The Great Reluctance: Why Universities Won't Develop Their Leaders

There is a profound mystery at the heart of higher education that no one seems willing to investigate. Universities—those magnificent temples of knowledge, those bastions of intellectual inquiry, those institutions that have spent centuries teaching humanity to think critically—have somehow concluded that developing the people who run them is someone else's problem.

It's beautiful, really. Like watching a world-class orchestra insist they don't need to tune their instruments, or a hospital announcing it will no longer maintain its equipment. The sheer consistency of it across the sector deserves recognition.

It would be logical to identify six stages, from "Academic Induction" (for those poor souls who don't know how to teach) all the way to "Vice-Chancellor Preparation" (for those about to inherit institutional chaos). There could be revenue projections. There could be risk mitigation strategies. It is, in every respect, the kind of strategic, evidence-based thinking that universities always say they value.

The Deeper Reluctance

The deeper problem isn't that universities can't develop their leaders. It's that they actively, deliberately, institutionally don't want to.

Think about it. Universities hire academics—bright, accomplished people with PhDs and research records—and then throw them into teaching, student management, and committee work with precisely zero preparation. Then, somehow shocked that these people don't know how to assess students fairly or manage their time, universities respond not by offering training but by wringing their hands and lamenting the "shortage of leadership talent."

It's gaslighting at institutional scale.

A new lecturer arrives. Nobody teaches her how to design a course. Nobody explains assessment practices. Nobody tells him how to handle an underperforming student, or manage his own workload, or navigate the unwritten political hierarchies of the department. And then, five years later, when she's asked to convene her subject programme, everyone acts mystified that she seems a bit lost. "Perhaps," someone suggests delicately, "she should attend a leadership programme."

Which one? There are thousands. Many are rubbish. Some cost R 45,000 for a single course. And here's the truly bitter part: the institution doesn't require attendance. It's not built into the career progression. It's not seen as core business. It's optional, like buying comprehensive travel insurance or actually reading your contract terms and conditions.

Universities should be making it as frictionless as possible so you don't have to actually commit to developing people; you can just throw money at us and feel like you're doing something.

The Economics of Avoidance

Financial projections are fascinating precisely because they reveal what universities are not willing to pay for directly. How much do they spend on in-house capacity? How many universities have a Director of Leadership Development? How many universities dedicate even one full-time equivalent to systematically building leadership capability among their own staff?

Spoiler: very few.

But this is rational behavior, in a perverse way. Universities have discovered that the reputational cost of not investing in leadership development is lower than the cost of doing it themselves. As long as someone—anyone—external can say "we're running leadership programmes," the institution can nod seriously in accreditation meetings and say, "Yes, we take staff development very seriously." The actual outcomes? Whether academics can actually lead better? Whether institutions are more resilient? Whether the faculty is ready for the next crisis?

These are questions for the consultants' next report.

The Fundamental Contradiction

Here's the exquisite irony: tone would think higher education would nominate the right people. It assumes they'll tie it to succession planning. It assumes they'll see leadership development as a strategic priority. But if universities were prepared to see leadership development as a strategic priority, they'd already be doing it.

The institutions most likely to subscribe to external professional programmes are the ones that are already reasonably well-managed and somewhat wealthy—which means they're the ones that least need help. The institutions that desperately need systematic leadership development—underfunded, stressed, beset by governance crises—are precisely the ones that will say, "We can't afford R 350,000 a year when we can't pay our cleaning staff properly."

What Might Actually Work (But Won't Happen)

If universities were serious about leadership development, they would:

• Make it mandatory for anyone taking on a leadership role. Not optional. Not "encouraged." Required.
• Build it into salary progression. No promotion without demonstrated leadership capability.
• Dedicate in-house capacity: a real person, with real resources, whose job is to develop people.
• Start at the entry level. Every new academic gets training in pedagogy, assessment, and basic institutional navigation before they sign their contract.
• Hold themselves accountable: publish annual data on leadership development completion rates, outcomes, and institutional impact.
• Demand that senior leaders model the behavior: VCs, Deans attending, not just junior staff.

But this would require universities to actually prioritize something that isn't research output or student recruitment metrics. It would require them to see people as assets worth developing rather than interchangeable labor units. It would require uncomfortable conversations about which leaders aren't up to the job and need support or exit.

It's so much easier to hire a consultant.

Conclusion: The Monument to Reluctance

An African programme for leadership will solve the problem of underdeveloped leaders in African higher education and it is perfectly calibrated to make the problem appear to be solved while doing the minimum required.

Universities remain, fundamentally, reluctant to develop their own people. They prefer to outsource it, price it, modularize it, and compartmentalize it so that no single institution feels fully responsible. They prefer to pay external consultants to write thoughtful blueprints rather than do the harder work of building development into their own DNA.

The real question isn't how to design a leadership pipeline. It's whether higher education institutions actually want one badly enough to commit. Based on decades of evidence, the answer appears to be a very polite, very professional, very permanent: no.