Originally posted by complaint_hopeful
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Another thing that is baffling in higher education is determining success by comparing yourself to others in your area. Success is not a "compared to" game. If you are comparing yourself to a failing school and claiming success because your enrolement numbers haven't shrunk quite as much, you are going about it all wrong. Success or failure should be based on how YOUR college is doing...if YOUR college has lost students for the last 10 years, YOU have a problem...Doesn't matter if you have only lost 10% of your student base while other schools have lost 15%. YOU are STILL failing!!
While there are some great college presidents who are innovative and forward thinking, seems that most are career educators with little understanding of how to manage and lead large, diverse organizations. There is a great difference between being "technically competent" (in the case of colleges, a great educator) and someone who can manage and lead a multi-million dollar business (make no mistake, that is what colleges are). While having technical competency can help a leader be successful, there are MANY more important skills that have a much greater impact on the success or failure of a business leader. Probably the biggest success trait of someone coming in to lead a filing organization is the ability to recognize AND admit the problems, then take bold and immediate steps to address them.
It would be an interesting experiment at say Mansfield to bring in a business leader from completely outside of academia and see what they can do. Soe may poo-poo such an idea saying that such a person couldn't possibly "understand" the world of academia, but the real questions is, could he/she do much worse that the pevious leaders who DID understand it??
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