The New
Leadership Gap: Addressing Projected
Shortages
in Administrative/Professional Positions
By Dale F. Campbell
Community college leaders have been effective in responding to the leadership gap created by the anticipated retirements of presidents and their executive officers that was first identified as a critical issue for colleges in the late 90s. However, recent research indicates that we have not anticipated a new leadership gap--one potentially even more devastating to the future of community colleges. This gap is reminiscent of the problem facing New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The leaders of the city of New Orleans initially thought that the worst had past after Katrina hit the gulf, not realizing that the worse damage was to come when the levies were later breeched and the city flooded. Similarly, have you carefully examined what the impending impact of retirements of administrative/professional in highly skilled and specialized positions will be at your college? New research indicates that colleges could be highly vulnerable and experience major fiscal impact if we do not act now to develop programs to meet this need. This article will report on those findings, and the results of a FuturesLeaders Work Profile Session, and suggest recommendations for leaders to address this new critical issue.
Leadership Development Programs
Research conducted by Christopher Shultz (2001) for the American Association of Community Colleges found that the retirement of community college president and vice president/deans posed a critical problem for the nation’s community colleges through 2005. The AACC has been instrumental the last five years in developing programs and services to meet this need. They called the first Leadership Summit, created a national database of graduate programs, established the Futures Leaders Institute, and gained Kellogg funding for the Leading Forward Project. The Board recently adopted Competencies for Community College Leaders. Local institutions, states and universities have also responded in developing leadership development programs. These programs have all been developed to prepare individuals to assume projected openings in president and vice president/deans positions.
This author recently replicated a portion of Christopher Shultz’s original research with the support of Navient Corporation and FuturesLeaders-Assessment Technologies Group. Community college presidents were asked to project the retirements of their administrative/professional staff. These staff are in non-faculty highly specialized positions that report to the vice president/deans in academic, student and business affairs.
Community college presidents project the following levels of retirements by area for their administrative staff between 2006-10:
Administrative
Staff 11-25% 26 >50%
Academic Affairs 38% 13%
(Dir. Learning Resources, Institutional Research, etc.)
Student Affairs 31% 9%
(Registrar, Dir. Financial Aid, etc)
Business Affairs 28% 10%
(Dir. Accounting, Human Resources,
etc.)
A follow-up survey was sent to those presidents expressing interest in participating in a work group to explore solutions to address this issue asking them to rank order the positions most critical to the future of their institution. Eleven community college leaders from seven states including presidents, vice presidents/deans, human resource officers and association presidents (American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, National Council for Student Development and the Council for Resource Development) accepted the invitation to participate in a FuturesLeaders Administrative Work Profiling Session in Jacksonville, Florida. The purpose of the work group was 1) develop a Work Profile for the community college registrar-one of the positions selected by respondents as most critical for their colleges, and 2) explore new strategies for colleges to reduce their recruitment costs and increase the effectiveness of their hiring processes. This was designed to be the initial step in assisting colleges to fill key administrative positions.
Dr. Les Krieger, President,
Assessment Technologies Group facilitated the FuturesLeaders Work Profiling
Session. Participants served as an
expert panel to identify key work tasks, major job context elements, and the
attribute and competency person specifications for successful performance of a
future community college registrar. They were asked to rank not only the priority
of tasks, but also the proportionate amount of time that a registrar should
spend on each activity. The key tasks and activities identified by the panel
were: assessing/evaluating,
controlling/directing, deciding, planning, implementing/coordinating,
reviewing/evaluating, and interpreting.
The following managerial
qualities were identified as either of high or extreme importance: planning and organizing, quality
orientation, specialist knowledge, problem solving & analysis, commercial
awareness, strategic, and personal motivation as shown in Table 1.
The Work Profile analysis goes significantly beyond the one-page position profiles developed by human resource offices or executive search firms to announce and advertise an executive position as shown in Table 2. The process ultimately enables colleges to use a work styles self-assessment inventory to assess a candidate’s person/environment fit or the extent to which there is a match between the candidate and the unique job requirements of the institution.
