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The University President: Balancing Competing Demands

By Lou Anna K. Simon

The role of the university president is continuously evolving as the challenges facing our institutions and the world at large become more complex and farther reaching. With increased globalization, decreased public financial support, and more external interventions, higher education leaders must balance often competing demands representing multiple constituencies both inside and outside the institution.

Facing challenges and guiding institutions through difficult times clearly is not new to the role of the university president. Each of our predecessors faced unprecedented challenges—world wars, economic depressions, race riots and social unrest, to name just a few—but the mandate to preserve their institutions' covenant with society never changed. Ever-increasing complexities, however, sometimes made it easy to lose sight of the common good. The admonishment in 1965 of Michigan State's 12th president, John Hannah, remains true today: "In making final decisions affecting its welfare, the university must be concerned with its irrevocable commitments and obligations to the society which sustains it." . . .

Excerpted from the special supplement to the winter 2009 issue of The Presidency. To subscribe to the magazine, please call (301) 632-6757, or order online through ACE's bookstore.