teachers; that is, researchers and scholars who prove their worthiness through a process of being screened by credentialed scholars who selectively choose which students pass through a process in which they were trained.45 As a very small percentage of students pass through and achieve a doctorate, the question that needs to be asked is: how many students are being prepared for jobs they will ultimately acquire, given that they were – in fact – trained in a totally different field using a totally different methodology (that of becoming a researcher, scholar, and faculty member)? Relying on professors to determine what is in the best interests of student training, when those faculty members have no experience in industry and are not aware of the workforce training needs related to jobs in the future, may not be best practice.
Institutional Leadership
In many regards, all these problems come down to institutional leadership.
Very few individuals become college or university presidents with the skillset to handle the enormously complicated job they will inherit. Some people arrive in the post having spent their career as a faculty member with little or no administrative experience. Provosts
or deans come to the job with some administrative experience and understand the world of academia but have little or no experience in dealing with a Board of Trustees, or with the fund-raising skills needed and/or the time required, and patience needed to be successful at it.
Consider, for example, characteristics of college presidents in 2016. A 2017 study by the American Council on Education (ACE) found in 2016 that “15 percent of college presidents came from outside higher education,” while “those who came from within higher education, a majority served in academic affairs; 31 percent came to the presidency from a chief academic officer or provost role.” Most presidents had earned a Ph.D. or Ed.D., and “a quarter of
presidents in 2016 had previously served as a college president.”
Few presidents even represent the demographics of the students they represented: ““seven out of 10 college
presidents were men, and fewer than one in five college presidents were a racial minority.” Moreover, the average age of presidents was 63, and 11 percent of presidents were 71 or older.” In other words, college presidents in
2016 were older white males.46 Little has changed since then. A new 2023 study by ACE
Right:
Sir Ken Robinson, "Do schools kill creativity?"
Video Courtesy of:
TED. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
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