EDUCATION

PSC Presidential Search: Lowered Bar on Higher-Ed Experience Raises Questions

The job posting for Pensacola State College’s next president doesn’t require a background in higher education—but it does require experience with state education policy and state budgets. That combination is worth a second look.

Pensacola State College has opened its search for a new president, and the job posting crafted by search firm Myers McRae Executive Search and Consulting contains a detail that’s easy to miss on first read but hard to ignore on second: the minimum qualifications don’t require any experience running a college.

Here’s what the posting requires:

• A bachelor’s degree, master’s, Ph.D., “or equivalent work experience”
• Executive leadership experience in higher-ed or business, or equivalent experience in the military or state/federal government
• Experience with state education policy
• Experience with state budgetary processes

Notice what’s missing: No requirement for a doctorate, no requirement for prior classroom or faculty experience, and no requirement that a candidate has ever worked inside a college or university. Business executives, military officers, and state or federal government officials are all explicitly welcomed as equivalents to a career academic.

• Note: Board of Trustees Chair Zack Smith has appointed himself the chair of the presidential search committee and named all the trustees members of the committee.

What the Qualifications Indicate

The two qualifications that survived the cut aren’t academic ones. They’re political ones.

• Strip away the “or equivalent” language and what’s left are two specific, non-negotiable requirements: experience with state education policy and experience with state budgetary processes. Those aren’t skills most college presidents, provosts, or deans pick up in a typical academic career. They are, however, exactly the skills someone would develop working inside the Florida Department of Education or the Florida Legislature.

Combine that with the fact that a bachelor’s degree alone is sufficient, and the profile that emerges looks less like a traditional academic search and more like a search built around a specific kind of candidate: someone with Tallahassee experience rather than a faculty lounge résumé.

The Process and the Timeline

PSC’s Board of Trustees has retained Myers McRae, with Kenny Daugherty serving as lead consultant. The firm solicited applications on July 23, and the deadline for applications is July 31—just eight days later.

An eight-day application window is not how you run a search meant to attract a wide, deliberate field of candidates. It’s how you run a search built around someone who already knows they’re applying.

National presidential searches typically stay open for four to eight weeks to allow sitting executives to arrange references, secure board or employer sign-off, and prepare a full application packet. An eight-day turnaround effectively rules out anyone who isn’t already positioned to apply on short notice—another data point suggesting the qualifications language wasn’t written with an open field in mind.

Review of applications is already underway, and a background and criminal check will be run on the finalists who make it to campus visits.

Applicants must submit a letter of application, résumé, and at least three references. Nominations—meaning someone else can put a name forward—are also being accepted, with full contact information required.

The bottom line: A posting that opens the door to non-academics while requiring specific state government experience, paired with an eight-day application window, is not necessarily evidence of a predetermined outcome. But it is the kind of qualifications language and timeline a search committee sets when it already has a certain kind of candidate in mind—one whose résumé runs through Tallahassee rather than a provost’s office.

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