The Monetary Value of Good College Presidents: Interims, new presidents, and long term presidents’ effect on giving to private universities and colleges

Successful fundraising is essential to the financial health of private colleges and universities in the United States. Using OLS, one year lagged, fixed effects regression analysis I examine institutions’ presidents’ impact on fundraising. Merging two well-known higher education data sets with a presidential dataset I create, I study 231 schools during 2001-2010. The results suggest that long term presidents are great fundraisers beginning the first day they step into office. Interim presidents, in contrast, inhibit donations. Strangely, I find that presidents do not improve at fundraising throughout their tenure