Why Succession Planning Efforts Stall at Universities and Community Colleges

Most universities and community colleges agree that succession planning matters. Few have a plan that holds up when a provost resigns in October or a president takes a job in another state. The gap between intent and practice has been wide for a long time. Programs can lose momentum when ownership shifts or advancement paths stay unclear. Board attention can fade too, leaving development work disconnected from actual openings.

The reasons rarely come down to effort. Campus culture treats open competition as proof of fairness, so preparing an internal candidate can look like favoritism. Boards often think about leadership only when a vacancy appears, and community colleges carry thinner administrative benches than most universities. This article explains why these efforts stall and what institutions can do to restart a plan that has lost momentum.

TL;DR

College presidents now serve an average of 5.9 years, and 55% planned to leave within 5 years, yet only 30% were preparing a successor. Plans stall on campus for structural reasons. Shared governance and open search norms make internal grooming look unfair, and many boards treat presidential succession as a one-time search. Community college succession planning faces added strain from lean staffing and a long retirement wave. Plans that recover build pools of candidates instead of naming heirs and give the board a yearly review. They also track simple measures such as internal fill rates and backup coverage for critical roles.

What succession planning means on a campus

Succession planning is the ongoing work of finding the roles an institution can’t afford to leave empty and preparing people who could step into them. In a company, that often means a short list of named successors for each executive, approved by the CEO and the board. On a campus, the definition has to be broader. Most senior roles are filled through formal searches, and faculty expect a voice in who leads academic units. Many critical jobs also sit well below the cabinet, where boards rarely look.

A working model of succession planning in higher education usually has 3 layers. The first is emergency coverage, which answers who steps in as acting president or provost if the incumbent leaves tomorrow. The second is a development pool: mid-level staff and faculty who are building the skills to compete for senior roles when those roles open. The third is knowledge continuity, meaning documented processes and cross-training for jobs where 1 person holds information nobody else has.

Most campus efforts cover the first layer and stop there. Emergency coverage is easy to write down and easy for a board to approve. The other 2 layers need money and years of steady attention, and they ask people to rethink how promotion works in an academic setting. That’s where most of the trouble starts.

It also helps to separate succession planning from replacement planning. Replacement planning names a stand-in for a specific job. Succession planning builds a leadership pipeline, a steady supply of people who could compete well for a role when it opens. An institution can do the first without the second, and many do.

The numbers behind the leadership turnover problem

The case for succession planning in higher education starts with turnover at the top. According to the American Council on Education’s 2023 presidency study, presidents in 2022 had held their jobs an average of 5.9 years, down from 8.5 years in 2006. More than half, 55%, said they planned to step down within 5 years.

The same survey shows how little of that turnover is planned for. In the full ACE report on the college presidency, 30% of presidents said they were preparing a successor, and 81% of that group said the successor already worked at their institution. Only 30% reported that their institution had plans or policies for future presidential searches, and 14% said it had a temporary succession plan or policy.

Turnover isn’t limited to the president’s office.Deloitte’s 2025 higher education trends report found that turnover in top leadership positions passed 20% between 2022 and 2024, with chief academic officers and chief human resources officers among the most affected roles. It puts the average tenure for chief academic officers at about 4.7 years and says the sector has failed to develop succession pathways.

Staff below the cabinet move as well. TheCUPA-HR 2025 employee retention survey found that 1 in 4 higher ed employees were likely or very likely to look for another job in the next year, with pay as the top reason. The more useful finding for succession is this one: 72% of those thinking about leaving said they were open to staying in higher education, and nearly half said they’d consider other roles at their current institution. That’s a large group of people who’d likely stay for a clear path upward if their campus offered one.

Why shared governance slows the process

Shared governance is one of the clearest reasons succession planning stalls on campus. Faculty expect a voice in choosing academic leaders, and most searches run through committees and public campus visits. A plan that quietly prepares 1 person for a deanship can look like an attempt to skip that process, even when nobody intends it that way. Researchers have made this point for years: the collegial culture of colleges differs from corporate settings, where a CEO can name a successor and a board can approve it in a single meeting.

