4 Ways to Reduce Higher Ed’s Leadership Deficit

It’s no secret that higher education has a workforce retention issue. Turnover is higher than ever, including among top leaders. One publication even once dubbed higher ed the Land of Dead-End Jobs.

But perhaps a more fitting label is the Land of Dead-End Employee Learning and Growth—unfortunate and ironic for some of the greatest learning institutions in the world. The pandemic poured accelerant on many employees’ feelings about their career prospects that had built up over years in resource-constrained environments.

And it has not let up. Continued, widespread industry pressures have brought clarity and greater focus to higher education’s woeful record on talent management, particularly as it relates to promoting, developing and supporting supervisors and leaders as they manage the greatest asset of any organization: its people.

Our leaders are often underprepared for their role and the ever-increasing people management required—and we need to fix this. We can either meet the moment or the moment will meet us.

A Tumultuous Landscape

It’s never been a more challenging time to be a college or university leader. They are finding themselves confronting issues surrounding the future of work, the fundamental value of what higher education does, constrained resources and an outsized narrative of political polarization extremes. All those challenges make leading people an even more daunting task, especially as many employees are new to their roles. Based on my review of the latest administrator survey data compiled by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, 55 percent of higher education executive leaders in C-suite roles for the institutions surveyed have been in their current role less than three years.

Further complicating the problem is that leaders often receive very little preparation or training to manage and lead people. I distinctly remember those early days in my own leadership experience: I received hardly any information and explanation about the institutional hierarchy, what my level of responsibility or authority was, or how to navigate the role I found myself in. And without those skills and knowledge, it’s hard to retain and sustain a strong, satisfied workforce. The 2023 employee retention survey from CUPA-HR shows one-third of higher ed employees are very likely or likely to look for new employment opportunities in the next year. Many of them are looking outside higher education.

In the same survey, the greatest correlating factor for employees seeking other employment was job satisfaction. The top five factors underpinning that sense of job satisfaction were: being recognized for contributions, being valued by others at work, having a sense of belonging, being asked for opinions on work projects and being able to bring up problems and issues.

Control of those factors falls at the feet of leaders, who are either not equipped at all as supervisors or equipped with outdated policies, processes and ways of managing people that do not meet the demands of the moment. We must break those down and eliminate them.

How can colleges and universities meet the moment when it comes to strong people leadership? Here are four recommendations.

1. Center people management skills in the hiring process. Higher education institutions spend the overwhelming majority of their budget on people, but the effective management of those people is an afterthought. Colleges and universities should focus on how they hire, promote and develop leaders from a people management–first perspective. When hiring, we need to ask ourselves if the position description elevates people management above other skills. Our search committees should also be prepared to assess people management skills in the way they screen, ask questions and listen to those answers. Make the development of people skills a vital part of the performance evaluation and goal-setting processes you use. Free up leaders’ time in their daily work expectations so they can actually manage people.
2. Prioritize people leadership alongside technical expertise when considering promotions. When those leaders are brought onboard, we need to support them, develop them and guide them. To do so, we must consider them as people leaders first and technical experts second. People are often promoted to leadership or supervision of people due to technical prowess in a particular field. That technical skill is certainly crucial for success, but without good people management skills, we’ll perpetuate the workforce instability on our campuses. This is particularly true for academic department heads, who rarely get any support as they begin to lead and manage people.

3. Tap into the vast human resources of institutions of learning. Our identity as institutions of learning is an incredible asset to people management. Colleges and universities should treat leadership development and employee learning like they do student learning: as a critical priority. Some of the greatest thought leaders, teachers and trainers work on our campuses. We should be tapping into those resources and making it a part of our employee cultures. Institutions should consider leveraging campus experts to create training programs or academies for managers and supervisors that not only give them the required management skills but also engage them as stewards and champions of the culture being built and maintained through their work.

One university innovating in this space is the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, whose president, Guy Bailey, launched a master of arts in higher education with scholarships for faculty and staff members. The university provided tuition and fees for 76 employees at the outset, and the first graduates of the program walked across the commencement stage last December. This kind of effort could be duplicated, expanded upon, or used as inspiration at institutions all over the country.

4. Create employee culture intentionally. We should focus on creating an employee culture like we do our student culture—by connecting it to mission and institutional identity. What drew me to my current role at the University of Montana was, first, our president’s distinct focus on building an outstanding employee culture at the university and, second, the empowerment that my team has to challenge traditional notions about what that looks like in higher education.

For very good reasons, colleges and universities focus a lot of energy on student culture and well-being; however, that doesn’t mean that employee culture should be ignored. We need to consider how we are discussing, planning for and elevating employee culture. In leadership meetings and gatherings to set priorities and strategies, we must devote time to talking about people practices. People practices are our collective responsibility, particularly when 33 percent of our employees want to leave the industry entirely. It’s not an HR problem alone; it’s a problem that we all own as stewards of culture.

Higher education truly does have a noble mission, and what happens on our campuses changes lives and the world. Our faculty and staff members who fulfill that mission need—and deserve—leaders and managers who are supported, developed and connected to great people practices that meet the moment and beyond.