WittKieffer Education Year in Review

Year in Review Education

For The Year Ended June 30, 2022

Introduction

Our Purpose at WittKieffer Is to Improve Quality of Life Through Impactful Leadership.

We recognize that the wellbeing of peoples and communities is inextricably tied to health, education and scientific advancement. That’s why WittKieffer exclusively serves organizations aligned to these areas of impact, as we have for more than 50 years. We help our clients navigate this ever-evolving and complex world by using our unique insight to identify and enable exceptional leadership. We precisely tune our services to the needs of each client – whether non-profit or for-profit – delivering high impact executive search, interim leadership and leadership advisory solutions.

Get to know us. You’ll find a remarkable organization – one that delivers unmatched service, that adheres to fundamental values guiding all our work and that understands the power of leadership to produce positive outcomes for people, organizations and communities.

The Quality of Life Ecosystem

Deepening Our Commitment Improving Quality of Life Through Impactful Leadership

Impactful Leadership means having the right people doing the right things and engaging with each other in ways that build value for their people, their organizations and their communities.

Through the last year, we deepened our commitment to Impactful Leadership across the Quality of Life Ecosystem. We now offer an integrated array of services that support our clients in building and developing leadership teams to successfully navigate an ever-evolving and complex world.

Education

Our Education Practice saw unprecedented growth during the last year, as we helped public and private institutions – large and small – confront the dual impact of retirements and COVID burnout. We opened more than 300 searches, including recruitments of key positions at some of academia’s most prestigious institutions.

Our empathy, candor and nuanced approach earned us the trust of distinguished leaders in education. We have expanded the breadth of positions for which we recruit, while further strengthening our presence in advancement, enrollment, CFO, student affairs and academic leadership. Reflecting this strength in academic leadership, we completed more dean and provost searches than at any time in our history. We also saw growth in our presidential searches.

Our holistic effort to attract diverse and highly qualified candidate pools contributed substantially to diversifying the leadership ranks of the institutions we serve. Notably, approximately 68% of our placements in the past year were women and/or people of color.

Key Trends to Watch

• Enrollments continue to decline at institutions due to the reduction in high school graduates, straining institutional budgets and heighten ing leadership challenges.

• The retirement cycle within education leadership will continue as baby boomers and long-tenured leaders experience stress due to the increased demands and quickly evolving landscape of higher education.

• Program innovation and diverse (even customized) fields of study become critical differentiators in attracting faculty and students, straining resources.

• Continued globalization of education and active learning emphasize unique approaches to institutional partnering.

• The polarized political environment clashes with institutional objectives of supporting freedom of speech and diverse civil discourse.

• Shifts are occurring in student demand from generalized higher education to skill-based education and training.

• Stronger higher education - corporate partnerships are emerging to help narrow the skills gap, open career pathways and unify resources to explore innovative ideas.

• The athletics landscape continues to shift as the term “studentathlete” is redefined and athletic departments become more business-like in their operations.

Implications for Leadership

• As enrollments decline, presidents and senior leaders must change the business model of the institution while keeping faculty and staff engaged. This is no easy task and requires a skillset encompassing agility, resiliency, diplomacy, transparency, teamwork and high levels of tolerance for ambiguity and for criticism. Learn more about the qualities to look for in a college president

• There is a strong demand for high-performing administrators who have proven track records of innovating and identifying new revenue streams. Increasingly, these roles are being filled by interim leaders who can step into a dynamic situation and provide outstanding leadership while allowing the institution time to address issues before taking on a full search.

• Whether permanent or interim, leaders who are proven innovators disrupt the norm, by definition; incorporating them successfully into leadership teams and institutional culture requires strong and inclusive leadership from university presidents and boards.

• The many trade-offs required (e.g., downsizing to reduce fixed cost while engaging required talent) to find new revenue streams to offset reduced enrollment are new to most education leaders, having grown up in times of prosperity. Managing these paradoxes will require the president’s team to step into courageous debate, change management, problem-solving and decisive action – and presidents themselves will need to lead high-performing executive teams more than individual executives.

• The standard-issue candidate is not necessarily the candidate who is going to help complex organizations thrive in the future. It’s important to look more broadly at candidates to understand how experiences, not just the type of experiences, helped them develop as a leader. It’s also critical to make sure chosen candidates have the onboarding and mentoring support they need to succeed.

• Diversity in hiring continues as a top priority across institutions and across roles. Learn how to keep diversity, equity and inclusion at the forefront of selecting a great candidate. Selection is not the end of the story; institutional cultures need to evolve to be more inclusive of different perspectives, and processes need to ensure equitable treatment across the employee lifecycle.

• The shared governance model in higher education presents a uniquely challenging context for both administrative and faculty leadership in the best of times. In these challenging times, creating a culture of mutual and shared accountability for shepherding the institution forward is mission-critical. Doing so requires honest fact-based strategic conversations, genuine vulnerability about the unique challenges of both faculty and administrators, and alignment on a new way forward.