San Francisco
Chief financial officers at colleges and universities are more than four times as likely to plan to retire than to seek a college presidency, according to a new survey of nearly 1,000 officials released by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.
The survey, which was conducted this year and presented at Nacubo's annual conference on Monday, is the group's first comprehensive census of the top financial officials in higher education. The responses offer a broad picture of those executives, whose titles include CFO and vice chancellor for business, and who are predominantly white, male, and older than 50.
A majority of those officials plan to retire or to seek another CFO position as their next career move. Only 8 percent of the respondents said they planned to seek a college presidency.
The findings highlight concerns about the source and quality of future college presidents, according to John D. Walda, Nacubo's president. "It's a very big issue," Mr. Walda said in an interview. "We need to get more, not fewer, people interested in those jobs."
It is unfortunate, Mr. Walda said, that college-leadership jobs "aren't more appealing to—and, more importantly, accessible by—CFO's, because many of the skills of dealing with budget problems are skills that nobody has better mastered than CFO's."
Mr. Walda said one cause was the unwillingness of many faculty members to consider financial officials as potential presidents. Another, he said, was that CFO's often have a close-up view of the presidential position, which is becoming "more and more challenging and stressful."
The survey is closely modeled after one of chief academic officers conducted last year by the American Council on Education. That survey also identified a lack of interest among provosts and other top academic officials in becoming a college president.
Nacubo's survey findings indicate difficulties in diversifying the CFO pipeline. Nine out of 10 respondents were white, compared with 85 percent of provosts and other chief academic officers.
Women were better represented, especially at community colleges, where they made up 42 percent of respondents. But their numbers dwindled at comprehensive universities, where they made up only 21 percent of the total.
Kenneth E. Redd, the group's director of research and policy analysis, said higher education's numbers compared favorably to those at Fortune-500 corporations, which, in 2009, had only 12 female CFO's. The diversity of college CFO's will also improve as officials from the present generation retire and are replaced by younger peers, he said.
The survey also asked CFO's to name the most common frustrations of their positions. The most frequent response was "never having enough money," followed by the "belief by others that you are infinitely accessible." Further down on the list of frustrations were, as the survey put it, "curmudgeonly faculty" members and "meddlesome board members."
Comments
1. honore - July 27, 2010 at 08:37 am
A couple of other reasons a "CFO" doesn't look toward a presidency:
1. the lack high-end clothing stores that carry bow-ties, suspenders and $5000 designer suits.
2. botox not covered by the health plan
3. tanning beds too far away from the golf course
4. not enough 12 step meetings for alcoholic wife/husband
5. know where all the bones are buried by legal counsel
6. 19 year old student worker is beginning to "show belly"
7. auditors are finding more of her/his zero-balance "discretionary" accounts
8. campus has now been declared a "no-smoking" zone
9. current president was just hauled off in hand-cuffs
10.expense accounts actually do include names of XXX-rated hotel room videos
...seen it here, in Madison,WI
2. rburns - July 27, 2010 at 09:15 am
An earlier story informed us that the majority of Provosts are not ambitious to be college presidents. Now we learn that the majority of CFO's share the lack of that particular ambition. I understand, as a former provost and retired president who worked with some simply outstanding vice presidents (including in student affairs), and a disaster or two as well. The best of these colleagues are privy to the frustrations and stresses of the presidency and might well be warned away from those career elements. In fact, even these most intimate colleagues cannot know everything that challenges a president who is trying to help the institution succeed for its students. You have to BE a president in order to understand fully the good, the bad, and the ugly.
But if the chief institutional leaders most aware of the requirements and experiences of the CEO therefore are not interested in the position, who are these folks who fill the application baskets in each presidential search? Are we relying too much on the well-intentioned but naive to apply, those whose ambition is based on ignorance of the reality of the position they seek? Or worse, how many apply knowing some of the complexities of the office of president, knowing they are not prepared to deal with them, but wanting the job anyway?
The challenges of a presidency for the person who works to understand and to respond in productive ways can be daunting. This is the single position on the campus in which one can never say "Oh, I'm sorry, your particular problem is not my job, let me refer you to the office responsible for that." It is the one office that must stand ready to remedy any mistake, misjudgment, or misunderstanding by the numerous other offices that are on the front lines. And it should be the case the a problem that reaches the president's desk is there because it was not or could not be handled at numerous other levels. It is the one office that is rightly so visible that it must follow the established rules while working to create new solutions. Finally, everybody wants--needs a piece of the president's time.
