FUTURE LEADERS OR FORTUNATE ELITES? RETHINKING LEADER DEVELOPMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND BEYOND

Abstract

The authors (Pomerantz, the Doerr Institute’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow) and Brown (Managing Director for Measurement and Associate Director at the Doerr Institute for New Leaders) discuss leadership development in higher education, and its relationship to traditional (and somewhat controversial and contested) published college rankings. This affects not only the higher education institutions, but its students and prospective students, who need accurate information about the schools they might want to attend. They write that “the Doerr Institute for New Leaders, based at Rice University (and the place where both authors work) has been dedicated to developing students in a way that doesn’t just teach leadership theories or train students in specific leadership skills, but that changes who those students are and how they see themselves—developing the identity, self-awareness, and self-efficacy necessary to lead.” In addition, the “Institute partnered with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Council on Education to create the Leadership for Public Purpose (or LPP) elective classification.” They stress that the LPP is not a ranking, which makes it unique. They conclude that “Our collective vision of leadership and how we develop leaders will determine whether the leaders we need are the leaders we have.”