Exploring Involuntary Presidential Turnover in American Higher Education

ABSTRACT

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 findings revealed 7 causes of involuntary turnover including athletics controversy, financial controversy, loss of board confidence, loss of faculty confidence, loss of system confidence, poor judgment, and poor fit. In addition to identifying trends in presidential involuntary turnover, we propose a presidential turnover framework to explain the causes of presidential turnover.

KEYWORDS:

• Governance
• turnover
• university presidents

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Brittany Barker and Martha Garrison for their research assistance.