Doctors make good university bosses because they are prepared to take action before they have all the answers, the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Leadership and Management Summit has heard.

Former University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Max Price began his career studying medicine, and he said a?¡°disproportionate number¡± of university chiefs had followed the same path. Despite some colleagues¡¯ complaints that this was a waste of training, he argued that medicine was good preparation for senior management.

¡°In a clinical environment, you have to make decisions,¡± Dr Price told the event, hosted by City University of Hong Kong. ¡°You have to make decisions given limited information.

¡°You try a?treatment, and if it works, that¡¯s good; but if it doesn¡¯t, you try something else. That level of?comfort with uncertainty, the ability to make decisions anyway, was helpful to?me.¡±

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Comfort with uncertainty was not the ¡°default position¡± for most academics, who ¡°only publish something when you¡¯ve¡­explored the issues thoroughly and you¡¯re at a point where you can commit to?something¡±, he?added.

University of Western Australia vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater, who also began her career as a?health professional, said vice-chancellors naturally sought the best evidence available. ¡°But the last thing you want is for [someone] to start looking through the evidence on the side of the road while you¡¯re bleeding to death.¡±

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Professor Freshwater said universities benefited from the ¡°constructive wisdom that comes from different environments and different ways of thinking about problems¡±. She criticised a tendency in academic circles to describe all difficulties as emergencies. ¡°Unless you need a defibrillator, there¡¯s no such thing as an emergency.¡±

There is also no such thing as an ¡°oven-ready vice-chancellor¡± and no ideal background for the job, she added. ¡°Leading academics are not always the best academic leaders.¡±

But Professor Freshwater said appointed vice-chancellors had advantages over those elected from within academic ranks. ¡°If you¡¯re elected, most often you have to go back into the environment,¡± she said. ¡°And that¡¯s not easy.¡±

THE chief knowledge officer Phil Baty said elections could result in risk-averse leaders, because at the end of their term they ¡°obviously have to go and face up to [their] decisions back at the front line of research.¡±

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University of Stuttgart rector Wolfram Ressel acknowledged that the approach in Germany, where all university presidents are elected, had drawbacks. ¡°You are elected for six to eight years and you can be re-elected, but normally you go back to the faculty. And then the problems begin.¡±

Professor Ressel joked that the ideal age for an elected university president was 55. ¡°You get two terms and then you retire.¡± But he pointed out that the German university tradition had endured for almost as long as the church. ¡°It¡¯s a big tradition and an old tradition, and it works.¡±

Dr Price said that while there was ¡°virtue¡± in 600-year-old traditions, elections risked becoming popularity contests. While appointments were preferable, they should not be indefinite, he added, saying 10 years was a ¡°good limit¡± for a university leader¡¯s term. ¡°People get stale, and they also get too powerful,¡± he said.

Dr Price criticised a trend towards shorter terms, especially in systems where leaders were elected, saying that vice-chancellors needed time to ¡°learn the ropes¡± and implement their visions. ¡°If you¡¯re out in three or four years, that really undermines the possibilities of leadership.¡±

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com