The result is a trust problem. When a president mentors a rising associate provost, colleagues may read it as a decision already made. When the provost role later opens and that associate provost applies, the search can feel predetermined to everyone watching. There’s a practical way through this. Institutions that keep succession work moving usually separate development from selection. They prepare groups of people rather than a single heir, and they still run a fair search when the role opens. Being ready helps a candidate compete, but it doesn’t guarantee the job. When faculty can see that development programs are open to anyone who qualifies and that the final choice still runs through normal channels, shared governance and succession planning can work side by side.

Faculty leaders can also help carry the plan. Bringing the faculty senate chair into early conversations about which roles need a bench can turn a likely critic into a co-owner. That works best when the plan covers academic roles faculty care about, such as department chairs and associate deans, and doesn’t focus only on administrative posts. A plan that includes faculty from the start usually meets less resistance than one presented to the senate after the fact.

Open search rules and the fear of a wired search

Public institutions face a second barrier that corporate succession models ignore: the laws and policies that govern searches. Many states apply open records or open meetings rules to searches for senior roles, and institutional hiring policies often require that positions be posted and filled through competitive recruitment. A plan that points toward an internal successor has to work inside those rules, and the rules differ from state to state.

They also keep changing. Florida’s current law keeps identifying information for presidential applicants confidential until finalists are named. Florida Statute 1004.098 keeps that rule in force in 2026 and includes a scheduled repeal in October 2027 unless lawmakers act again. The policy remains contested because search confidentiality can affect both candidate privacy and campus participation.

Open rules create a specific fear for internal candidates. In an open search, an internal applicant who loses is visible to every colleague, and a sitting dean who applies elsewhere can damage trust at home. Both risks discourage people from raising their hand. Search consultants add another layer when they warn boards that a search which looks “wired” for an insider will scare off outside talent. That warning can push boards away from internal candidates, even strong ones.

None of this makes succession planning in higher education impossible. It changes the goal to preparing internal candidates who can win a fair search. The table below compares that approach with the corporate model most succession guides assume.

Boards that treat succession as a search event

Many governing boards think about presidential succession only when a president announces a departure. At that point the board hires a search firm and forms a committee, and the process can take most of a year. Between searches, succession rarely appears on the agenda. This event-driven habit explains the ACE figures above. When only 14% of presidents report a temporary succession plan, most boards are one surprise away from an improvised response. Unplanned exits are common. Presidents leave for health reasons or after conflict with their boards, and some departures come with only a few weeks’ notice. Without a written interim plan, the board makes its most important staffing decision under pressure, often in a special meeting and with limited information.

Short tenures make the problem worse. Shorter presidential tenures make succession planning more frequent and increase the value of standing interim plans. Some boards now fill the gap with long-term interim presidents. An interim can steady an institution. A long interim can have several causes, including a difficult search or limited internal readiness.

Boards that break the pattern put succession on a fixed calendar. An essay published by ACE’s Higher Education Today recommended that trustees requiredocumented succession plans for senior leaders, including the president’s direct reports and other vice presidents, with regular discussion between the board and the cabinet. The author notes that this creates accountability while making no promise of promotion to anyone. A yearly review of the plan, tied to the president’s evaluation, keeps presidential succession on the agenda between searches.

Why community college succession planning faces extra strain

Community college succession planning runs into every barrier universities face, plus a few of its own. The sector has warned about a retirement wave for more than a decade. Aspen said in 2024 that many sitting community college presidents planned to retire within the next decade. Its Rising Presidents Fellowship announcement framed leadership preparation as an ongoing need across the sector. Earlier retirement forecasts made the same concern visible years ago, but the newer evidence is the better guide for current planning.

Lean staffing is the bigger structural issue. Many community colleges run with small administrative teams, so a single dean may oversee several academic divisions along with workforce programs. When that person leaves, there’s often no deputy who has seen the full job. The bench is thin because the budget never paid for one.

Budget also shapes development. A multi-day leadership institute or a doctoral program costs tuition and time away from work, and small colleges struggle to cover both. External programs help fill the gap.Community College Daily described how the American Association for Women in Community Colleges runs a 5-day LEADERS Institute built on AACC’s leadership competencies, and the authors urged colleges to strengthen the middle layer of leadership through training in areas like crisis management. Programs like this give staff a way to build skills their own college can’t teach in-house.

