Academic Leadership

Left in the wake of Jerry Sandusky’s alleged crimes at Penn State University are a highly regarded university president, a legendary football coach, and two high-level administrators charged with perjury for lying to the grand jury. The only person left standing is former Penn State Wide Receivers Coach Mike McQueary. McQueary testified before the grand jury that he personally witnessed Sandusky in the shower with a young boy, engaging in acts so distasteful that they need not be recounted here.

The 20-year-old “bubble era” of rapid expansion and leveraged prosperity in American colleges may have been a novelty; it did not, however, fund or build much that now seems original. Too bad, because there is a difference between movements or institutions (as there is for poets and scientists) that are original, truly springing from fresh inspiration, and those that are merely novel, highly derived forms growing from already familiar soils. The Great Recession continues a residual perplexity like a weather front hovering upon the shoreline.

Here we are at a coffee shop in South Boston, commiserating over the latest higher education buzz. Boston, a place that hosts 50 colleges and universities, is the kind of college town that often drives national higher learning megatrends. The talk here is about President Obama taking aim at at student debt load, gainful employment, and health care.  For Obama, “The question isn’t how we can afford to focus on healthcare. The question is how we can afford not to…because in order to fix our economic crisis and rebuild our middle class, we need to fix our healthcare system, too.”

During his nine-year tenure as senior vice president for advancement at Oklahoma Christian University, John deSteiguer contributed to reaching a record $110 million in donor giving. He’ll put this experience, and his previous experience at Northeastern State University (Okla.), to use as OC’s new president, effective in June. He succeeds Mike O’Neal, president since 2002.

An unprecedented and powerful confluence of forces—political, economic, public policy, regulatory, technological, and consumer choice—will drastically reshape the landscape of higher education governance in coming years. These forces will cause a seismic shift in governance and accountability for American colleges and universities. Board members will need additional skills and competencies for leading their institutions through the more treacherous terrain of a new governance world.