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Formerly, search consultants were used in higher education at only a small number of institutions—and even there, only when recruiting presidents. But over the years, the industry has grown to the point that many large and small firms now compete for higher education searches, including ones for administrators and even some for endowed faculty, at a wide range of institutions. The American Council on Education's report on the presidency indicates that the majority of presidential searches now involve search firms, with the costs to institutions running to many millions of dollars.
Why has this been such a growth industry? I think it is because colleges and universities do not do much succession planning in the top ranks of administration. Instead, they generally (and often unfortunately) assume that their next leader will have to come from outside the institution, either because the logical successors on campus—e.g. the provost, vice presidents, and deans—have made enough hard decisions to alienate substantial segments of the institution’s stakeholders or because there is a strong desire for a change of direction. Also working against succession planning is the belief that only a national search can address affirmative action concerns.
The desire to find the best person to lead our institution “to the next level” also too often means wanting candidates from that “next level” in higher education’s rigid pecking order, at the top of which sits the research university. But governing board members—often corporate leaders who are accustomed to using consultants in their businesses—rarely have the contacts to identify likely candidates from among that group, and faculty members—who are quite well informed about stars in their disciplines—know as little as board members about potential senior administrators. The conventional wisdom is that only the search consultants have the rolodexes with these names in them, and only they can bring such individuals to the table. Besides, few board members or faculty have the time to do the laborious work of attracting candidates and performing due diligence in checking candidates’ backgrounds.
In an interesting exception to the widespread use of consultants, the Ivies and a few other prestigious private universities do not use search consultants for presidencies or chief academic officers quite as often as other institutions do (although this may be changing, as indicated by their use in several recent Ivy presidential searches). The most plausible explanation is that these institutions will generally consider only the top people at other such institutions—and that since this is such a short list of well-known prospects, search firms are not needed.
Robert Atwell is president emeritus of the American Council on Education, serves on the board of directors of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and chairs the board of directors of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity, and Accountability. He has been a search consultant and been on numerous academic and association executive and governing boards, both those that used search consultants and those that did not.
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