Stop Waiting for Saviors: The Governance Revolution Universities Need to Survive

Higher education is running out of time, and the president alone can't save it.For decades, universities counted on visionary presidents to lead them through crisis. That model is now structurally obsolete -- no single leader has the bandwidth to process today's demographic cliffs, technological disruption, and existential financial pressure fast enough to matter.Dr. Robert ("Skip") Myers has lived this reality from inside the president's office -- as a university president, chancellor, and senior board consultant who has guided institutions through financial turnarounds, acquisitions, and near-closures. In Stop Waiting for Saviors, he makes the case that boards, not presidents, must become the primary architects of institutional transformation.Drawing on four decades of governance experience and case studies ranging from Arizona State to Mount Ida College, Myers dismantles the myth of the heroic president and lays out a practical blueprint for boards: how to break free of outdated structures, build real decision-making frameworks, recruit "transformation architects" instead of preservation-minded trustees, and develop the strategic intelligence institutions need to survive an epochal era of change.This isn't another call for better leaders. It's a governance revolution -- and it starts with the board.If you sit on a university board, lead an institution, or care about the future of higher education, this book will change how you think about who's really responsible for saving it.