. New Geographic Area – the college reaches beyond its traditional geographic boundaries to locate students; usually, the strategy correlates the characteristics of enrolled students with potential students in new areas.

  3. New Revenue Market – the college designs new revenue-generating programs to attract students. These new revenue generators could include: new academic programs, new athletic programs, and new ways for students to prepare for future employment, create hybrid programs with other colleges, and buy better lists with a wider geographic range with more precise information about the potential students.

  4. Aggressive Plans: seek out strong programs in other colleges and offer a deal to the faculty to move to your college or start a comparable program at your college. Routes:
    1. Buy into an instructional network with a fast-growing market.
    2. Offer to buy programs from a failing college.
    3. Target the same market used by a competitor by offering new students a better price and shorter times to complete a degree.

WSJ – AI Is Already Wrecking the College Grad Market

by | Aug 2, 2025 | News 2025

A headline of the Wall Street Journal article of July 28th says: “AI is wrecking an already Fragile Job Market for College Graduates”.[1] The gist of the article is that many companies are installing AI to perform the skills that recent college graduates used to provide. Until very recently, college graduates, as the article notes, did the grunt work of preparing reports that taught them basic management and operational skills so that they could advance up the ladder of management success. Now, AI is able to do this work cheaper and faster. Nevertheless, companies still hire a few graduates to review AI reports for accuracy, coherence, and the use of legitimate citations. Unfortunately, the number of new college graduates hired by major companies is very small compared to the past.

Colleges need to quickly get a grasp on this change in the job market before the student market finds an alternative to the cost of a college degree that leads to low pay and a career with no future.

  1. Lindsay Elliss and Katherine Binley; (June 28, 2028); “AI is wrecking an already Fragile Job Market for College Graduates”; Wall Street Journal; AI Is Wrecking an Already Fragile Job Market for College Graduates – WSJ ↑