In all likelihood, the next president of the university will be a high-ranking academic official.
Unless he or she is a candidate with ties to the university — former Provost Bill Destler and current Provost Nariman Farvardin are the two most obvious — most students, faculty and staff members will have never heard of whichever academic the Board of Regents chooses as the next president before their selection is named. This means that some of the more fanciful suggestions made on the presidential search site — former Secretary of State and Stanford Provost Condoleeza Rice, former Virginia Governor and Democratic National Committee chair Tim Kaine and Washington Post editor Marcus Brauchli — are unlikely choices, to say the least.
Most university presidents are former provosts. University President Dan Mote is unusual in that he had never been a university’s top academic officer — or even a college dean — before becoming president. He instead made his name on fundraising success. Mote has credited his background as vice chancellor for university relations at University of California at Berkeley for helping him understand and better relate to people outside the world of higher education.
But Mote is still an academic at heart. He has spent his entire adult life as a professor at public universities. He’s a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — two titles you don’t receive by simply dabbling in research.
But if Mote’s experiences outside academia were beneficial, imagine what kind of critical eye someone with substantial life experiences outside the cloistered world of faculty could bring. Here, those far-off suggestions are on the right track. We strongly urge the presidential search committee to consider people with extensive backgrounds outside of academia to be the next university president. Let’s face it: Universities are a bubble where students and tenured faculty members, if they choose, can live largely unaffected by outside events and can essentially avoid day-to-day interactions with regular people. But someone with experience in politics, business or law will have spent time mingling with the masses.
Yes, this person should have some academic experience — preferably a graduate or a professional degree. Baptizing someone without any letters (J.D., M.D., Ph.D.) after their name in the fire of a university presidency sounds like a recipe for disaster. But the benefits of having lived outside the Ivory Tower could be plentiful: A president from outside of academia could bring with him or her connections that might bolster fundraising and research opportunities and broaden the university’s reputation.
More than anything, they would bring a different set of perspectives and life experiences to the position. Just as how Sonia Sotomayor’s background, which is starkly different from the experiences of the other eight members of the Supreme Court, can change the way the entire court looks at certain issues, a businessman- or politician-turned-president could change the way the university looks at the outside world. This could lead to improved relationships with the city of College Park, Prince George’s County and the state legislature. A politician could better exploit the university’s status as the only major research institution near Washington. A businessman could lead the university to tap into growing industries such as biotechnology and cybersecurity.
It’s a big world out there. The presidential search committee should consider all of it before making their recommendation.
