A Crisis By Any Other Name: The 2023-2024 HBCU Executive Leadership Turnover Report
“Send not for whom the bell tolls/It tolls for thee.” –John Donne, “No Man is an Island”
Discussions of the fraught college presidency have dominated higher ed headlines in recent months. High-profile executive terminations at Harvard (who fired their first Black female president, Claudine Gay, six months after hiring her) and Penn (who fired Liz Magill only 18 months into her tenure as president) put the executive seat under the microscope. Articles titled “Who wants to be a college president?” are now annual editorials (here’s Adam Harris from The Atlantic in 2019; Eric Kelderman in The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2022), and they took a decided turn this year.
There is a new overtone of despair and hopelessness associated with the question, such as in Blinder and Saul’s 2024 New York Times article “Anyone want to be a college president?” and Daniel Drezner’s 2024 Chronicle entry, the morbidly humorous “You could not pay me enough to be a college president.” The themes track throughout each inquiry, namely:
1) though a prestigious, important, and often well-compensated role, it has become incorruptibly fraught by political considerations both inside and outside the campus;
2) Inherent administrative ability is far less consequential than one’s timing in accepting a role (and that that timing is out of your hands); and
3) the luster and allure of executive administration posts belie the potential trauma awaiting those who pursue it, such that the experience may erode one’s confidence in higher education and society.
Now, consider the HBCU Presidency/Chancellorship in 2024. Imagine, then, the scenario of the executive college administrator hundreds of miles from the hallowed halls of Harvard, Penn, UCLA, and Michigan. Consider the salaries of less than half of those aforementioned campus leaders, operating budgets of less than a third of their budgets, and endowments of less than one percent of their endowments. Add to that decades of purposeful, racist, and illegal underfunding by state legislatures and discriminatory treatment by federal funding agencies and private donors. Add to that the meddling of governing boards—be they privately or gubernatorially appointed—the mercurial caprice of outside governing agencies, such as accreditation boards and the NCAA.
Finally, consider that there is near constant news in your sector, at a rate of nearly once a week this past year, of forced resignations and terminations, botched searches, emergency interim appointments, a dizzying game of musical chairs wherein your colleague at one institution in your sector leaves suddenly to take another position in your sector as another former executive in the sector moves in to take the first empty chair. One imagines that the inquiry ‘Who wants to be a college president?’ turned the declarative ‘I don’t want to be a college president’ is not far from becoming the expletive ‘@!#$ the college presidency! (ft. Kendrick Lamar).’
Since 2016, HBCU Digest has published a report on executive turnover at HBCUs (archived on Will Broussard’s Medium) that chronicles the annual announcements of leadership changes at historically Black colleges and universities. In the last two years, each announcement has been documented in real-time (or as news became available) thanks to the efforts of both authors of this piece on a Twitter thread. Those documents report the annual comings and goings into and out of HBCU executive leadership positions by way of hiring, termination, retirement, forced resignation, interim appointment, interim appointment, and interim appointment, which numbered over 40 announcements in 2023-2024.
As we have perennially discussed, each announcement is accompanied by change, which can be good for some campuses. Quite frequently, however, especially when the announcements occur in near-annual succession, this can disrupt long-term strategy, planning, and fundraising efforts; fracture carefully assembled political and financial negotiations and networks; and threaten the career growth and employment stability of mid-level managers and aspirant faculty who wish to become chairs/deans/provosts.
The focus on changes in the HBCU executive chair rose to national scrutiny on several occasions this past year, with the authors engaging audiences in Diverse and Inside Higher Education and additional coverage of the topic appearing in the Washington Post and Higher Ed Dive. Several of the themes we observed this past year include:
In the 2023-24 cohort, 21/32 presidential transitions at HBCUs were male presidents, indicating a significant gender disparity. Only three of the male presidents/chancellors were replaced with women, and more women were replaced by men;
Only 12/32 presidents lasted longer than five years in their position while half (16) survived less than three years.
The average tenure for HBCU presidents that transitioned in the last year stands at approximately 54.59 months, or roughly 4.55 years. However, this average varies significantly when broken down by gender: Women: 41 months (3.41 years) vs. Men: 61.71 months (5.14 years). Both significantly lag the national average for presidents of 5.9 years1;
Tenures were longer at public institutions on average (5.17 years) compared to private (3.84 years), and male presidents at private universities lasted twice as long as women (4.54 years compared to 2.45 years);
Presidents with previous executive-level experience had longer tenures (5.02 years) than those who did not (4.07 years).
