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News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education

Oct. 20, 2005

Presidents Who Are Scholars

Conventional wisdom holds that presidents these days are selected for their skill as fund raisers and lobbyists, not for anything so mundane as original scholarship. Sure, a Ph.D. is still a requirement at most institutions, but in an era of career administrators, a presidential bio is supposed to boast of capital campaigns not journal articles.

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Actually those who long for the days of universities led by real scholars may be surprised by a new study that found a correlation between being a well respected (and published) researcher and obtaining a top presidency.

Amanda Goodall, a researcher at the business school at the University of Warwick, in Britain, examined all of the research citations of work done by presidents of 100 top universities all over the world. The research, forthcoming in The Journal of Documentation, classified all the presidents as those with high or low research expertise based on how frequently their research work is cited. (Goodall used various conversion methods to deal with the way some disciplines are cited much more frequently than others, and presidents were assigned a category on whether they were cited highly or not.)

Goodall, while acknowledging flaws in university ranking systems, used the top 100 list done by a research team at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. (Its top 10: Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Berkeley, MIT, CalTech, Princeton, Oxford, Columbia and Chicago.) The presidents whose academic records were studied were in office at the end of 2004.

What Goodall found — in both American and non-American institutions — was a significant correlation between the quality of research done by presidents and how high up on the prestige ladder they were situated. The best universities have as presidents people with the most distinguished scholarly records.

In terms of citations, those leading the top 50 universities (a group that is made up primarily of American institutions) are two and a half times more likely to be cited than presidents in the next group of 50. And a president in the top 20 (of which 17 are American universities) has almost five times the citations of a president in the fifth quintile.

In her paper, Goodall offers several possible explanations. Among them: good researchers may make good presidents, top universities see good researchers as being assets to the institution in fund raising and public relations, and research talent may be a proxy for leadership skills. Goodall’s paper makes clear that there is not yet evidence for any one of those explanations (or other possibilities).

In an e-mail interview, said that “the most significant part of these findings is the fact that this is an important characteristic about leaders of research universities that has until now not been picked up on or analyzed.”

While noting that managerial skills are obviously important for university presidents, Goodall said that she was pleased with the correlation she found. “It could be argued that a leader should reflect the mission statement of a university and as we can see with the top ones, it does,” she said. “Being a good researcher also reflects the core business of the research university.”

— Scott Jaschik

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Comments

Tautology?

I remember that ranking list (see the link above for a discussion of it): the methodology was strongly biased in favor of research and technical schools. So what this paper suggests is that research/technical schools tend to promote, all the way to the top, their most successful faculty.

The question is “does this make for good presidents” or is this the Peter Principle at work?

Jonathan Dresner, at 7:54 am EDT on October 20, 2005

In my experience, many professors compiled large CVs by either writing “popular scholarship,” “co-authoring” works with real scholars; or “editing” compilations of other peoples’ work. If you want to seriously look at presidential characteristics you will need to strip out all of the co-authorship (unless it is known that the president really was the driving force behind whatever it is), and just about everything that the had not really participated in. Of course, different skills are necessary to be a good president than to be a good researcher, and presidents are expected to look good (academically) on paper, but the time it takes to be a good administrator takes away from the time it takes to do good research.

Larry, at 9:47 am EDT on October 20, 2005

Presidents

Aside from whatever technical issues may affect this study, the general phenomenon explains why so few university presidents are deemed to be or to have been outstanding. Research on private corporations and on universities indicates that the skill of performance is not the same as the obviously more rare talent of leading that performance.

AP, at 10:28 am EDT on October 20, 2005

reverse correlation

Does the author consider that the work of college presidents might be considered more credible because of their presidential title and thus cited more often?

E, at 12:00 pm EDT on October 20, 2005

E — which author, of the study or the reporter?

user, at 2:34 pm EDT on October 20, 2005

Findings predictable

Having just defended my Ph.D. dissertation on universities presidents and their career paths to the presidency, I find the finding of this study to be very predictable and nothing new or insightful. The universities cited (Harvard, Stanford, Berkley, Princeton et. al.) are all well established universities that do not need new and dynamic leadership. This is not to say that the current presidents of these universities are not dynamic—Dr. Thilghman is very dynamic! But, what is she going to do in terms of leading Princeton to new heights??? Take it from, well number 1 in undergraduate education to what....

The non-traditional presidents (i.e. the ones who are not as well published and known for their pure and unaltered academic careers) are at institutions where a change (perceived or real) is needed. For example, Lee Todd (with a scholarly background, but more known for his business leadership) took over the Univ. of Kentucky as it was felt that it was not making the strides it need to fulfill its goal of being a top 20 research university; Texas A&M found its leader in Dr. Gates—from the CIA—because it felt that its national prestige was slipping as it lost a focus on “excellence". Georgetown also selected a president who’s background was not all academic—but primarily administrative—as it felt a need to become more efficiently run.

These are just a few examples of president who do not follow the academic ladder to the presidency. They all serve excellent universities that had a need a change of perspective. Harvard doesn’t need, or they don’t feel that they need, to have that change. Conversely, look at Colorado—there was no question that they would select a non-traditional president—as the perception of change was needed and therefore there was no way an academic president would have been tapped to lead CU—either in the interim or long-term.

Robert Davies, at 2:14 pm EDT on October 22, 2005

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