There is a renewed debate across the country about required levels of transparency in presidential searches, which some contend bar institutions from being able to attract top candidates.
A June 5 article in the Post and Courier points out that “South Carolina’s leading universities have moved almost entirely to confidential searches” despite a state law that requires institutions to disclose at least three finalists for every presidential search. According to the article, Clemson University hasn’t published a shortlist of candidates since 1999, the year after the law went into effect, and even then, the authors say, candidates were released on a Friday and Jim Barker was named as the institution’s 14th president the following Monday.
In Florida, lawmakers have blasted the lack of transparency around not just the ongoing tumultuous search process for the next president of the University of Florida, but contract terms that offer “a multimillion-dollar payout” current Interim President Dr. Donald Landry if he is not offered the permanent job. Last year, the Washington Coalition for Open Government called out officials for their lack of transparency in the presidential search process that eventually named Dr. Robert J. Jones as president.
Every state has some variation of a “sunshine law” — those policies that govern transparency in searches for public figures, including college and university presidents. Florida has one of the strictest presidential search transparency requirement laws in the country, with a requirement that search committees release the names of finalists a minimum of 21 days before the last round of interviews begins.
In the 2023 edition of the American Council on Education’s American College President Study, the reported tenure of college and university presidents was 5.9 years, a number that had sharply declined from the 8.5-year average reported in 2006. Presidential turnover in 2025 increased by as much as 30% compared to prior years, and across the country, a growing number of candidates are withdrawing at the final stage of searches, citing the existential political and campus climate risks that now come with the job. More than two-thirds of presidents represented in the 2023 ACE survey said they struggle to find people who understand the challenges they face as campus CEOs, and 55 percent said they planned to step down in the next five years.
At the same time, public skepticism about whether presidential appointments serve institutional missions or political ones has intensified the case for openness — with critics arguing that opacity in the search process makes it easier for boards to install ideologically aligned leaders without scrutiny.
Proponents of more secrecy in the search process contend that it’s difficult to attract top candidates, whose current leadership positions could be in jeopardy if they’re not selected, without keeping candidates’ names confidential.
In Louisiana, lawmakers recently entertained a bill that would allow institutions to keep the search details completely private; state Sen. Mark Abraham, R-Lake Charles, said it is difficult to attract top candidates for hot positions like the college presidency and football coaches “without the promise of secrecy,” though he has since agreed to amend the proposal.
“When you apply for a job and the application is made public, your current job is in jeopardy,” he told the Times-Picayune earlier this spring. “It restricts certain people from applying for a job.”
Increasingly, college presidents are coming from outside of academia; 18.2 percent of respondents in the ACE survey described their career path as coming from public service, business, nonprofit, or other fields, compared to 13.1 percent in 2006.
What the data and the debates make clear is that there are no easy answers, only tradeoffs. Shielding candidates from public exposure may expand the pool. It may also shield institutions from the accountability that public trust requires. Meanwhile, the deeper challenge — a job that fewer qualified people want to do, in a climate that has made the presidency more perilous than prestigious — will not be solved by confidentiality agreements or sunshine laws alone.