These realities and many more might well leave the college presidency lower on the list of life's ambitions for many. It is hard work, even when it appears to be and often is fun. Evidently we must work harder to teach senior colleagues about the joys and satisfactions of the job so as to attract the best and brightest to it. And we must work harder to improve the reality of the job in those cases in which the college presidency fails to be more often than not---fun.
3. dale1 - July 27, 2010 at 09:30 am
@rburns:
I'm just a lowly staff member and don't yet have my PhD, but I have to argue just a bit. I'd say the presidency is exactly the job where you can say, "Oh, that isn't my job, let me refer you..." We see that all the time. Presidents get a crisis or problem thrown in their laps and what do they do? Pass it off to a VP and on down the line, or create a commission, panel, advisory board, or some other time-sucking administrative apparatus to handle the issue. Then when a decision is finally made, very few people actually remember what brought on the whole hoopla in the first place, in the vast majority of cases.
It's the lower levels where you can't pass the buck, where you have to suck it up and do what you have to do, regardless of circumstance.
I'd like to have great presidential leadership - and academic leadership as well from the president. But let's not kid ourselves - one of the main jobs of a president is fundraising, and the academic and often the athletic enterprises are not understood well. At least at many mega-universities.
4. jtgibson6 - July 27, 2010 at 10:54 am
I served as a CFO for ten years and served as president for nine years. I found too much acrimony between the faculty because of my financial experience. Notwithstanding, there are instances when You have to say no when you want to say yes to some of their financial concerns. The bottom line--funds are not available and you can not find money! The maliciousness intensifies during stringent fiscal times.
Do you believe,there are inordinate pressures from board members for gratuities and some demands that are aberrant to all policies and procedures?
I could go on and on about the the trials and tribulations of serving as a CFO and then president--not enough pages.
I retired early and I am for once "at peace".
JT Gibson
5. 11223435 - July 27, 2010 at 10:56 am
Pants on the ground, pants on the ground.....
6. rburns - July 27, 2010 at 12:02 pm
to dale1--
First, no PhD I'm aware of prepares its holder to be a college president, though I understand it usually is a required credential.
Second, a good president will call in every available resource to solve the problems on the desk, but they still are the president's problems and he/she must find the solutions. My comments are about a president who actually does the job and cares to do it well. There are other varieties, of course. I'm sorry you haven't yet worked with the kind I have in mind. Don't give up.
You also are correct that much of a president's time is taken by fund raising, including bringing in the resources to fund both the academic and the athletic programs to a level of excellence. Fund raising must involve the president to be successful. A major gift comes most of the time with the involvement and support of the president--who most often must be the one to make the "ask." If the president doesn't know much about the college's programs I suspect she/he will have a difficult time raising real money to support or to develop them. There are exceptions, of course, but knowing and believing in your programs leads to more successful fund raising.
Note to JTGibson: I had the gift of having the absolute best of CFO's at the two campuses I served as president, and our success so often hinged on that quality and talent, especially in the most difficult fiscal times. As to retiring and being at peace: Been there, done that, too.
7. jeff1 - July 27, 2010 at 04:53 pm
Please . . . the Chronicle is clueless on this issue either for CFO's or Provosts. There are plenty of us out here with great experience and ambition. The key is balance and whether one comes from the academic side, as I do, or the financial area presidents need to be all things to all people internally and externally (or nearly so) to be successful today. The pipeline is rich as anyone who has been on a presidential search committee can attest (I can so state that that is true)! So ignore the CHE's yellow journalism on this topic . . . its weak, poorly presented and simply not based in reality!
8. 3224243 - July 28, 2010 at 07:59 am
CIOs and CFOs often (usually?) get into their fields because they like the work they do (working with numbers/machines rather than people). I'd wager many are in the "introvert" section of the MBTI. College/university presidents/chancellors have to schmooze and grovel for dollars, both of which are distasteful to CIOs and CFOs.
What surprises me is that there aren't more fund-raising professionals seeking presidencies. The others of us in the C-suites can run the university (as we do now) while the chancellor is out meeting, greeting and soliciting "time, treasure and talent."