Laslo Boyd: So you think being a university president is easy?

It’s true that many of them are quite well-paid. And the job often comes with some nice perks, including a house and a car. Many university presidents are important and influential members of their communities. And whether the sports teams are any good or not, they are guaranteed really good seats, often in a presidential box.

On the other hand, the job at most universities has gotten much more demanding. A bit like an elected official, you’re required to be doing fundraising all the time. You are expected to show up at a dizzying assortment of events. Of the many apt uses of the phrase about how hard it is to herd cats, the truest may refer to the challenge of leading faculty in any particular endeavor. Many universities are large, complex organizations. While the president can’t possibly oversee what everyone — students, faculty and staff — is doing all the time, she or he is responsible if bad things happen.

We have seen some of those bad things end a president’s term or at least make it much more difficult. While few falls from grace are quite as spectacular or disturbing as that of former Penn State President Graham Spanier, the generic root of his problems, a failure to maintain “institutional control” — a phrase directly from the NCAA Handbook — over a highly successful and lucrative athletic program is far from unique.

At Rutgers, Robert Barchi was hired as the institution’s president to oversee the acquisition of a medical school, a task for which he was well-qualified by his previous experience. What he wasn’t ready for was an athletic scandal that involved an abusive men’s basketball coach or the challenges of hiring a new athletic director who came with her own baggage. Look around the country and you see lots of examples of prominent universities that have been unable or unwilling to play by the rules with their intercollegiate athletic programs. Presidents often survive, but not always.

That’s the challenge for University of Maryland President Wallace Loh, whose athletic program is moving from the Atlantic Coast Conference to the bigger-money Big Ten. Everyone connected with the decision has promised that College Park won’t succumb to the temptations that derail so many programs and that the entire university will benefit.

Other presidents have given similar assurances. Hopefully, Loh and his successors will be successful. A cautionary tale here is that the University System has already stumbled badly in its secretive handling of the initial decision, by claiming that key officials didn’t understand a state open meetings law that they had been operating under for many years.

Athletics isn’t the only pitfall out there. At highly regarded St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a relatively new president, Joseph Urgo, in his effort to put his personal stamp on the college, replaced key admissions personnel. This year’s precipitous drop in new students led to Urgo’s resignation (or was it a dismissal?) after the news went public.

There is a story now lurking out there about a potential decline in enrollments at Anne Arundel Community College. Whether the planned examination of the figures threatens a first-year president there or is merely a prudent response to early numbers remains to be seen.

Presidents are usually chosen, at least formally, by governing boards. In the last year, there have been two well-publicized cases of board chairs who led efforts to fire presidents whose leadership they found lacking. At the University of Virginia, the board dismissed President Teresa Sullivan and then, under intense public pressure, was forced to reinstate her.

A similar dynamic played out at Morgan State. A longtime board chair, Dallas Evans, persuaded other members of the board to fire President David Wilson. Wilson did not go quietly, however, and rallied faculty and student support. In the end it was Evans who resigned, and Wilson remains Morgan’s president.

In the University System of Maryland, two presidents, Susan Aldridge of University of Maryland University College, and Reginald Avery of Coppin State University, have been forced out in recent years. The Coppin example, as a task force studying the institution pointed out, reflected a long-term failure of leadership to address fundamental issues there, including a dismally low graduation rate. Aldridge’s problems, never explicitly identified, apparently involved violations of federal financial aid rules in recruitment of students.

As these examples demonstrate, being a university president is a hard job, filled with potential land mines. On the other hand, some presidents have been able to negotiate the pitfalls with seeming ease and have built enviable reputations.

Freeman Hrabowski, who has been the president at University of Maryland, Baltimore County for 20 years, is nationally respected for his leadership in programs for high-achieving minority students and is as innovative and energetic as he was when he first took the position.

Fred Lazarus is stepping down after 35 years — take a second to reflect on that number — as president of the Maryland Institute College of Art. He transformed that college into a leading arts institution and also made it a vital part of midtown Baltimore.

Universities are critical institutions for the future of this nation as well as the economy and the stability of large and small communities. The quality of leadership matters enormously and is far from a sure thing. Expect to see other examples on both sides of the equation in the coming years.

Laslo Boyd writes a monthly column for The Daily Record. He has held senior positions in higher education in Maryland and Massachusetts as well in Maryland governor’s office. He can be contacted at [email protected].