Have the positions really become “more challenging than ever”? Or have they made them such through inconsistent actions and a seeming inability to provide common sense answers?
I think university admin jobs in general are harder to fill and even harder to retain. I know a professor at a well regarded school who has had NINE different deans in only 15 years of working at his college. That sure doesn’t provide consistency, or the ability to see through long term goals.
I think they are much more challenging than before. Who tracked university endowments a generation ago except for folks in the asset management industry? Now a U’s endowment takes a 3 percent hit during a market pullback and it makes the 6 o’clock news. Who tracked sex assaults on campus? A woman was raped in a frat house when I was a freshman…she left after first semester, he stayed and graduated, never made the news and if she hadn’t been in my dorm, nobody would have heard about it. Now? The university president is expected to take the lead on any investigation, reporting, statements to alums, announcements on increasing training for healthcare personnel, etc. A student gets deported for violating their visa? That was handled by the international student office. Now Presidents are expected to be personally involved to make sure the student has a lawyer, due process, etc.
Much more challenging IMHO.on every single dimension.
Also, for an already successful university, there are far more ways for a president to fail (get negative publicity, even if the problem is not under one’s control) than to succeed (do something that gets positive publicity).
There is also the fact that Academia has had a problem with covering up the bad behaviors of its stars for as long as there has been academia. It has gotten a lot worse after most colleges went co-ed, which added sexual harassment to other types of harassment and abuse.
Once social media but provided a network for victims of abuse to find each other and a way in which bad behavior by university officials could be revealed, years of bad behavior and coverups came to light. Many of the Big Names involved were colleges administrators.
So there have also been a long list of administrators who have been forced out because of something that they did in the past.
Another factor is that there are two powerful forces pulling in opposite directions. There are boards of trustees and activist politicians who lean more conservative, waiting to pounce on perceived attacks of The American Way Of Life, and, on the other side, there are organizations and lots of students, who lean progressive, and who will go on attack against perceived Attacks On The Right Of Somebody Somewhere.
So administrators are also under a barrage of demands for actions and demands for being fired if they don’t take those actions, or demands for being fired if they do take those actions.
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