Why Do College Presidents Get Fired?

Last week at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), my research assistant and I presented a project that we’ve been working on for over a year now.  The study, Exploring Involuntary Presidential Turnover in American Higher Education, asks a simple question:  Why do college presidents get fired?  For today’s post, I want to share some of the more interesting findings of what we discovered.

Photo credit: NBC

Call Me Michael

Original Lyrics by Carly Rae Jepsen.  Adapted by Dr. Harris aka Michael.

 

Even if I don’t know you well

Ask my first name I’ll ask always tell

I went to school for way too long

I have doctorate but that’s okay

What is the Difference Between an Ed.D. and a Ph.D.?

Like many of my colleagues in higher education programs, I am often asked what is the difference between an Ed.D. and a Ph.D.? As a holder of an Ed.D., yet also a research faculty member, I may get these questions even more. I want to describe the major differences between the degrees (at least on paper). Also, I want to challenge our field to move our rhetoric about the differences more toward reality.

Photo credit: Alan Turkus
The simple answer is that the Ed.D. focuses on practice and application while the Ph.D. prepares for research and theory development.

Unfortunately, in most higher education programs, the reality is that the degrees often differ very little.

Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education

I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about the focus of higher education, particularly the hyper-vocational emphasis.  In my History of Higher Education course this week, we discussed whether higher education is a right or privilege.  Moreover, I believe we need to think more about the change that occurred during the transition from elite to mass higher education.  In today’s post, I want to again share a section from my monograph, Understanding Institutional Diversity in American Higher Education, that deals with this transition.

Photo courtesy: Reuters