Is Higher Education Changing Faster Than Leadership?

In an article, Study Finds Higher Education Presidential Pipeline Is Slow to Change, it shows that the make up of leadership is not changing very quickly. What I found interesting is that 58% of the current Presidents are 61 or over and heading toward retirement. So who are the new leaders going to be as this majority of college presidents begin retiring?  What will they be bringing to higher education?

Only 41% of College Chief Academics are women and only 2.3% are ethnic minorities.  This reflects the make up of faculty.  In all of higher education, the vast majority of faculty are white, 80.3%.  We need to do better than that.  The next generation of higher education presidents are not going to be ethnically diverse.

However with 58% of the Presidents retiring, there are some changes ahead.  That 58% of soon to be retiring presidents were born before there was easy and affordable access to computers.  The Internet was an emerging technology coming into a skeptical educational community.  Social networking was a cocktail party at the President's residence.  No one could earn a degree online.

The younger generation coming up were raised with computers, the Internet, online courses, purchasing books on line and texting their colleagues and students.  This will be matched with the disruptive technology of the iPad and  tablets as they quickly replace paper textbooks and even textbooks entirely.  The secure jobs in academics has seen its day as higher education is charged with declining budgets and increased accountability.

There is going to be an interesting 10 years ahead. Certainly worth watching.