Board turnover adds a final wrinkle. Many community college trustees are elected or appointed to fixed terms, so the board that hires a president may look very different from the board that evaluates that president 4 years later. Aspen’s work withpresidents and trustees on shared reform priorities makes the point directly: without a shared plan, reforms are more likely to be disrupted by presidential turnover and budget uncertainty. Community college succession planning has to survive changes on the board as well as in the president’s office.

System offices can carry some of the load. A study ofa succession planning pilot at 5 two-year colleges in the Minnesota State system interviewed college HR leaders about the challenges that kept campuses from doing the work, and it described succession planning as still a new concept in higher education. Pilots like this give small colleges a common framework to adapt, instead of asking each one to design its own.

The department chair gap in the leadership pipeline

The leadership pipeline in academic affairs usually starts with the department chair. Chairs manage budgets, class schedules, faculty hiring, and conflict between colleagues, and many future deans and provosts first learn administration in the role. Yet most institutions treat the chair job as a rotating service duty that someone has to take, and they prepare people for it accordingly.

The training gap is based on older evidence, but it still gets cited. AASCU noted in January 2025 that an earlier national survey found 67% of department chairs received no formal training from their institutions. Most who did receive training got 10 hours or fewer, and the average term as chair was about 4 years. That means many faculty spend a large part of their term learning the job by trial and error, then return to the faculty just as they’ve become good at it.

The rotation creates a second problem. Chairs know they’ll go back to working alongside the colleagues they supervised, which makes hard decisions feel risky. Some capable faculty avoid the role entirely. Others serve a single term and decide administration isn’t for them, often because nobody showed them what the next step would look like. Each of those exits removes a potential associate dean from the pool.

For the leadership pipeline, this is the leak at the bottom. If chairs aren’t trained, the pool of people ready to become associate deans stays small, and the pool for dean and provost roles shrinks further. Institutions that close the leak usually put a few basic supports in place:

·  A structured orientation for new chairs that covers budgets, personnel rules, and handling conflict with colleagues.

·  A peer network of chairs across departments that meets regularly to work through real problems.

·  An overlap period where the outgoing chair works alongside the incoming chair for part of a term.

·  A yearly conversation between each chair and the dean about interest in larger roles and the experience those roles require.

These supports can require less direct spending than formal external leadership programs, although they still use staff time. Together, they can turn a service rotation into the first step of a real path. A chair who knows the next role exists has a reason to stay on the path.

When development programs export talent

Leadership development programs are a common first step in succession planning in higher education, and many work well for the people who attend. The catch is where those people go next. AChronicle of Higher Education essay on succession planning observed that programs such as the ACE Fellows Program often become stepping stones to jobs at other institutions, rather than preparation for successor roles at home. Participants come back with new skills and a much wider network of contacts.

That outcome helps the sector as a whole. Higher education gains when a well-trained associate provost becomes a provost somewhere else. For the institution that paid for the program, though, it can feel like funding a competitor’s leadership pipeline. Budget officers notice, and the next round of funding gets harder to defend.

The fix is to pair development with a visible path at home. Participants should know which roles are likely to open over the next few years and what experience those roles require. Each should have a senior sponsor who’ll speak for them when a chance appears. Stretch assignments close the experience gap without waiting for a vacancy, and acting roles during a colleague’s leave are among the most useful because they put someone in the real job with real stakes.

Institutions should also accept some loss. A program that sends a few graduates to other campuses while promoting others at home is working as intended. The warning sign is a program where nearly every graduate leaves, because that usually means the home institution offered nothing worth staying for.

The hidden risk below the cabinet

Most talk about succession planning in higher education centers on presidents and provosts. Some of the biggest risks sit lower on the organization chart, in roles where 1 person holds knowledge that nobody else has. Financial aid is a clear example. Aid offices manage federal rules that change often, and compliance failures can put an institution’s access to federal student aid at risk. In a 2022 survey of 500 institutions,80% of respondents told NASFAA they were concerned about their office’s ability to remain administratively capable under federal requirements, and 56% worried about meeting student needs at current staffing levels. When a long-serving director retires, the knowledge of how the office actually runs can leave with them unless someone planned for it.

