More college presidents are jumping ship or leaving under pressure than ever before as higher education faces snowballing fiscal and enrollment challenges, recent reports show.
Recent data indicate college presidential terms are getting shorter. Those findings were illustrated by five sudden presidential departures in late July. The end of July brought a flurry of sudden presidential resignations. Over the course of a week, presidents stepped down at Stanford University, Texas A&M University, Seton Hall University, Thomas Jefferson University and Berklee College of Music. Their reasons for resigning are as varied as the institutions they led, with some departing amid scrutiny and scandal while others left shrouded in mystery. Only Marc Tessier-Lavigne at Stanford had been on the job for more than five years.