If you are considering a leap into academic administration or a change in an administrative post, reacquaint yourself with some of academe's cultural characteristics. Many people who want to go into administration don't understand these basic characteristics and often fail in their attempts to land an administrative job. Understanding these factors will enable you to select the right opportunities and evaluate your chances more effectively.
The key indicators of campus culture include:
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Public versus private.
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League -- what league an institution falls into depends on orientation (research or teaching), degrees offered, and religious affiliation, if any. Within such classifications are tiers, where the institution fits in based on national rankings.
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Size -- a major ingredient, irrespective of type, league, or tier.
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Values -- academic and social underpinnings affecting faculty and student life.
One caveat before you sift through these indicators: The kind of college or university where you begin your career is likely to be the kind of college where you will remain throughout your professional life. Higher education has a pecking order, and if your experiences before or after becoming an administrator have not been at an Ivy League or state flagship university, don't expect to be considered at such institutions. Regional state universities, liberal-arts colleges, religiously based institutions, and community colleges are just as likely to recruit from within their own league.
Moving to higher tiers of institutions is rare for faculty members or administrators but movement to a lower tier is usually possible. A dean at a highly ranked university, for example, may be welcomed as a provost or even president of a less prestigious institution.
Do you want to serve as an administrator in a public or private institution?
You may not have much choice on this issue, depending on where your academic career has taken you up to now. But transfers between the two sectors are possible. (I did it, moving from a large regional university to a mid-sized private university.)
Administrators at public institutions must be sensitive to legislators, governors and their staffs, state higher-education boards and commissions, and their own elected or appointed boards of trustees. These official bodies have influence over everything -- recruitment and admissions policies, tuition and other charges, salaries, curricula and degrees, buildings and athletics. Political concerns are ever present, and institutions have to be sensitive to general citizen reactions. Nevertheless, the continuing existence of an institution backed by public money is essentially assured.
Administrators at private institutions, meanwhile, have their eyes and ears tuned to private sources of income. Because most private colleges and universities do not have a "natural" local constituency, they conduct wide-ranging and expensive recruitment activities. Alumni satisfaction and building the prestige of academic programs and student life command constant financial attention.
In general, private administrators have considerably more power over campus life and over the crucial decisions involving money, personnel, and programs. Except among the most highly endowed and most prestigious institutions, a private institution is typically under financial pressure, and administrators cannot blame state politics and bureaucrats for a lack of resources or flexibility.
Administrators who have "crossed over" may find themselves completely out of harmony with the new culture. One whose experience is only in public institutions may exhibit considerable discomfort or even incompetence in thinking like a business manager dependent upon private resources.
Experience at primarily private institutions may leave you hapless in dealing with legislators and bureaucrats on state boards. I have talked to many private-college administrators who have neither the experience nor the empathy to understand the fragile political atmosphere within which top public university executives must live. Community-college leaders must tread the shoals of both state and community politics, and keep a keen eye on local business needs.
Numerous social and economic differences exist between public and private colleges, most of them subtle and unspoken. Private-college students are wealthier and more apt to emerge from prestigious private secondary academies or well-regarded high schools across the nation. Most public-college students come from the public high schools of the state in which the college is located. Administrators of private and public institutions often move in different social circles consistent with their prestige and sources of funds.
Is the institution you wish to move to within the league and tier of colleges and universities to which you belong?
In my experience as a dean and provost, most applications for jobs have come from people who had no chance at all (hence the rapid screening to a short list), because neither their training nor experience was appropriate for the institution's league and tier. The administrative road from regional State U to Ivy U does not exist. Do not expect to go to a doctoral-degree-granting institution or to a prominent liberal-arts college from the comprehensive regional universities emphasizing undergraduate and applied master's degrees.
On a less obvious level, however, even if you are in the correct league, you may not be in the proper tier. Applicants from respected universities and colleges with good local reputations may not be seriously considered by similar categories of institutions ranked as first or second tier. Just think for a moment about a recent administrative search on your campus and how you evaluated a person's résumé based on the colleges and universities that the applicant attended or served in.
What size institution is appropriate for you?
The California Institute of Technology (named No. 1 among national universities in the latest rankings by U.S. News and World Report) has only 900 undergraduates and about the same number of graduate students. Most of the state flagship universities have enrollments in excess of 35,000. Few private four-year colleges exceed 10,000 students while few public four-year institutions have less than that. Size is not an indicator of quality at all, but administrative life can vary radically between large and small institutions.
Personal preference and lifestyle will dictate what is best for you. In a small institution, you are in charge of your domain and in close contact with everyone on campus. In a large institution, you will trade that closeness for the management of others who, in turn, make the contact.
Compare the dean of a small college with the provost of a university that has numerous deans of colleges and schools. In the latter case, the provost may rarely meet with a student and interacts with deans mostly in administrative meetings. Deans within large universities have their own associates and assistants to guard the door.
Are your values reflected in the day-to-day operations of the institution?
This is a wide-ranging matter, difficult to categorize, but let me suggest a few questions to consider:
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Are you uncomfortable in an institution that ranks low in prestige because of the quality of its student body, or do you prize the opportunity to serve underprivileged students?
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Is being on a residential campus important to you with its range of traditional student activities, or do you prefer an urban campus without too much emphasis on student life, Greek organizations, or athletics?
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Can you comfortably administer a campus with emphasis on teaching and campus service, or will you long to be in the research environment of your graduate years?
None of these are unusual dilemmas of academic life but facing them realistically is vitally important for someone with administrative responsibility.
Some issues about values are a bit less obvious but worth thinking about. Here are two from my personal experiences as a candidate. I once interviewed for a deanship at an institution that provided so little in travel funds as to discourage faculty participation in professional meetings, a practice I consider important. In another job interview, a dean's budget had no discretionary funds whatsoever, turning the dean into a bookkeeper and supplicant.
The soul of an institution is expressed in how it spends whatever money it collects. If the expenditure patterns don't fit your values, don't go there. If you value liberal-arts education, you might think long and hard about a position at an institution that seems to put an inordinate amount of money into athletics and professional education.
If you are among the finalists for a major academic position (dean or higher), ask to see the institution's budget. Look at such basic issues as how much is spent on physical plant and maintenance. There is never enough money, but you should be satisfied that the budget does not ignore values of great importance to you or makes your own leadership impossible.
The life of an administrator will be dramatically marked by the combination of cultural characteristics that describe his or her college or university, and this combination may well affect the opportunities available to an ambitious administrator in the future.
