Joe Abraham

If higher education were a patient, it would be in the ER, facing policy shocks, Dear Colleague letters, a strained funding model, decades of technical debt, shrinking execution capacity, and an AI tsunami most campuses are not ready for. In existential moments of change like this, the president has two choices:

I’ve seen it done both ways. Across the hundreds of institutions I’ve studied, I have yet to find one thriving under option 1. When the stakes are this high, the best doctor to triage the patient’s recovery is the president.

Why HR-Led Change Fails in an Existential Moment

HR excels at policy, risk mitigation, and repeatable processes. But the job of architecting and selling a nonlinear future—setting a bold narrative, absorbing political risk, and reallocating capital across sacred cows—that’s presidential work, and global research confirms it.ⁱ A key predictor of successful change is an active, visible executive sponsor.ⁱⁱ Put plainly, when the chief executive leads from the front, change sticks; when they don’t, it stalls.

The Stakes Keep Going Up

It’s hard enough running an institution when things are going well, let alone when faced with mounting challenges.

It all comes back to a bold president charting a clear path—one the entire institution is bought into, even when it hurts.

What It Looks Like When the President Owns Change

Owning change is not micromanagement: It is message, mandate, and momentum.

In AI roadmapping sessions I have conducted with colleges, discovery and governance efforts seem to gain traction only when driven from the president’s office. Only when the president mandates it do departments stop buying point systems without the information technology (IT) department’s knowledge. Only when the president is the executive sponsor does a true enterprise-wide AI strategy emerge—one that breaks silos and delivers the student experience everyone says they want.

When people know the president owns it, engagement rises, shadow systems surface, and the organization gains political cover to move decisively. HR still plays a pivotal role—codifying policy, coordinating training, running pulse surveys, and guiding workforce transitions—but I have come to find that the mandate and narrative must sit with the president. The transformation that Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega continues to lead is evidence of this. As one of her advisors for the past three years, I have observed her delegating authority while still owning the narrative and mandate. In our ongoing work with the Higher Education Research and Development Institute, I have found that board member Jermaine Ford, President of Florence Darlington Technical College, is leading with a similar approach.

The President’s 90-Day Plan to Reclaim Change

If you have not yet taken over the reins of change, here’s a 90-day plan to consider and make your own.

Day 0-10: Set the Narrative and the Bar

1.   Issue a state of the institution memo and hold a town hall. Name the reality, the destination, and the nonnegotiables.
  Commit to being the visible sponsor of transformation.
2.  Create a Project Management Office (PMO) that reports to you. Keep it small and cross-functional—operations, finance, IT,
 academic affairs, student experience. HR is embedded, but not in command. Pro tip: Go two to three levels deep to find the
 innovators, not just the titleholders.

Day 11-30: See the Whole Board

3.   Run a rapid discovery and risk sprint. Use listening sessions and short surveys to surface bottlenecks.
4.   Map vendor and platform risk. Classify systems by financial and operational exposure. Anthology’s case is your board
  wake-up slide.
5.   Publish a north-star scorecard. Baseline six to eight metrics tied to mission and solvency now.

Day 31-60: Move Resources, Not Just Words

6.   Stand up a cross-functional governance council. Select for entrepreneurial DNA and frontline proximity.
  (See this AI Playbook for more insight.)
7.   Name three lighthouse projects. Choose high-signal initiatives that improve student experience and staff productivity within
  90 days.
8.   Kill, pause, or fix. With staff and faculty, create a stop-doing list and reallocate those dollars to the lighthouses.

Day 61-90: Lock in Momentum

9.   Reframe HR’s role. HR leads enablement—policy refresh, training pathways, job design, and change communications.
10. Institutionalize cadence and transparency. Biweekly PMO meetings with you; monthly campus updates with dashboards.

The Bottom Line

If your institution is coasting and focused only on keeping the lights on, by all means, let HR manage the incremental change. But if you’re navigating simultaneous people, process, and technology transformations, the only responsible move is presidential ownership of change. And not because HR isn’t capable, but because the job demands the risk appetite, resource control, and narrative authority that only a president holds.

The research says executive sponsorship is the lever. The market says the runway is shortening. Your own campus tells you where to start. Lead from the front. Then let HR help the whole institution keep pace.

ⁱ Potter, J.P. (1995, May-June). Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Harvard Business Review.
ⁱⁱ Prosci. (2025, August 8).  Avoid These 5 Change Management Obstacles.
ⁱⁱⁱ Kelchin, R., Ritter, D., & Webber, D. (2025, November 25). Colleges Are Closing. Who Might Be Next? Education Next.
^iv U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2024). FAFSA: Education Needs to Improve Communications and Support Around the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Highlights, para. 4.
^v Norris, S., & Dawson Ullrich, L. (2024). The FAFSA Crisis: Will Delayed Completions Result in Enrollment Declines? Community College Insights. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
^vi McCormack, M. (2025, February 3). EDUCAUSE QuickPoll Results: The Varied and Compounding Effects of Institutional Debt. EDUCAUSE Review.