Is secrecy necessary for a successful university presidential search? Here’s what the numbers say
By Turner Street
Universities promote themselves as welcoming places for the free and open exchange of ideas, even controversial ones. Nevertheless, when it comes to the most important governance decision in the life of the university — who will serve as president — stakeholder input and debate are kept to a minimum. Although the public contributes significant sums to the operation of public institutions — both directly through state operating subsidies, and indirectly through research grants, federal financial aid and other sources — the public is increasingly excluded from the hiring process.
The most common argument for a confidential university executive search is that the school will not get the “best” candidate if it opens up the search, because good candidates would be wary about applying due to the possibility their interest in the job would be revealed to everyone. Would-be candidates are alleged to be afraid that if they apply for a job and do not get hired, that they will seem like “damaged goods” in future job pursuits, or that their interest in another job will result in retaliation at their home institutions.
To investigate these claims, researchers from the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information looked at publicly available sources (news reports and university websites) to examine the most recent hiring process at every public university in the United States that has 10,000 or more students according to the current U.S. News and World Report data (209 schools), along with 33 chief executive positions for university systems, totaling 242 data points. Twelve of those organizations did not publish enough information about their latest hire to confirm whether the process was open to the public or closed, so 230 hires were fully analyzed.
For our study’s purpose, “open” searches means at least two finalists were named, while “closed” means only the chosen candidate was announced and publicly vetted. For example, while the University of Alaska-Anchorage had four finalists, they were privately brought to campus to meet with constituencies and their names were not released. Only one name — the ultimate choice, Cathy Sandeen — was revealed to the public, so that search qualifies as “closed.”
The two categories, open and closed, were subdivided into “internal” and “external” hires, to determine whether the manner of hiring led to a difference in people rising from within or coming in from outside. For purposes of this study, we defined “internal” to mean (1) being promoted from within the same institutions or (2) being hired from a sister institution within the same state, since there would logically be a lesser fear of retaliation for a candidate who, for example, moves laterally between two campuses of the California State University system.
The data was broken down into 11 different categories of employment from which the hired presidents came, to see if either type of search (open or closed)led to a certain kind of candidate getting hired. The 11 categories were: sitting president/chancellor elsewhere, internal interim executive, external interim executive, executive who is not the chief executive (such as a provost or vice president), dean, center director, professor, business executive, government official, military, or education board member (such as a university trustee).
Out of the 230 hires we were able to fully analyze, 165 of them were conducted behind closed doors and 65 were open. Closed searches resulted in external hires 62.4 percent of the time (103/165) while open searches resulted in external hires 73.8 percent of the time (48/65). In other words, in-house candidates were somewhat more likely to benefit from a search conducted without a public competition. (This aligns with prior research by the Brechner Center looking at the way sitting presidents in three neighboring states — Florida, Georgia and Tennessee — got their jobs; those in Georgia, which makes its hires in total secrecy, were far more likely to come from within the university system than those in Florida and Tennessee, where the public was given the names of the finalists.)
The closed searches did garner a larger percentage of chief executives than the open searches did (23.0 percent > 10.8 percent). So proponents of closed-door searches are probably correct that some sitting presidents or chancellors hesitate to risk disturbing relations back home (or to incur the embarrassment of a public rejection) by allowing themselves to be considered publicly. It’s worth noting, however, that even with a secret search, universities do not end up hiring a sitting chief executive more than three-quarters of the time.
Closed searches resulted in slightly more deans (9.7 percent > 8.5 percent) and government officials (7.3 percent > 4.6 percent) while open searches resulted in more hires from executives who were not the top executive, such as an executive vice president or provost (44.6 percent > 38.8 percent). Interestingly, the most pronounced difference between open and closed searches was in the likelihood of hiring a candidate from the business sector as opposed to someone currently working in higher education; closed searches resulted in hiring a business executive 10.6 percent of the time, while open searches produced a candidate from the business community only 1.8 percent of the time. This intuitively makes sense. When the choice is left entirely to trustees (who are, overwhelmingly, male business executives) the selection is logically more likely to produce a winner who reflects the makeup of the board, while a more inclusive search is likely to result in community pressure for a person with academic credentials.
The data shows that while closed searches produce a higher percentage of lateral hires of other chief executives, open searches pull in a slightly larger percentage of hires from the “traditional” route of second-in-command. When those categories are viewed together — how successful were the colleges in recruiting a top executive from another college (a president, vice president or provost) — the distinction between the two search methods largely disappears: Open searches result in hiring away another college’s executive 54.5 percent of the time and closed searches produce that result 61.8 percent of the time. Aside from the substantial difference in hires from the business sector, none of the other distinctions is of great significance, suggesting there is no “night-and-day” difference between the credentials of hires when a search includes or excludes participation by campus stakeholders.
It’s important to note how small these numbers are. Looking at the number of closed searches that resulted in hiring a sitting president, if closed searches yielded a sitting president at the same rate as open searches, the number hired would be 18 out of 165 rather than 38 out of 165. So a change in a few outcomes could change the percentage rates considerably.
To take the study a step further, we looked to see where the non-hired candidates ended up, to determine whether there is factual evidence that a candidate who is publicly named but not selected will experience demonstrable career damage (what we will call the “damaged goods” hypothesis).
To analyze this “damaged goods” concern, we examined the 65 public searches and what happened to the identified runner-up candidates. There were 155 publicly announced candidates who were not selected. We divided them into four categories: those who were selected for presidencies later on (“president”), those who stayed at the institution they were applying from (“stay”), those who went on to get academic positions of importance at other schools (“other executive”), and those who did not get a position in academia or left academia after not being selected for the presidency they applied for (“other”).
Overwhelmingly, the candidates were either selected as president or retained in their current positions, with no retribution from their current institution for vying for another school’s presidency. A significant number also took executive-level positions (vice presidents, provosts) at other institutions, furthering the idea that losing out in a presidential search is not a recipe for lack of job prospects. Despite the common argument being that failed presidential candidates will tarnish their reputation by being publicly revealed, the data refutes this. Over half of the unsuccessful candidates we studied went on to other presidencies or positions of importance at other institutions.
Within the category of “other” outcomes (those who neither stayed in their current positions nor can be found to have promptly secured university executive positions elsewhere), many obtained positions of comparable status outside of the campus setting — such as Michelle Johnson, who became an executive with the National Basketball Association; Robert King, who was named an assistant secretary with the U.S. Department of Education, and Sethuraman Panchanathan, who took a leave from his Arizona State University administrative position to become head of the National Science Foundation.
Statistically, there does not appear to be support for the contention that being publicly considered for a university presidency is likely to produce severe professional harm. The most common outcome for those who sought presidencies and were not chosen is to be hired for a different presidency, which suggests there is no widespread “damaged goods” perception. Almost all of those who did not attain another presidency within a short time either remained in their current positions, secured other university executive positions, or (as with Johnson, King, Panchanathan and others) left campus for prestigious executive positions elsewhere.
It is for policymakers to consider whether the modest increase in the odds of hiring a sitting college president is worth the other sacrifices made when presidents are hired without community participation. As seen in the recent failed search at the University of Wisconsin, where campus stakeholders revolted against the closed-door hire of Alaska’s Jim Johnsen — causing him to decline the presidency after accepting it — there is diminishing public tolerance for secretive hires, doubly so in the “Me Too” era as the importance of thorough background-checking comes into sharper focus.
University of Florida law student Turner Street is a law clerk for the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information
