The number of foreign presidents of US universities is growing

In his inauguration speech as President of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Benjamin Akande spoke of growing global professional competition in a world where education is one of the key conditions for human liberation and development. With the appointment of Dr. Akande, a Nigerian by birth, to the presidency, the college once again confirmed its international reputation.

Westminster College in Missouri is proud that 70 years ago, in 1946, it was here that former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered the famous Fulton speech, in which, among other things, he condemned the “Iron Curtain”, the shadow of which was then just falling across the entire European continent. from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic,” dividing the peoples of Western and Eastern Europe. In 1992, the college welcomed Mikhail Gorbachev to its campus as an honored guest, who solemnly declared the end of the Cold War.

This small private college proclaims its mission to be “educating young leaders of change in the world.” Of its approximately thousand students, 14% are foreigners from more than 75 countries.

Benjamin Akande joins the dynamically growing cohort of American university presidents from other countries. Thus, the president of Seton Hall University in New Jersey is from the Philippines, and the president of the Stevens Institute of Technology is from Iran. Two years ago, a Trinidadian was chosen president of Howard University in Washington, a historically black college in the District of Columbia metropolitan area. Over the past five years, Indians have headed a number of major US research universities, including the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the University of California in San Diego, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the University of Texas in Arlington and Lawrence Technological University in Detroit.

Although place of birth was not a decisive factor in the selection of presidents by university boards of trustees, foreign status was certainly seen as an important positive aspect of candidates as educational leaders in a rapidly globalizing world. In announcing that Andrew Hamilton, a Briton from Oxford, would lead New York University, the board of trustees emphasized the candidate's deep understanding of the importance of the university's "significant global presence and influence" in the world. And when Spaniard Angel Cabrera was hired as president of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2012, the chairman of the selection committee highlighted the candidate’s “impressive global vision” for the problems and challenges of modern university education.

“The rich cross-cultural experience of foreign-born presidents gives them a head start in understanding the enormous importance of the international dimensions of education,” says Patti McGill-Peterson, who oversees international initiatives for the American Council on Higher Education, a nongovernmental organization of U.S. higher education leaders. .

It also reflects the natural evolution of American universities: as they attract more international undergraduate and graduate students to their programs, many of these graduates gradually rise in their careers and become leaders in US higher education. With rare exceptions, so are all the newly elected presidents mentioned above. For example, Dr. Akande is a graduate of Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, Texas, and received his doctorate in economics from the University of Oklahoma. Before leading Westminster College, he was dean of the business school at Webster University in St. Louis for 15 years, where his responsibilities also included active support and development of the university's international partnerships program.

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