AKA Review - 03.15.2024

From The Chronicle of Higher Education
A Guide to Crisis Leadership
By David M. Post

Low public confidence in higher education and the inevitability of crises to come, the author argues, demand a heightened focus on crisis leadership as a core competency of senior leaders. He draws on his own experiences as a senior university leader and reflects on crises making headlines today to articulate four lessons learned. Based on these, he suggests key steps to prepare for leading in a crisis and offers advice for trustees, presidents, and provosts on qualities to look for in effective crisis leaders. Read this article

From The Atlantic

The Real Problem with American Universities

By Ian Bogost

In this interview, former Macalester President Brian Rosenberg offers a colorful assessment of the disfunction he believes is embedded in today’s universities. Avoiding the usual clichés, he examines several historical characteristics: shared governance, tenure, and the greater identification of academics with their field than their institution. These, he argues, have led to universities that prize preservation of the status quo over changes that would ensure that more students at more colleges actually graduate. Read this article

From The Economist

America's Elite Universities are Bloated, Complacent, & Illiberal

From The Economist International Desk

There’s no subtlety (see title) and a bit of irony to this critique of America’s elite universities, coming as it does from a periodical in the U.K. where elite universities were birthed. Its analysis of the sources of disfunction doesn’t plow new ground (see: little conservative representation, ambiguous commitment to free speech, etc.). However, there’s a a cautionary tale in its examination of how elite institutions “broke from the pack” only recently in terms of wealth and in so doing, drew widespread public ire. Read this article

From Education Next

The Party of Education 2024

By Frederick Hess, Michael Q. McShane, and Ruy Teixeira

Democrats have lost the public’s trust in them as “the party of education.” In that context, Education Next asked thinkers on the right and left how each party should shape its education agenda. Both sides agree that the left, at best, promises to support a publically unpopular status quo while the right struggles to offer any practical solutions. But the surprise is that they also agree that regaining public support hinges on promoting high achievement standards, greater K-12 choice, and getting ideology out of schools.

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From New America

2024 Survey of College & University Presidents

Edited by Colleen Flaherty & Doug Lederman Editors, Inside Higher Ed

New America provides a useful resource with this summary of the 2024 Survey of College and University Presidents and a link to the complete report, which spans such topics as campus speech, public perceptions of higher education, race, AI, financial confidence, and mental health. In general, presidents are optimistic about their own institution’s health but deeply concerned about the current state of public confidence in higher education overall as well as the climate for free inquiry and civil dialogue.

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