Academe's Exhausted Executives

W. Clarke Wescoe, chancellor of the University of Kansas since 1960, announced last week that he will resign in June. He is only 48. Two weeks ago, Vernon R. Alden revealed that he will leave the presidency of Ohio University after just six years. He is 45.

Within the past year countless other heads of U.S. colleges and universities have also quit, well before retirement age. They include U.C.L.A.'s Franklin Murphy, 52, Indiana's Elvis J. Stahr, 52, Swarthmore's Courtney Smith, 51, Kentucky's John W. Oswald, 50, San Francisco State's John Summerskill, 43, and Hawaii's Thomas Hamilton, 54.

One reason for the resignations was admitted openly by Florida's J. Wayne Reitz, 59, who left his post last year after suffering what he called "presidential fatigue." Not all of them were literally too exhausted to carry on. Most emphasized that the satisfactions they found in leading intellectual centers of action and argument outweighed any personal agony. But all agreed that the pressures on campus presidents are too much for one man to bear for long. Last week in interviews with TIME correspondents, a number of present and former academic leaders discussed the strains--and satisfactions--of their jobs. Had they all been in one room, the dialogue of their complaints might have sounded like this:

U.C.L.A.'s Murphy: The job is a physical, emotional and creative drain. You have to be sadistic to ask a man to stay on more than ten years. A man makes his greatest impact the first six to eight years on the job. After that, he becomes more of a housekeeper and less of a creative force. After a while you even get tired of hearing yourself talk. There are nights when you want to say to hell with it all.

Miami's Henry King Stanford: The demands on a university president are limitless. A man comes into the presidency like a bride: everybody's cheering him, the honeymoon is on. Then he reaches the burnt-toast stage in the romance as he has to make decisions and people become disaffected. Yet he can't run a university out of his hip pocket any more. He has to have a kind of radar, always sending out signals to see what bounces back.

Mills' Robert J. Wert: The decision-making process has changed over the past ten years. A president now has to lead rather than dictate. He has to work for a consensus. You have to be something of a politician, and no academic can take too much of that. There also has been a shift in student tactics, which are now designed to evoke a heavyhanded response from the university. Activists demand something they know in advance that the uni versity cannot yield, then scream bloody murder when it is not delivered. More and more, it is the confrontation and not the issues which are important.

Earlham's Landrum Bollinq: There's a kind of grimness about students now. They tend to come to college with the feeling that the administration is the enemy. There are days when I ask myself, "What am I spending my time doing this for?" You feel yourself sometimes torn into a thousand fragments, and you wonder how any man can go on in this business.

Indiana's Stahr: The university used to think of itself as objective and rational. But when the bigot and the zealot begin to get a foothold in the university, then one year of a presidency is like three or four. I left my law practice to become an educator, not a policeman. Now every university president has to be a policeman. There are little groups that are determined to destroy. They don't want solutions, just confrontations.

Brown's Ray Lorenzo Heffner: I wasn't ready for the constant public exposure in this job. Every facet of your life is under scrutiny, and this can become a strain on your family life. When one commencement speaker devoted his address to an attack on university presidents, my wife, who bears up pretty well under the pressures, came near to a breakdown. I do feel the strain, and I do get fatigued.

Ohio's Alden: It's an impossible responsibility. As symbols, university presidents are expected to deal with everything personally. There is an unrealistic expectation of what they can do. With all the pressures and criticism, you can begin to lose your forward thrust and act defensively all the time.

Murphy: It's also a demeaning thing to run around with a tin cup, pleading with people to help me help their children. And can you imagine General Motors or any major corporation appointing to its board of directors persons with no experience whatsoever in business? That's exactly what we're doing in education on our boards of regents.

Stahr: It's not like running out of gas --you can always fill up the tank again --it's more like burning out your bearings. The accumulation of pressures and problems wears your bearings thin. I'm not a deserter or a quitter. I've done my share: 27 years of working like a damn dog. I just don't believe in hanging on after you have lost your enthusiasm. It's impossible to be the president of a university and a useful member of a family.

Alden: You sometimes feel like staying at home talking to your own son or daughter instead of dialoguing with students at a dormitory.

Kansas' Wescoe: For the past 18 years, my children really haven't had a father. I have gone as long as 37 days without ever sitting down to dinner with my family.

Ruth Stanford, wife of Miami's president: The only people who should be university presidents are the friendless, the orphaned, and bachelors.

Syracuse's William Pearson Tolley: If I did it again, I would be a professor, not a college president. Professors have the best of both worlds--they can do what they want and they don't have to do what they don't want.

Murphy: A chancellor shouldn't have to deal with every problem that comes across his desk, and there should be men to accept a few of his speaking invitations too. He should have a sabbatical every four or five years in which he would be free to do anything he wanted.

Wert: Something is going to have to be done to allow the academic heads of institutions to concentrate on education and let somebody else handle all of the corporate aspects.

North Carolina's William C. Friday: A president simply must be prepared to accept great pressure, criticism and even personal abuse. There is satisfaction in the fact that no two days are alike and you are really at the crossroads of the world.

Vanderbilt's Alexander Heard: The university president is right smack in the vortex of a whole host of contentions and conflicts. It can be frustrating, and if you expect it to be rational, it can be maddening. But I am going to beat the job rather than let the job beat me--trying to be a university president is as important as anything in the country today.

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