Is running a top university America’s hardest job?

Wanted: presidents for America’s top universities. Applicants must possess an unimpeachable academic record. Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned as president of Stanford University in July 2023 after a report found serious problems with the neuroscientist’s research. They must also be able diplomats in America’s culture wars. In December Liz Magill was chastised by lawmakers in a hearing on campus antisemitism, and resigned from her role as president of the University of Pennsylvania days later. Claudine Gay, whose tenure as president of Harvard University lasted six months, fell at both hurdles. She was seen as weak on antisemitism by donors and resigned on January 2nd after a plagiarism scandal erupted over her work.

Changes at the helm of America’s universities are common. According to the American Council on Education, an industry association, the average tenure of a university president in 2022 was six years, indicating that hundreds of jobs change hands each year. Yet the number of vacancies at America’s most prestigious schools is striking. Yale’s president will also step down this summer after 11 years in the job; so will the chancellors of the publicly funded University of California, Los Angeles, and Berkeley. That leaves six of the top universities in the world searching for a new president. These institutions are responsible for shepherding some of the world’s biggest brains (Nobel prizewinners) and also some of its most impressionable (the coddled offspring of America’s elite). That’s to say nothing of their hospitals, thousands of administrative staff and $160bn of endowments.