The Changing Role of Higher Ed Leadership

Having led multiple major universities, UDI Distinguished Fellow E. Gordon Gee reflects on how the presidency has evolved amid political, social, and cultural pressures. He contrasts the insulated presidencies of decades past with today’s environment of relentless scrutiny and shifting expectations. Leadership, Gee insists, now requires humor, resilience, and deep courage — traits that can’t be developed overnight. Gee urges universities to cultivate leadership early and intentionally, preparing a new generation that is confident, curious, and humble enough to face the challenges ahead.

As I said, I've been through four decades now. You know, you have the millennials now. You have the Z generation now. The alphas are coming up right behind us right now. And yeah, I think that the role of the presidency has changed in terms of expectations.

The role of the presidency has not changed as much as it should, because so many Presidents wanted it to be the structural way that it has been what, the way that they grew up with, or the way that they got their training at Stanford, Yale, Ohio State, Arizona State, they pined for that.

But the moment is not allowing that. And so I think that the changes are really dramatic. If you're sitting in the university president's chair right now. Even though I'm newly retired, I certainly didn't fill out, particularly over the last few years, with all of the kinds of queries, pushes and pulls that are coming from our leaders, and the legislature. But also, the public is asking a lot of questions and something that I didn't experience for about 30 years.

Well, I was asked one day to, rather recently, give a kind of a definition of what I thought were the kinds of  characteristics of a good president. And I really have three characteristics. It's not surprising.

One is you have to have very thick skin in today's world. Second of all, you have to have a great sense of humor, because if you can't laugh at yourself or find humor in everything you're doing, you're not going to exist. And the third and I call it nerves like sewer pipes. What I really mean is the fact that university presidents need to make decisions, and then they need to be confident in their decisions, and they need to not get waylaid by what is happening in terms of the public media notes and letters that they received.

Think about it. The university president, when they make a decision in reality, not in theory and reality, has more information than anyone else has, and all these other people are commenting on it. Do they know how to run the university better than he or she does? But they only have part of the story; they don't have the actual conversations that are taking place. And that is the reason that we need to instill real confidence in decision making among our presidents.

I think first of all that by the time one becomes a president, then you then have a new president's program, it's too late because you know, your characteristics are over the things that you've learned and that you haven't learned or are already sort of embedded in. And you've got your own playbook, what you think you need to do.

I think that the real need, in terms of leadership, is for us to train younger leaders. Some of them will become president, some have become deans, some of them will just enjoy their academic life. But we need to start at a much younger age, and we need to give people the understanding that there are multiple ways to gain access to leadership, not just, you know, the traditional way that I'm an assistant, I'm an associate, I'm a dean.

Right? And we need to recognize the values that people bring in different times to the institution. So we need to have a youth movement. Third, you know, I talked about two tyrannical issues. But the third one is that, too often we're led by very old people. And I have a right to say that because I think that younger people, when given the opportunity, can really get enough confidence to make the decisions they need to make.

And have very specific kinds of training programs. You know, right now we have the ACU fellows program and others. And I've had a lot of ACU fellows. I've had 30 of them, as a matter of fact. But, I think it needs to be much more intentional. I think that we have entered into an era in which universities, if they are to regain trust and remain important, that they need to have very, calculated leadership models and we need help to train those.