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Chronicle Features Mary Marcy’s Analysis of Presidential Power
College and university presidents are often compared to CEOs, but provost and vice president of Bard College at Simon’s Rock Mary Marcy points out the limitations of the analogy. In the May 2, 2008, edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education Marcy draws a different parallel and sheds new light on the nature of college leadership. She writes, “An academic institution is essentially a political, not a corporate, system.…Its leader is more akin to the president of the United States than to a corporate chief executive.”
Marcy notes that despite the frequent comparison to executive leadership in the corporate, for-profit environment, college presidents function in a distinctly different context. “The fundamental goal of a business is straightforward: to return a profit. But the terms of academic success as well as the means of achieving it are constantly being negotiated—for instance, in setting goals for a capital campaign, determining the size of a first-year class, or making tenure decisions.”
Academic institutions, like political systems, operate according to the principles of shared governance, Marcy argues. “Inherent in shared power is the existence of multiple constituencies, all of which are essential to the creation and application of policy.” College presidents lead by “vision and collaboration, not by fiat but by negotiation.”