Changing Nature of Administrative/Professional
Positions
The FuturesLeaders
Work Profile Group concluded that the nature of the work of the registrar has
changed dramatically and requires higher skills and greater knowledge than in
the past. The position is increasing called
upon to not only preserve the integrity of institutional records and student
privacy, but also provide strategic planning and decision-making for the
institution in student recruitment and enrollment management. Both areas of responsibility have the
potential for major financial impact in the millions for a college should the
wrong decisions be made. The group
concluded that due to the increasing strategic responsibilities of the position
that it should be renamed the Dean/Director of Enrollment Management & Registrar. One of the presidents participating
announced that he was going to give his registrar a raise when he returned
having had no idea how the complexities and responsibilities of the position
have changed.
Unfortunately there
are currently no clear career paths or opportunities for staff to explore
moving into highly specialized positions like the registrar. The American Association of Collegiate
Registrars and Admissions Officers provide a one-day intensive session for new
registrars—but the person already has to have been selected by a college for
the position. College applicant pools
for community college registrar positions tend to be limited to experienced
classified support staff without academic credentials or younger professionals
without the specialized experience required in the field. The group concluded that the severity of
this problem was like two trains on a collision course—no one in the field was
currently aware of the extent of the problem.
This work group also found alarmingly that this to be true across the
wide range of administrative/professional positions studied including financial
aid, librarians, information technology, and resource development.
General findings and conclusions of the work group session included:
- There will be a critical leadership gap in the highly specialized administrative/professional positions between 2006-2010.
- The availability of skilled and trained professionals to fill these highly specialized positions is extremely critical to the future of the colleges.
- The need to build awareness of the forthcoming gap as a major issue that should be widely disseminated to community college trustees, presidents, vice presidents/deans is clear.
- No clear avenue currently exists for career exploration or development for those interested in entering the administrative/professional ranks.
- Encourage professional organizations such as AACRAO, National Council on Student Development, Council for Resource Development, Community College Business Officers and AACC collaborate in developing professional development programs to meet this need
- College presidents must identify, recruit, development and invest in their current staff with the potential to move into these positions.
- University leadership programs should partner with colleges and professional organizations and provide accessible graduate masters and certificate programs targeted to address the projected critical shortage areas
Future Development
It is
vital that community college leaders attend to the staffing needs for these
highly specialized positions. The
article is the first step that the work group recommended to help build
awareness that the new leadership gap of administrative/professional positions
is a major issue that must be widely disseminated to community college
trustees, presidents, vice presidents/deans.
We must continue to collaborate with other community college and
association leaders to develop similar work profiles and programs to address
this new leadership gap for other administrative/professional positions.
Dale F. Campbell is professor
and director, Community College Leadership Consortium, University of
Florida. He is author of The
Leadership Gap: Model Strategies for
Leadership Development published by Community College Press, 2002. He served as Principal Investigator for
FuturesLeaders Administrative/Professional Work Profiling Research conducted by
Navient Corporation and Assessment Technologies Group, 2005.
References
Shultz, Christopher.
“The Critical Impact of Impending Retirements on Community College
Leadership.” American Association of
Community Colleges, Research Brief, No. 1, Leadership Series, 2001.
Table
1
Inventory
of Management Competencies Profile*
Dean/Director of Enrollment Management
& Registrar**
|
MANAGERIAL
QUALITIES Importance Level Baseline Moderate High Extreme |
|
|
Leadership Planning & Organizing
Quality Orientation Persuasiveness |
|
|
PROFESSIONAL
QUALITIES Importance Level Baseline Moderate High Extreme |
|
|
Specialist Knowledge |
|
|
ENTREPRENEURIAL QUALITIES Importance Level Baseline Moderate High Extreme |
|
|
Commercial Awareness |
|
|
PERSONAL QUALITIES Importance Level Baseline Moderate High Extreme |
|
|
Interpersonal Sensitivity |
|
*Copyright 2000 SHL Group
**2005 FuturesLeaders-Assessment
Technologies Group, Jacksonville, FL
Table 2
Dean/Director, Enrollment Management & Registrar
Specific job objectives would be as follows:
|