Leading through higher education’s watershed moment

Leadership matters a lot. This is not a new issue but an increasingly urgent one. Here’s why:

• Higher education needs to produce more credentialed adults. At least 60% of today’s jobs require people with some postsecondary education, but only 54% of 25-to 64-year-olds possess it. Postsecondary education is also an engine of social mobility and knowledge creation. It’s more challenging to measure these shortfalls, but if we could, the so-called talent gap would appear small by comparison.
• Credentialing more people requires postsecondary education to include individuals who don’t currently pursue an education after high school and those seeking to reskill and upskill with non-degree credentials, licenses, apprenticeships, etc. There aren’t enough “traditional” students left to fill the gaps. And because education is not a one-size-fits-all approach – where simply turning on the water hose and letting it flow will suffice – credentialing growth will require significant evolution in the performance of virtually every postsecondary function. It will require postsecondary education to evolve, change, upskill and reskill itself and its employees.
• Productivity improvement will occur amid significant headwinds. Before January 2025, these headwinds were primarily driven by demographic shifts, student affordability challenges, changing student, employer and societal needs, negative public sentiment, rapid technological advancements, hyper-inflationary cost increases, an aging postsecondary workforce that requires upskilling, growing tensions (including mutual distrust) between faculty and administration and an unfavorable political landscape. They are blowing with far greater force today.

These pressures bear down on everyone in higher education. Still, they are hardest on the CEOs – university, college and system presidents – who must lead effective responses, often requiring significant (even transformational) shifts in strategy, practice and legacy academic and business models. They need to lead these responses contending with Boards, the often-competing interests of internal (students, faculty and staff) and external (community leaders, employers, donors, alumni and elected officials) stakeholders, and slow-moving decision-making apparatuses that represent and reify decades of compromise.