Higher Education Executive Search Firms And Today

By Karyn Shields


The term "headhunter" connotes professions most people consider business or very close to business, such as attorneys, construction management, or engineers. By contrast, academe connotes a tree-lined grove half that belongs to a world of pure contemplation unsullied by concerns about mere money. Needless to say, academe is not nearly so pure, and one consequence of this is the need for higher education executive search firms.

Academe's carefully cultivated image as a dream world is deeply stamped in the public conscious. This image, common to student orientation speeches across the country, suggests a world unrelated to everyday considerations. Students supposedly imbibe the artifacts of culture for no purpose other than their own edification and the continuation of that culture.

Meanwhile college is a big business, with endowments running in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Public higher education is a pretty significant percentage of any state's budget. Above all, the interest in attending college and gaining a degree is almost entirely commercial. Even poets want the MFA degree from a top program, and they want it for entirely careerist reasons.

A student's costs are so astronomical that schools cannot help but think of them as their consumers, even without admitting it to themselves. This pure image needs to be recognized as, above all, an industry's advertising campaign. Youths today are much more aware than their predecessors that these years will manifest themselves not just as a degree but as many years of debt, and only a few can take that on just to be able to quote Wordsworth.

There are kinds of customers other than students. Institutions must compete for grants, both from business and government, with special attention to the relation between the science and engineering departments and the military, where truly huge contracts are available. They must also compete for funding from wealthy benefactors and their foundations, especially when it comes to the humanities departments. The best way to attract this money is by hiring academic superstars, those rare individuals whose names and backgrounds will impress donors.

It is well worth remembering that the university must include the very expensive world of collegiate athletics, a part of campus life perhaps more important than any other to school spirit and institutional branding. Top coaches and beautiful facilities are extraordinarily expensive. The goal isn't just victory on the sporting field, but students who will support their alma mater decades after they receive their degrees.

Contingency firms work primarily on one job opening at a time, with as many as a dozen each day calling beleaguered personnel officers on a particular prospect, and several will end up calling This could be the favored option for smaller colleges who don't have the need to hire superstar academics very frequently.

Retainer firms are the better choice force both for very large, usually public universities with nearly ongoing top-level hiring needs, and elite colleges where their infrequent hiring must be among the best. Such firms establish deeper, exclusive relations with the schools, learning what they like and don't like. This makes life much easier for the overwhelmed personnel officers or department heads.




About the Author: