With universities in crisis, the traditional choice of an academic as leader might not be the wisest, suggests LSE HE Blog Fellow Richard Watermeyer

At a time of unprecedented challenges for the UK higher education sector, the question of who is best placed to lead universities – assuming that such large and complex organisations can indeed be led (and by any one individual) – resurfaces, alongside churn in top positions.

The recruitment of university leaders, or more specifically vice-chancellors and their equivalent, is an opaque process. But what is currently known is that recruiting to such positions, especially from outside the UK, is hard. Reasons are manifold. One is remunerative. By comparison to other international higher education sectors, especially the US, and despite media headlines, UK vice-chancellors are poorly paid. Geo-political destabilisations are another contributing factor. Brexit has made UK higher education a less desirable destination for senior leaders. And then, of course, there’s the British weather. Yet, of all these various downsides, the financial crisis seemingly engulfing UK higher education may be, more than any other reason, deterring prospective applicants and causing them to pack away their CVs.

Conflicting academic identities

If recruiting individuals from a global talent pool is hard and the home talent pool is sparse, finding the right candidate for the job appears further strained by a pervasive view that university leaders ought always to be academics. In the UK, there are very few vice-chancellors currently in post who were not formerly academics – ‘formerly’ being the operative word.

Yet championing academics as university leaders assumes that university leaders persist with their academic identities. It ignores the fact that few may be able – or even want – to move back and forth between what are, for the most part, polarised identities. Indeed, in taking on formal leadership roles, some will shed their academic skin in acknowledgement of the seeming incompatibility of managerial and academic interests.

How many university leaders return to their former academic identity and role, or at least do so willingly?

At an operational level, endless demands leave no time for academic pursuits for those at the summit of university leadership. Few leaders, if any, will visit the classroom or undertake research. Moreover, such academic tasks may no longer seem relevant to the academic leader’s professional selfhood or career trajectory. How many university leaders – certainly those who have dedicated themselves to a management career track – return to their former academic identity and role, or at least do so willingly? For those that do, the process of reconversion will be arduous, such is the consequence of lapsed identity or the strength of disassociation that comes from being a leader.

An act of scholarly betrayal

The identities of academics and academic university leaders may be far more dissymmetrical and in tension than complementary and harmonised. Why? Because in the transition from academic to leadership roles, increased visibility, perceived power accumulation, and attribution with unpopular decisions, translates into academic university leaders being othered, alienated, and ultimately isolated. When an academic moves into a formal leadership role, some, (certainly the more prestige-anxious and envious) will claim scholarly betrayal. For these, formal leadership is the manifestation of domination over academics (as semi-autonomous workers) who are intrinsically antagonistic towards authority and control.

The exit strategy of the failed scholar?

So why do academics take on formal leadership roles? Speculation is rife. I have encountered claims that leadership transition is a natural part of academics’ career progression and the culmination of their success, though others have stated the opposite and have argued that leadership is an exit strategy of the failed scholar. I have also heard a view that academics opting for leadership positions have reached the end of the line in terms of their scholarly contribution, having achieved all they might as researchers and teachers, or have become dissatisfied and/or exhausted by the seemingly endless demands and precarities of academic life.

The academic community can be vigorous in preserving a scholastic bloodline and unflinching in defending against those who threaten it

In any of these given scenarios, their transition may be motivated by a strong desire to move on from and/or leave academia yet remain within the university sector – far from a desirable impetus or recipe for effective leadership. But these academic leaders do not commit to this action blindly or passively. The social cost is known and rooted in their experience of the fierce tribalism and territorialism endemic to academics’ socialisation and from which their own nepotism likely springs. The academic community can be vigorous in preserving a scholastic bloodline and unflinching in defending against those who threaten it.

Rethinking the academic leader

The pariahhood of university leaders and their villainisation as the source of academics’ professional degradation plummets any stock or relevance in their (former) academic identities. There is, as such, an increasingly compelling, if likely unpopular, argument that a policy of only appointing academics as university leaders is, in the current milieu, in need of rethinking. Are there not other, ostensibly more important criteria (such as business resilience skills) that should be prioritised when selecting individuals to lead universities in the present context where their financial sustainability rests on a knife edge? Moreover, given the identity disassociation many academics will experience when becoming leaders, and given that most UK university staff are not academics but those in professional services roles whose interactions with academics are often best (or most generously) described as challenging, there is surely good reason to now take a more catholic view of senior leader appointments.

An idealisation of universities under academic stewardship neglects the dual effects of marketisation and massification

If leadership can be genuinely counted on to transform higher education then an investment in transformational leaders is necessary. Such figures may not only be former academics but those working beyond academia with a diversity and richness of experiences. While the UK sector may be short on evidence of the efficacy and success of non-academic university leaders – and the consensus is that academics remain the best bet – it may be time to challenge the primacy of a view of university leadership that is confined to a paradigm of governance long since gone. An idealisation of universities under academic stewardship neglects the dual effects of marketisation and massification that have transformed higher education from an elite to massified sector, and the abandonment of a model of collegial governance for corporate managerialism that most mourn. Extolling the virtue and need for academic university leaders for institutions that are increasingly unacademic-like – and who face a plethora of non-academic challenges – smacks as delusionary and/or false compensation; an empty effort to reassert academic sovereignty at a time when academics’ power over their estate is already destitute.

Higher education has evolved into a world of dog-eat-dog, where brawlers not bawlers survive

In a milieu of permacrisis, there is little escaping that higher education has evolved into a world of dog-eat-dog, where brawlers not bawlers survive. Universities need their best fighters in place to defend them and ensure their continuity in a hostile and unforgiving marketplace. It may be the case, however, that their best fighters are not ultimately academic. In an age of inexorable disruption, more agile and less idealistic – or be that less disingenuous – rationalisations of who gets to lead universities are needed.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________ This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions.    _____________________________________________________________________________________________   Main image: Lisa Marie Theck on Unsplash