At universities, demographics change but presidents stay the same

Study: Typical head administrator continues to be white man in early 60s, preoccupied by funding

Although diversifying the makeup of student bodies has been a major effort on college campuses in recent years, when it comes to the president’s office, there has been little change: The typical college president continues to be a white man in his early 60s, a new survey has found.

College presidents are also increasingly preoccupied by (and worried about) budgeting and fundraising. At public institutions, well over half of those surveyed predicted that state government funding would decrease in the next five years, and more than three-quarters believe that tuition and fees will go up.

These are among the key findings in the latest edition of the American College President Study, released Tuesday by the American Council on Education, an association of degree-granting institutions including twoyear and four-year public and private colleges and universities. Conducted every four or five years, the wide-ranging survey has traditionally been viewed as an important census in higher education.

The report comes as accessibility to affordable higher education is increasingly part of the national discourse, particularly with support from state governments dropping and the Trump administration proposing deep cuts in many programs.

As colleges grapple with these challenges, the survey offers a snapshot of the leaders in higher education: who the current presidents are, how they got there, how they spend their time and what they think the future holds.

More and more, the presidents are having to deal with change on campus and off.

“Pressures to transform colleges and universities have grown, making the job of being president harder,” the report says. “Higher education has reached an inflection point as the student body diversifies, enrollments plateau, funding volatility grows, accountability and political climates become more intense and tumultuous.”

To complete the survey, the council solicited input from more than 3,600 presidents last year. More than 1,500 responded to a 69-question survey, representing 60 percent of universities granting doctorates or master’s degrees. The survey also sought data from for-profit institutions, but only 31 — about 6 percent — replied.

Overall, the study found that 30 percent of college presidents were women and 17 percent were members of racial or ethnic minorities — a slight increase from recent surveys. One group that slipped, however, was Hispanics, and especially Hispanic women; while 6.7 percent of college presidents identified as Hispanic women in 2006, the figure in 2016 was 2.9 percent.

But with the percentage of college students who are white continuing to decline — they now make up 58 percent of the college population, according to the National Center for Education Statistics — college presidents overwhelmingly agree that the racial climate on campus has become more important: 56 percent cited the issue as more of a priority than four years ago; 1 percent said it was less of one. Almost half of the presidents, in fact, said they were trying to attract female and minority faculty members to better reflect the population.

“While we would like to see numbers reflect more progress in certain areas,” Molly Corbett Broad, the council’s president, said during a conference call Monday, “I do believe that the needle is slowly moving in the right direction.”

The average age of presidents is now 62, the survey found, or a decade older than the 1986 figure. The percentage of presidents over 71 increased to 11 percent, from 5 percent.

The percentage of presidents age 50 or younger has dropped to 10 percent, from 42 percent in 1986, indicating that more experienced administrators are now in higher demand. Small wonder, then, that the average presidential stint has gradually shortened and is now 6½ years.