The same risk shows up in registrar offices, institutional research, IT systems administration, and grants management. Staff churn makes it sharper. ACUPA-HR report on 2022-23 staff turnover showed voluntary turnover for full-time exempt staff reaching 14.3%, the highest level since the association began tracking it in 2017-18. These roles still rarely appear in a succession plan because they aren’t senior enough to reach the cabinet’s list. Yet a vacancy in any of them can delay an audit or an accreditation report, and the replacement may need months to learn what the previous person knew by heart.

Knowledge continuity costs far less than leadership development. It starts with a list of roles where a sudden exit would hurt, followed by written procedures and a named, cross-trained backup for each one. Offices can use a short checklist to find their gaps:

·  Is there a written procedure for every task done less often than once a month?

·  Can at least 2 people perform each critical task without help?

·  Are system access details and vendor contacts stored where a backup can reach them?

·  Has the backup actually done the work at least once in the past year?

·  Does the office review its backup plan when someone announces a departure?

Any no answer points to a continuity gap that should be assessed by risk before the next retirement. Many of these gaps can be reduced with written procedures and a few practice runs.

Warning signs that a plan is stalling

Succession plans rarely end with a decision to stop. They fade. A leadership academy loses its budget line, and nobody updates the list of high-potential staff after the HR lead who ran it moves on. Because nothing formally ends, leaders may believe a plan exists long after it has stopped doing anything. The table below lists common signs of a stalled plan and what they usually point to.

The most common reason succession planning in higher education stalls is ownership. When succession planning belongs to HR alone, it gets treated as an HR project with an HR-sized budget and little authority over the cabinet. When the president and cabinet own it and the board checks progress each year, the plan gets the attention it needs to survive changes in leadership.

How to restart a stalled succession plan

Restarting succession planning in higher education works best when an institution starts small and earns trust before it builds programs. The steps below follow the order most campuses can manage with existing staff.

Step 1: Name the critical roles

Start with a short list of roles where a sudden vacancy would disrupt students or operations. Include senior posts and the hidden roles covered earlier, such as the financial aid director or the lead systems administrator. Rate each role on 2 factors: how hard it would be to fill and how soon the incumbent is likely to leave.

Step 2: Build pools instead of naming heirs

For each critical role, identify 2 or more people who could grow into it within a few years, and look across departments instead of only at the direct deputy. Pools fit campus norms far better than named successors because nobody has been promised the job. They also widen the field of internal candidates. Publish how people can join development programs, and accept self-nominations along with supervisor referrals so the pool doesn’t simply mirror existing networks.

Step 3: Put the board on a calendar

Ask the board to review succession once a year, ideally alongside the president’s evaluation. The review should cover the emergency plan for senior leaders and the progress of each development pool. For presidential succession, the board needs a written interim plan that names the acting president and spells out that person’s authority.

Step 4: Give people real experience

Assign pool members stretch work that looks like the job they’re preparing for. Acting roles during a colleague’s leave and a seat on the budget committee are 2 of the most useful options. Pair each person with a senior sponsor who’ll speak for them when roles open and give honest feedback on what they still need to learn.

Step 5: Keep the search fair

When a role opens, run the search the institution’s policies require, and let internal candidates compete on equal terms. Tell internal candidates plainly how the process will work, including how their candidacy will be handled if they don’t advance. A fair loss handled with respect keeps a strong person on staff, while a clumsy one sends them to another campus.

For community college succession planning, the same steps apply at a smaller scale. A college with a thin bench can share development programs with nearby colleges or its system office, and it can use state and national programs to give staff experience the college can’t offer alone.

Measuring whether the plan is working

Plans that can’t show results lose funding. A few simple measures can show whether succession planning in higher education is working on a given campus, and most come from data the HR office already holds.

Read these numbers together. A high internal fill rate combined with poor retention of program graduates may mean the institution promotes only a favored few. A low fill rate with strong finalist numbers may simply mean searches are competitive, which is a healthy result. The 18-month promotion check comes from the Community College Journal authors cited earlier, who suggested tracking promotions within that window after a leadership program.

