Overlapping pools?

Each year, 10 percent of university presidents decide it's time to move on. According to Marlene Ross, the director of the National Presidents' Study at the American Council on Education, this year the turnover may seem higher because institutions like Harvard, Princeton and Brown tend to grab media attention.

"This year it may seem like more because these are high-profile, well-known institutions," Ross says.

But that doesn't mean that Harvard, Brown and Princeton will be wrestling over common candidates. In fact, the applicant pool may widen as prominent educators recognize that so many openings are available.

"The bottom line is that one person becomes president," Ross says. "You're talking about needing three qualified leaders. I'd like to think there's a lot more than that out there."

When administrators pick between schools, the main issue is "fit"--compatibility between the atmosphere of the school and the applicant. John Chandler--former president of Williams College who is now a senior consultant at Academic Search Consulting Service--says that a lot depends on how well the individual and the institution know each other.

Chandler likens this year's administrative flurry of activity to the period in the early 1990s when four prominent universities were simultaneously searching for presidents. Numerous search committees tossed around the names of Gerhard S. Casper, who eventually went to Stanford University, and Nannerl O. Keohane , who ended up at Duke University. But today, he says, there aren't such obviously universal contenders.

"I see fewer candidates who are likley to jump quickly to mind as the logical, obvious candidates for those institutions," Chandler says. "In an earlier period, someone such as...Nan Keohane figured into speculation quite widely then." Nevertheless, he adds, "there's likely to be a substantial amount of overlap in the pools."