The Need For Higher Education Executive Search Firms

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.

Higher academia has a rhetoric attached to it, and that rhetoric has created a nearly fairyland image. That image, which is still prevalent in film and fiction, is of a life not very connected to the everyday hubbub of the common person. Students learn fine things in a fine manner, unconcerned with ordinary life, lazing in the grass as though they were young troubadours.

In reality, higher academia is a very big industry, whose endowments can reach as large as a billion dollars. Public universities represent a very noticeable slice of every state budget. For the students, interest in getting their degrees is inevitably about their career. This is the case even for those in the arts, which is why the Master of Fine Arts is so important to them.

Students' expenses are so extreme that students are best seen as as a schools' customers, however vulgar it would be to admit this openly. There is a hallowed image of purity, but at the end of the day, administrators must take a cold eye to it and see it as what it is, an industry marketing strategy. The student body is increasingly aware of, and nervous about, the mountain of debt it is incurring each credit-hour, and the student attending for pure refinement of sensibility is fast becoming an anachronism.

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's easy to forget that college also means collegiate sports, which often becomes all important to the school's self-image. Top coaches in top sports, with the most cutting-edge facilities, are understandably expensive. The payoff is branding that inspires students not simply during their college years but after they graduate, when they can approached for donations to their beloved alma mater.

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 agencies are the best choice for big universities which hire frequently because of their sheer size, as well as elite but smaller schools for whom any hire made needs to be similarly elite. These firms build lasting relationships with their clients, and are generally favored by any school's human resources officers.




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