Trends: What sort of leaders does higher ed need in the coming crisis?

Moody's Investors Service says boards need more business people:

Leaders of public universities lament that state appropriations have been declining as a proportion of their budgets for at least two decades, a trend that has forced institutions to find new sources of revenue by raising tuition, undertaking massive fund-raising efforts, and forming partnerships with private firms to develop new technologies.

A new report released on Tuesday by Moody's Investors Service concludes that public universities are economically stronger because of that shift, but that they now must now learn to operate less like government entities and more like large, complex nonprofit corporations. And states need to give them the flexibility to do so, the report recommends.Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

But university administrator says college presidents' challenges are political, much like those of the US president:

By MARY B. MARCY

In an election year when politics is in the air, it's important to note that an academic institution is essentially a political, not a corporate, system, and that its leader is more akin to the president of the United States than to a corporate chief executive. This is in spite of the argument, particularly when defending the compensation of college presidents, that leading an academic institution is similar to running a major corporation. Such statements may make sense at first blush, but they misread the academic organizational structure and the responsibilities and role of presidents.Read the rest of here opinion here.