When the AGB task force on the state of the Presidency in American Higher Education was meeting last fall in Washington, D.C., to deliberate about the role of the academic presidency, the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education convened across town to examine issues ranging from access to affordability to…

This article encourages college presidents and trustees to prepare for public relations challenges by tracking issues through four distinct stages: fringe, emerging, getting hot, and white hot/too late. "Fringe" refers to, for example, people discussing an issue at conferences, in professional publications, or among a few concerned…