Determinants of presidential longevity in higher education: estimating a structural model from a dataset derived from publicly available data
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Aileen Marea Reid (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Ayesha Boyce
Abstract: Long-term presidents are important to institutions of higher education, yet, studies on presidential tenure in higher education have reported declining tenures for several decades. The studies reporting these declines primarily used surveys of sitting presidents, computed tenure based on years completed to date, and none, to date, have employed structural equation modeling (SEM). This study used a convergent mixed methods design to create a dataset (n=202) on research university presidents from publicly available data and used SEM to test a structural model of presidential longevity. The findings suggest that publicly available data is a viable data source for studies on presidential longevity and that SEM can be applied to higher education research given a large sample and correctly specified models. The study also found that research university presidents’ tenure has remained stable over several decades, demonstrating the importance of using presidents’ full tenure, rather than completed tenure of sitting presidents as a measure of presidential longevity.
Determinants of presidential longevity in higher education: estimating a structural model from a dataset derived from publicly available data
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Created on 12/1/2018
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Dissertation
- Language: English
- Date: 2018
- Keywords
- Public data, Structural equation modeling, Tenure, Presidential
longevity, University presidents
- Subjects
- College presidents
- Universities and colleges $x Administration
- Structural equation modeling