Oft-cited data from The American College President, published in 2023 by the American Council on Education, demonstrated a drop in average presidential tenure from 8.5 years in office in 2006 to 5.9 years in 2023. The average age of presidents stayed nearly equal across that time period: 59.9 years old on average in 2006, and 60.0 in 2022.
The American Association of Community College’s 2023 State of Community College Leadership report featured interesting results. It confirmed the presidential turnover around 2017 occurred as projected by Aspen’s College Excellence Program. Turnover, however, decreased slightly during the pandemic (2020-2021), but was on the rise again as of 2022-2023.
We’re dialing in the competencies needed for an effective presidency. One of the Aspen Institute College Excellence Plan’s early landmark publications was Crisis and Opportunity, wherein it saw a wave of community college presidents retiring by 2017: 42 percent, or roughly 500 presidents (which comprises nearly half of U.S. community colleges).
Aspen’s College Excellence Plan outlined key competencies for presidents: committing to student success, taking entrepreneurial risks, creating lasting change, enacting a long-term vision, and effectively allocating resources. Look no further than winners of Aspen’s College Excellence Prize for examples of presidents who have embodied some. if not all, of these competencies.
More recently (2024), researchers Jorge Burmicky, Kevin McClure, and their team found a different set of essential competencies, which blend interpersonal and operational skills: trust-building; demonstrating resilience; communication savvy; crafting a cabinet and team building; emotional intelligence; leading with courage; and data acumen and resource management.
We have the basics of leadership from business leaders past and present. We have various sets of competencies specific to the community college presidency. Yet turnover persists in this role – “the loneliest job on campus,” as one former president described it to me.
What’s the rub?
Stubborn challenges to the presidency
We’re at an important juncture where we need to gauge how the challenges – new and decades-old, alike – are rendering the presidency into a prestigious, yet highly precarious position.
From the outset, we should reflect on the path into the presidency. ACE’s 2023 report (cited earlier) found that current presidents averaged aspiring to a presidency at roughly 45 years old. From there, they began applying for a presidency just shy of 50 years old and started their first presidency at an average of 51.7 years old. So, we have, in essence, a pipeline to the presidency that takes nearly seven years to materialize from first inspiration to inauguration.
Regardless of age upon entering the executive office, new presidents are assuming a role that has “fundamentally changed,” as Mordecai Brownlee (President, Community College of Aurora, Colorado) wrote this past summer. Artificial intelligence, shifts in student demographics, changing political realities, and increased mandates without funding tied to them. These are all sizable disruptions occurring simultaneously.
Brownlee’s onto something important when he observes that the presidency has expanded from “primarily overseeing educational institutions” to “spearheading regional talent development enterprises and networks.” He explains further:
"Today’s presidency requires those who can lead seamlessly at the intersection of education, workforce development, K-12 to university transfer pathways, economic development, public policy, fiscal stewardship, technology, philanthropy and civic leadership."
When community colleges engage their communities in economic development, they can have a profound effect, meeting labor market needs and minimizing talent flight (graduates moving away to other communities).
But to expect a president can singlehandedly have the expertise and acumen alike to enact all this tremendous change is wishful thinking. Hence the importance of one of the competencies Burmicky, McClure and their colleagues identified: crafting a cabinet and team building. Taking all this on alone is a precursor to burnout and a premature departure from office.
Related to community-building within a complex ecosystem of partners is integrating yourself into the community. Any president arriving at a new college has to spend the better part of their first year getting to know their campus and community. This process can be all the more challenging for presidents arriving not just to a new college but to a new state, where they contend with an invisible albatross of foreignness and “not really knowing how we do things here.” They’re seeking to integrate and prove their long-term and abiding commitment to the community while having to dispel stereotypes and suspicions.
And all this is happening at a time when public trust in higher education (collectively, 38% as of this summer, according to a Gallup poll) is of central concern from the federal level all the way to individual communities. As I wrote for the Teaching to Transform Substack back in April, we’re doing well to consider how to increase trust as a sector but still tend to justify and explain ourselves on our own terms and not those that will resonate with our communities and demonstrate the impact we offer.
Presidents are central to trust-building efforts. Given the mission of community colleges, this effort is less of an uphill endeavor. (Community colleges are fortunate to have a higher level of trust in higher education than their four-year counterparts: 56% compared to 44%.) Still, the process of rebuilding trust is taxing, especially when it entails fundraising and advocating for bonds, having to address periodic public critiques and skepticism, and striving to increase student success rates.
Beyond competencies: Where to from here with the presidency?
It’s going to take a concerted effort to reduce turnover in the presidency. As a starting point, we should explore ways to inspire people to aspire to the presidency earlier and expedite the path to inauguration. We should also shift from treating and speaking of the president as “doing everything” to lessen the pressure on them to attempt to do so. Further, we should encourage presidents to empower their cabinets to engage more with community partners ranging from pre-K centers to assisted living communities to gauge needs and identify how the community college can help meet those needs.
How we’ll go about these and other reforms to the presidency remains to be seen. But we risk perpetuating the same untenable dynamics within the role if we don’t take action.
Ryan Knight, Ph.D., is the associate director of the Community College Association of Texas Trustees. Dr. Knight holds a doctorate in educational research and policy evaluation with an emphasis on community college leadership from NC State University. He is a reviewer for and serves on the editorial board of the Community College Journal of Research and Practice (CCJRP).
