The Public Voices of Private College Presidents

Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, and a friend of SCUP, writes recently in University Business about private college presidents taking stronger leadership roles in their communities and regions:

Presidential leadership is often a matter of making discrete decisions that anticipate a future in which the institution will thrive. Sometimes that means offerring a spirited defense of the college's historic values, and sometimes it means pursuing entirely new directions.

Officials at Hillsdale College (Mich.), for example, believe so deeply that the government should not meddle in higher education that they have not accepted federal funds for many years. More recently, several dozen college presidents have come to believe so strongly that U.S. News & World Report measures the wrong things that they have decided not to participate in the annual "reputational" rankings.