Higher education is accustomed to preparing people for what comes next. We prepare students for careers that may not yet exist. We redesign curricula in response to emerging technologies. We build pathways around new credentials, new modalities and new definitions of what it means to be career ready. However, there is another “what comes next?” conversation that receives far less attention: Who will lead our institutions next?
The question feels particularly relevant as higher education navigates multiple transitions at once. Enrollment patterns are shifting. Students and families are reconsidering the value of the traditional college experience. Employers increasingly emphasize demonstrable skills. Microcredentials and alternative pathways are challenging conventional assumptions about degrees. Economic pressures continue to influence who can access higher education, how they access it and what they expect in return. Institutions are being asked to become more agile, innovative and responsive, ut transformation is not only happening around our institutions. It is happening within them.
Higher education is also experiencing changes in employee expectations, retention, leadership turnover and organizational culture. Institutions understandably seek fresh perspectives when leadership positions become available. An external appointment can bring new experiences, challenge established assumptions and introduce ideas that might not otherwise emerge,
but in our pursuit of fresh eyes, there is another question worth asking: Are we overlooking the people who have spent years learning to see the institution clearly?
The Succession Planning Paradox
We teach succession planning in business classrooms. Students learn that healthy organizations identify talent, develop leadership pipelines, transfer institutional knowledge and prepare employees for increasing levels of responsibility. We explain that succession planning should not begin when someone announces a departure. It should be embedded in the organization’s approach to talent development, then we return to our universities, where succession planning can sometimes feel more accidental than intentional.
A faculty member may become a program coordinator. A coordinator becomes a department chair. A chair takes on assessment, accreditation, budgeting, faculty development, student concerns and strategic initiatives. Over time, that individual may acquire an extraordinary understanding of how the institution actually works, but does the institution intentionally ask: What are we preparing this person to do next? Too often, advancement depends on a vacancy appearing rather than a leadership pathway being designed. That distinction matters.
Experience Is More Than Time Served
Promoting from within should never mean that longevity automatically earns advancement. Leadership positions require the right capabilities, judgment and vision, and institutions benefit from competitive searches and diverse perspectives, but perhaps we should also be careful not to confuse familiarity with stagnation. Someone who has spent years within an institution may possess something difficult to capture on a résumé: institutional fluency.
They understand why certain initiatives succeeded and why others quietly disappeared. They know where processes become unnecessarily complicated. They understand faculty culture, student expectations and organizational history. They know which relationships allow work to move forward and where invisible barriers exist. Most importantly, they may have earned trust. In an environment where change is increasingly constant, that knowledge can be an asset rather than a limitation.
The more interesting question, then, may not be whether institutions should hire internally or externally. It may be whether they are developing internal talent strongly enough that internal candidates are genuinely prepared to compete for senior leadership opportunities.
Succession Planning Is Really Leadership Development
True succession planning should not be about identifying someone’s replacement behind closed doors, nor should it guarantee anyone a future position. It should be about creating an environment where people can grow into responsibilities that do not yet belong to them.
What would happen if emerging academic leaders were intentionally exposed to budgeting before becoming deans? What if department chairs participated in strategic planning beyond their units? What if faculty interested in administration were given opportunities to understand enrollment, advancement, accreditation, governance and institutional finance? What if senior leaders were evaluated partly on whether they developed other leaders? These experiences would not guarantee promotion. They would create readiness. And perhaps readiness is the missing piece of the succession conversation.
Institutions frequently invest considerable resources in recruiting leadership talent after a vacancy occurs. An equally important question is how much we invest in developing leadership talent before one occurs.
Fresh Eyes and Institutional Memory Are Not Opposites
Higher education does need new perspectives, but new does not always have to mean external. Sometimes, fresh thinking comes from someone who has spent years close enough to a problem to understand it but has finally been given enough authority to address it. Likewise, external leaders can bring tremendous value, particularly when institutions need capabilities or perspectives that do not currently exist internally. The strongest organizations may therefore resist treating internal development and external recruitment as competing philosophies. They build strong internal pipelines and remain open to external talent.
That creates a healthier question when a leadership position becomes available. Instead of asking whether to look inside or outside, an institution can ask: Who is best prepared to lead us into what comes next, and what have we done to prepare people for that opportunity?
Perhaps We Should Practice What We Teach
Universities exist because we believe people can develop. We believe knowledge changes capability. We believe experience matters. We believe mentoring matters. We believe that, with the right opportunities, people can become prepared for responsibilities they were not ready to assume yesterday. Those beliefs shape what we promise our students.
Perhaps they should also shape how we develop our employees. As higher education reimagines credentials, student experiences, technology and the future of work, succession planning deserves to become part of that transformation. Because eventually every institution will face the same question: Who comes next? The more important question may be whether we started preparing them before we needed the answer.