Tools for Hiring Community College Presidents

This set of open-access hiring tools—including job announcement language, interview questions, and a candidate evaluation rubric—is designed to help boards of trustees, search committees, search consultants, and others hire presidents capable of leading community colleges to high and improving levels of student success.

Driven by a combination of increasing accountability and constrained government and low-income family resources, most colleges are being forced to rethink the way they do business. At the same time, community colleges are facing unprecedented demand from minority, low-income and first-generation students. In this context, for community colleges to improve student outcomes, they will need to deliver more credentials of higher quality at a lower per-pupil cost to an increasingly diverse population.

Decades of research and reform efforts in higher education have yielded one area of near-universal agreement: exceptional educational institutions have excellent leaders. U.S. higher education institutions need presidents and other leaders who are deeply committed to increasing student access and success and have the knowledge, skills, and tools to achieve that objective in the rapidly evolving landscape.

The majority of college presidents are over the age of 60, nearly a decade older than the average age just 20 years ago. All signs point to a generational turnover in the college presidency in the coming years. There is an urgent challenge and opportunity to reevaluate how we recruit, develop, and support college leaders.

Based on original research into the qualities of exceptional leaders published in its Crisis & Opportunity report, CEP has developed a set of seven practical, easy-to-use tools for boards of trustees, search committees, search consultants, and others to use when hiring community college presidents.