Presidents have difficult roles regardless of systemic context and in times of crisis their work is especially complex. While the body of work on presidents generally is growing, understanding of their role in crisis is underdeveloped. In this study, we enhance research on presidential crisis leadership by applying the competing values framework…

Higher education scholars have studied the American college presidency. Yet, fewer studies have prioritized the support systems needed to ensure that the presidential pipeline is representative of the students they serve. By examining the concept of sponsorship through a hermeneutical phenomenological approach, this piece described the mechanisms…

Performance-funding for higher education diffused across the U.S. following the Great Recession that led to funding cuts for the system. Postsecondary funding never returned to pre-Recession levels, and public colleges are held to higher expectations even as the funding they might use to meet these expectations has diminished. This is a challenge…

University presidents face a variety of competing demands and pressures to successfully lead their institutions. We sought to better understand these issues by studying unsuccessful presidencies ending in an involuntary turnover. We collected data on 1,029 presidential terms across 256 institutions with Division I athletics from 1988 to 2016. Our…

This study aimed to discover how trust is established during the decision-making processes of boards of trustees at private historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This study also aimed to address if and how board composition and individual board members' value systems play a role in the decision-making process and work of the board.…

In order to explain the rising cost of higher education, economist Howard Bowen in 1980 proposed his "famous law" of institutional finance. Bowen based his "revenue theory of cost" on a study of aggregate quantitative data extending from 1929 to 1979. Neither he nor subsequent economists asked whether or how that…

This study focuses on the norms espoused by the professoriate regarding the role performance of academe presidents resulting with eight inviolable and five admonitory normative structures. The findings showed institutional and individual faculty characteristics do promote a level of influence on the degree of indignation registered on various…

The literature on organizational culture underscores the benefits of a strong culture--its capacity to draw people together through shared values and norms. Yet, the formation of a powerful ideology also has the capacity to promote divisiveness and to alienate those who fail to conform. This study employs Frank W. Lutz's witch-hunting framework in…

Over the past decade, community engagement has emerged as an important priority among many colleges and universities. This study employs a multi-case study design to examine boundary spanning practices of research universities that have adopted a community engagement agenda. A model is advanced to conceptualize spanning behaviors and to inform…

Given the importance of moving diversity agendas forward nationally and the lack of understanding about how to address the politics that almost always emerge when institutionalizing a diversity initiative, the author examined the method by which college presidents handled the politics related to moving a diversity agenda forward. She focused on…

This article presents findings from a study examining the similarities and differences between Native American student perceptions and the perceptions of state representatives, university presidents, and faculty about persistence factors and barriers to degree completion specific to Native American students at three land-grant universities in…

This study identifies four patterns of how college presidents (N=32) interpret their own leadership roles and defines them in terms of a president's target of attention, mode of action, and relatedness to college life. It concludes that the presidency is not a singular, objective event but a subjective construction that may be experienced in…

If leaders make a real difference, institutions should change as leaders change. Data collected from colleges and universities between 1970 and 1980 indicated that scores on the Institutional Functioning Inventory did not change when their presidents were replaced. Some implications of these findings for understanding organizational leadership are…

Provides a chronology of college presidential efforts to deal with conflicts related to reconciliation of academic mission and athletic success through development of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) initial eligibility academic legislation. Analyzes these efforts in terms of maintaining congruence within the constituency-based…

Novels about American higher education are examined to discover the images of college and university presidents projected through fiction. Fictive presidents are found to be vain, ambitious, hyperaggressive, failures at coping with crises, and--in contrast to fictive faculty--either uninterested or unsuccessful in extracurricular sexual…