The epigraph leading to the discussion here may appear macabre, and perhaps melodramatic for the subject of discussion. After all, not one executive leadership announcement this past year was due to a campus closure/merger, and despite the most hyperbolic claims to the contrary, HBCUs are not dead or dying. Enrollments across the sector are cumulatively up, many campuses are thriving, and the high caliber of achievements of HBCU students across the country matches the achievements of HBCU alumni and scholars.
However, the toll of the bell is an apt metaphor because of the crises that far too many HBCUs are experiencing because of disruptions in their executive leadership that can happen on any campus. Suppose you currently benefit from a supportive board or flagship campus regents. In that case, you are one election or system presidential appointment/retirement away from the potential of the egregious harms faced by many HBCUs. If you have enjoyed stability in your institution's President/Chancellor seat and the attendant benefits of said stasis, retirement and/or the lure of more competitive compensation from consultancies always loom around every annual corner.
What we do now as HBCU alumni and supporters to pressure elected officials and appointed board members to do right by our institutions and praise and support them when they valiantly defend our institutions ensures that when the bell does toll for us, it signals not death, but a welcome metamorphosis. The choice, ultimately, is that we continue to adapt to meet our students, our communities, and the world’s needs or, conversely, that we fail and with our bells rung and white towels thrown in, all is done save for the singing.
HBCU presidential transitions reveal significant gender disparities in tenure length, with male presidents generally serving longer than female presidents2. Additionally, presidents at public HBCUs tend to have longer tenures than private institutions. Executive experience at HBCUs also appears to contribute to longer tenures. These insights underscore the complexities and varying dynamics of leadership at HBCUs, offering a nuanced understanding of presidential transitions in this vital sector of higher education.
May God bless the leaders who have taken on this responsibility and the institutions they serve.
2023-2024 HBCU Executive Leadership Turnover
By the numbers:
48 announcements affecting 32 institutions
15 interim appointments
9 resignations
2 promotions from interim status
1 known termination
16 new and 11 interim appointments; 10 resignations; 1 known termination
Albany State University: President Marion Ross Fedrick resigns
Alcorn State University: New President Tracy Cook*
Arkansas Baptist College: President Calvin McFadden resigns
Interim President Regina Favors named
Barber Scotia College: New President Chris Rey
Bluefield State College: President Robin Capheart resigns
Interim President Darrin Martin named
Central State University: New President Morakinyo Kuti
Dillard University: President Rochelle Ford resigns
Acting President Monique Guillory named
Elizabeth City State University: Interim Chancellor Catherine Edmonds named
Fisk University: New President Agenia Walker
Florida Memorial University: President Jaffus Hardrick resigns
Interim President and Board Chairman William McCormick named
Grambling State University: Interim President Connie Walton named
New President Martin Lemelle
Jackson State University: New President Marcus Thompson
Kentucky State University: New President Koffi Akakpo
Knoxville College: President Leonard Adams resigns
Lane College: President Logan Hampton resigns
Langston University: New President Ruth Ray Jackson*
Lincoln University (MO): President John Moseley suspended/later re-instated
Acting President Stevie Lawrence named
Morris College: President Leroy Staggers retires
New President Said Sewell
North Carolina A&T State University: Chancellor Harold Martin retires
New Chancellor James Martin (no relation)
North Carolina Central University: Chancellor Johnson Akinleye retires
New Chancellor Karrie Dixon
Paine College: President Cheryl Jackson Evans retires
Shorter College: President O. Jerome Green passes away (RIP)
Southern University-Baton Rouge: New Chancellor John Pierre
Southern University Law Center: Interim Chancellor Alvin Washington named
St. Augustine’s University: President Christine Johnson McPhail terminated
Interim President Leslie Rodriguez-McClellon named
Interim President Marcus Burgess named
Talladega College: President Gregory Vincent resigns
Interim President Edward Hill named
Interim President Walter Kimbrough named
Tennessee State University: President Glenda Glover resigns
Interim President Ronald Johnson named
Texas Southern University: New President James Crawford
Tuskegee: President Charlotte Morris retires
New President Mark Brown
University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff: Chancellor Laurence Alexander resigns
Interim Chancellor Andrea Stewart named
University of the Virgin Islands: New President Safiya George
Winston-Salem State: New Chancellor Bonita Brown
*promoted from interim president/chancellor
William Broussard, Ph.D. is Vice Chancellor of University Advancement and CEO of the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point Foundation. He is the author of Public Regional University Fundraising: Under the Radar, Below the Fold (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023).
Dakota Doman, Ed.D. is Managing Principal of TM² Executive Search. TM² is a subsidiary of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the only executive search firm dedicated solely to Historically Black College and Universities, Predominantly Black Institutions, and Historically Black Community Colleges.
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Interesting times. With more pressure that includes a changing college sports world, polarizing politics, louder student body, and lower birth, being a college president with the ability to bob and weave will be more crucial than ever.