Presidential succession deserves its own yearly check. The board should confirm that the interim plan is current and that a designated acting leader can assume the authority defined by institutional policy. If that coverage is unclear, the gap should move to the top of the next year’s plan.

Conclusion

Succession planning in higher education stalls for reasons that have little to do with effort. Open search norms, shared governance, event-driven boards, and rotating chairs all work against the corporate habit of naming an heir. Community colleges face the same forces with thinner staff and tighter budgets.

The plans that recover adapt to those conditions. They prepare pools of people instead of heirs and keep searches fair, which lets faculty trust the process. They also reach below the cabinet to the roles where 1 retirement can stall an office. With presidents serving shorter terms and more than half planning to leave within 5 years, succession planning in higher education is now a basic part of running an institution well.

Frequently asked questions

What is succession planning in higher education?

Succession planning in higher education is the ongoing work of preparing people to fill critical roles when they open. It covers emergency coverage for senior leaders and longer-term development of future candidates. Good plans also include backups for key staff roles where 1 person holds specialized knowledge.

Why do succession plans stall at universities?

Succession planning in higher education usually stalls because campus norms favor open searches, which makes preparing an internal candidate look unfair. Boards also tend to address succession only when a vacancy appears. Many plans lack a clear owner above the HR office, so they fade when the person who started them leaves.

How is community college succession planning different?

Community college succession planning deals with smaller administrative teams and tighter budgets. A dean may cover several functions, so there’s often no deputy ready to step in. Turnover on elected or appointed boards can also interrupt long-term plans before they produce results.

How long do college presidents stay in their jobs?

ACE’s 2023 study found that presidents had served an average of 5.9 years as of 2022, down from 8.5 years in 2006. More than half of the presidents surveyed said they planned to leave their current role within 5 years.

How many college presidents are preparing a successor?

In the same ACE study, 30% of presidents said they were preparing a successor. Among that group, 81% said the likely successor already worked at their institution.

Does shared governance prevent succession planning?

No. Shared governance changes how succession planning in higher education works. Institutions can prepare groups of internal candidates and still run fair searches with faculty involvement. Bringing faculty leaders into the planning early builds trust.

Can public institutions promote internal candidates without a search?

It depends on state law and institutional policy. Many public institutions must post senior roles and follow open records or open meetings rules. Internal candidates usually compete in the same search as outside applicants, so preparation should focus on helping them compete well.

What is the difference between succession planning and replacement planning?

Replacement planning names a stand-in for a specific role, usually for emergencies. Succession planning builds a leadership pipeline over several years, so strong internal candidates exist when roles open. Most institutions need both, but many stop at replacement planning.

What role should the board play in presidential succession?

The board should review presidential succession every year, ideally alongside the president’s evaluation. That review should confirm a written interim plan naming the acting president. It should also check progress on developing senior leaders across the cabinet.

Why do department chairs matter for the leadership pipeline?

Chairs are often the first administrative role for future deans and provosts. When chairs get little training and rotate out after a single term, the leadership pipeline loses people before they’re ready for larger roles.

How can colleges keep leadership program graduates from leaving?

Pair each program with a visible path at home. Graduates should know which roles may open and have a senior sponsor who’ll back them. Acting assignments during a colleague’s leave also help them see a future at the institution.

Which staff roles need succession planning besides senior leaders?

Roles with specialized knowledge carry high risk. Examples include financial aid directors, registrars, grants managers, and systems administrators. A sudden exit in any of these roles can disrupt compliance or daily operations for months.

How should institutions measure succession planning results?

Useful measures include the internal fill rate for senior roles, the share of critical roles with a ready backup, retention of program participants, and time to fill senior vacancies. Leaders should review them together once a year.

What is an interim succession plan?

It’s a written plan that names who leads if a senior leader leaves suddenly and defines that person’s authority. ACE found that only 14% of presidents reported a temporary succession plan or policy at their institution.

Where should a stalled succession plan restart?

Start by naming the roles where a sudden vacancy would cause the most harm. Then build small development pools for those roles and put the plan on the board’s yearly calendar.