When Harvard’s presidential lookup committee goes to work in the coming months, it will have some level of competition.
College President Lawrence S. Bacow, who introduced Wednesday that he ideas to move down following yr, has joined additional than a half-dozen notable higher schooling leaders who are set to depart shortly, which includes the presidents of Dartmouth College, Columbia University, Tufts University, and MIT.
Numerous specialists agree Covid-19 has played a position in spurring the departures, which will go away open up many of better education’s top rated work all at after.
“While you hope crises to arrive alongside, you never hope 1 that lasts two several years — and that triggers in essence the entire world to be influenced in the way the pandemic did,” said former Missouri Point out University president Michael T. Nietzel. “This is of a complete distinctive magnitude than would be generally predicted.”
At minimum half of the Ivy League will see a presidential transition possibly this 12 months or upcoming. Dartmouth College’s Philip J. Hanlon and Columbia University’s Lee C. Bollinger both declared plans to depart in 2023, along with Bacow. Previous University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann resigned in February to provide as U.S. Ambassador to Germany.
An array of nearby increased instruction leaders have also called it quits this year. MIT President L. Rafael Reif and Tufts President Anthony P. Monaco — who lead Harvard’s two closest neighbors — not long ago announced strategies to depart at the stop of the 2022 and 2023 tutorial yrs, respectively. The presidents of Amherst College, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Emmanuel College have all also announced they will exit in the coming months.
L. Jay Lemons, president of the recruiting company Academic Search, mentioned an array of worries — not just Covid-19 — could contribute to the mass exodus, pointing to condition-degree political headwinds some leaders confront, between other challenges.
“What may well appear to be some clumping could be a little bit a consequence of Covid, but is much more probable a little bit additional complex phenomenon than it may surface on the surface area,” Lemons mentioned.
Previous Ohio College President Roderick J. McDavis, who leads the better schooling executive research business AGB Research, stated the pandemic’s issues could have caused leaders to depart earlier than at first expected.
“The previous two decades in larger education and learning can be in comparison, truly, to about three to 5 decades in conditions of the amount of money of strain that individuals have been below,” he explained. “The point that lots of of the presidents that almost certainly had prepared to provide a handful of much more a long time have attained a position where by they’re deciding to phase down is incredibly substantially a national development.”
Some research business executives stated the pandemic may perhaps guide colleges to prioritize disaster management competencies when selecting new leaders.
Another potential element in the wave of departures: age.
The American Council on Instruction, a leading schooling nonprofit, pointed out in its 2017 American University President Study that presidents were being “slightly older” than their counterparts from 5 decades in the past. The report predicted greater turnover in major posts owing to retirement and shorter tenures in the subsequent many years.
Bacow, 70, was tapped to serve as president of Harvard in December 2018 following beforehand serving as president of Tufts. Lemons called Bacow’s tenure at Harvard an “unexpected next act.”
In the initial four yrs of his presidency, he steered the university by means of an array of crises — most notably, Covid-19 — and battled the virus two times himself.
Nietzel reported broader shifts in bigger instruction may well have also motivated leaders, pointing to a rising erosion of rely on in establishments — including universities.
“Major social establishments throughout the board have occur less than not just scrutiny, but confront cynicism from a massive section of the public — and there is been a individual aim at elite universities in that regard,” Nietzel mentioned. “Harvard would be at the leading of that checklist.”
“I assume it does just take a toll to protect universities towards these forms of attacks,” he stated. “Understandably, presidents get drained.”

—Staff writer Isabella B. Cho can be reached at [email protected]. Adhere to her on Twitter @izbcho.