It Takes a Village

After languishing at an unacceptably low level for a full two decades, the average term of a Canadian university president is now the shortest it has ever been—five years or less. By comparison, a Canadian corporate CEO enjoys 10 years or more in office. 

The main reason for such swift university presidential turnover continues to be lack of support — from boards, senior team members, university communities themselves in times of crisis, presidential predecessors and more. Women in the university presidential role are over-represented by this sobering reality. In contrast, the reasons corporate CEOs leave are mainly new leadership opportunities and retirement. 

Such presidential instability comes at the very time when universities in Canada are needed more than they have ever been, and when strong, durable and supported leadership of them is needed more than it has ever been. The global post-truth era of denialism and the new age of AI cry out for what universities – and only universities – do well: discover and disseminate evidence-based knowledge and develop independent thinking. As well, university research holds a key to Canada’s ambitions for increasing its productivity, improving its prosperity and securing its sovereignty.  

Serving as a university president for over a decade, I dealt with many challenges including the Covid pandemic, extraordinary financial pressures, Indigenous identity fraud, geopolitical campus conflicts and more. I was fortunate to have support both from within and beyond the University of Saskatchewan to advance our mission to “be what the world needs.”  

But I witnessed first-hand the high turnover rate of too many of my presidential colleagues. All were devoted to their universities, rightly believed they had something to offer them in the top leadership role, and wanted to see their institutions and the sector flourish. All of them attempted to serve their universities with skill, dedication and courage in the face of similar extraordinary challenges, from the crushingly financial to the polarizingly political.  

Necessary as these challenges were to address, they routinely reduced a president’s term length and horizon of leadership aspirations, distracting from the larger impact universities now can and must have, and making university presidencies among the most difficult of any senior leadership positions in the country. Many CEOs of major corporations remarked to me that in their view universities are overwhelmingly complex to lead by comparison with their own organizations.  

It is difficult in a less than five-year average term to accomplish many of the main objectives new presidents bring into their role. It is virtually impossible in the space of such a brief tenure to lead their universities to evolve into what Canada, and the world, now need of them. University presidents require broad support from within and outside their institutions, ensuring adequate time in office to focus on the bigger picture. To me, a few features of that bigger picture stand out as deserving a president’s attention and wide support for it. 

Public uncertainty about whether today’s universities prepare students for careers and fulfilling futures and help solve Canada’s foremost challenges must be addressed. Canadians are now facing daunting financial realities, students want the achievable dream of a productive future, and Canada is now charting a new sovereignty course for itself. This is not to say that universities should respond to every public or politicized criticism of them, or that they should discount the many ways they have prepared students well for decades. But it is to say that universities must continually identify the features of these new realities to which they can contribute solutions through engaged research and programming. 

For presidents, this means developing opportunities to elevate the conversation at universities to a level where the campus community sees itself as involved in confronting today’s biggest challenges, not only in their own academic agendas. Leading that scale of change will require adequate time in office and a lot of constructive support. 

The current tilt in universities away from broadly informed dialogue that welcomes contrasting perspectives and toward a narrower academic orthodoxy needs a courageous examination and reset. Until that happens in demonstrable ways, universities will continue to writhe under the broader suspicion that they talk the talk of diverse perspectives but don’t walk it. Just as universities hold a critical key to Canada’s sovereignty, prosperity and productivity ambitions, so too are universities best positioned to model what learning from opposing viewpoints looks like. If there’s anything the world needs these days, it’s that.  

For presidents, this means leading the university community to convene repeatedly around the biggest issues of the day in open, informed (not merely opinionated) and rational discourse that welcomes many and contrasting perspectives — if for no other reason than to show the world it can be done and that universities know how to do it. Leading that scale of change will require adequate time in office and a lot of determined support. 

At their best, universities develop and encourage the creative, self-reflective and ethical thinking that makes societies sustainable, equitable and just. This requires from students and faculty the hard work of informed critical analysis in a world of confusing social media messaging, as well as the courage to be personally introspective in order to ascertain what is just and right. The world is losing its aptitude for these crucial human capabilities and AI, despite its many benefits, will accelerate their demise, not remedy it. Now is the time for the university to turn its attention to recovering its own profound relationship with them.  

For presidents, this means defending the traditionally rewarding purposes of the humanities and social sciences while, crucially, steering those disciplines in particular to be fully engaged with meeting the challenges of relevance, value and diversity of thought. Leading that kind of change too will require adequate time in office and a lot of support. 

For presidents, this also means validating independent thinking in an AI age. That is not a challenge to be met only by provosts, deans, department heads, and faculty. At a time when AI can seemingly complete or outdo most cognitive functions itself, the success or failure at guaranteeing the endurance of critical thinking and its expression will re-define the university, as well as the public and political measure of the university’s value. For that reason, it is a presidential challenge and will require adequate time in office and a lot of support.  

This list is just a start. Presidents can’t accomplish all, or even any, of this in today’s average shortened and distracted term, nor alone. They need all those around them, inside and outside the university, to contribute to their success in the role. If it takes a president to raise a university to these now necessary levels of relevance and achievement, it takes a village to raise a president.