American Enterprise Institute, A Crisis in Leadership? Examining the Successes and Failures of University Presidents:
Executive Summary
College presidents are receiving heightened public attention and scrutiny. But few data exist that demonstrate which college presidents are most effective at improving student outcomes. This report ranks over 400 current and former college and university presidents on how much they improved access, affordability, and student success during their tenure as president. The rankings reveal that some college presidents are superstars. While president, these individuals cut tuition costs, increased the share of students from low-income and underrepresented racial backgrounds, and increased graduation rates. Other presidents, however, did little to improve these outcomes, and some presidents oversaw steep declines in these outcomes. I argue that higher education boards, students, and policymakers should pay more attention to how presidents improve student outcomes. Rankings such as these could provide some much-needed pressure on college presidents to elevate their performance on improving access, affordability, and student success.
Chronicle of Higher Education, Should College Presidents Be Ranked?:
Some of the best-known college-ranking schemes have for decades put the wealthiest and most-selective institutions at or near the top. A new ranking puts Harvard University at 441st — fifth from the bottom.
The list, which comes from a recent American Enterprise Institute study, highlights universities in a very different way — by ranking their presidents based on improving student outcomes.
AEI, a libertarian think tank, rewarded efforts such as cutting tuition, boosting the graduation rate, and increasing the racial and socioeconomic diversity of undergraduates. The higher the percent change on student-success measures, the higher the ranking for the college president. …
Cody Christensen, a doctoral student in higher-education policy at Vanderbilt University and the study’s author, acknowledged the limitations of his work. But he said there was no reason that leaders earning seven-figure salaries shouldn’t be held accountable for student success. And he argued it was valuable to compare presidents to their peers. …
Higher-education experts say a focus on institutional metrics is important, but they are not enough to judge the full measure of a president’s worth. In addition, few leaders are assessed on such direct outcomes, said Robert E. Myers, who works with college presidents and governing boards as a consultant for the Casagrande Institute for Higher Education Effectiveness.
If boards aren’t considering these outcomes, Myers wonders whether they are really that important to the institution. “If they’re not assessing presidential performance to include these three metrics, does one then infer that they’re just not strategic priorities for the institution? I’d love to toss that hand grenade into the boardroom and watch how they wrestle with that!” he wrote in an email to The Chronicle.
But there are limits to what the numbers can show, he warned. “Many of the outcomes these measures rely on are influenced by external factors — a regional downturn, shifts in state funding — that presidents have little control over,” he said. “If boards focus too narrowly on these metrics, they might miss the bigger picture.”
Inside Higher Ed, How to Rank a College President?:
A new study rates college leaders according to student success, access and affordability. But critics question whether such rankings are credible—or even possible.
Higher education is awash with rankings, proclaiming the best universities, college dorms and even campus food. Now a new ranking aims to measure the effectiveness of college presidents.
Launched by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, the rankings score presidents based on how much they supported student success, increased access and improved affordability. The study, which used federal data to measure graduation rates, socioeconomic diversity of the student body and tuition costs, ranked 446 college presidents who served at about 200 U.S. institutions between 2000 and 2023. …
Like all rankings in the education sphere, these have generated widespread skepticism, not only about the study’s methodology but also about whether college presidents can actually be ranked on a narrow set of metrics.
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