Managing at the Yield Point: Leadership Reflections from the 2026 Higher Ed Conference Season - Part 3: Crisis of Faith
Part 3: Crisis of Faith
Shadow Systems: Leading Through “Slow Betrayal”
Key takeaways:
Fearing political retaliation and being perceived as weak institutional leaders, capable leaders are migrating critical student support services to “shadow systems.” Senior leaders must contend with the risk of managing hidden workflows.
When leaders perceive executive leadership or the President capitulate to outside political pressure at the cost of core educational and institutional values, they shift from seeing themselves as institutional stewards to feeling like mere transactional, replaceable labor.
It feels like the breakneck speed of higher education work has fully come off the rails with the growth and presence of genAI, DEI in survival mode, and the slow betrayals of weak leadership. Each day poses and continues to pose its own unique problems for senior leaders who are keenly aware of their own precarious labor as arbiters of policy interpreters, institutional stabilizers, and productivity performance managers. The consensus is clear - joy in work has left the room - because they must also contend with their own feelings of grief and disappointment in Presidents who have capitulated to political pressures while expecting their executive leaders to create shadow support systems to protect what remains of DEI at their institutions.
Disillusionment at the Top
Digital resentment: Leaders tried to be optimistic but shared mixed emotions with genAI that has been framed as a replacement for human staff, rather than a tool for student connection. Among the greatest disappointments is the expectation to use genAI to make up for decreasing resources.
Coded compliance: Senior leaders are being forced into “stealth” work to protect resources and services for marginalized students. They believe these shadow and off the book systems are necessary to keep the work alive but live in constant fear about being shut down or laid off.
The integrity gap: higher ed professionals at all levels are watching Presidents and across higher education capitulate to political pressure as their equity-focused areas are reorganized, renamed, or eliminated. The growing grief and disappointment towards these leaders brought up broader questions about their ability to continue on.
The combination of expectation to do more with less through genAI use and the deinstitutionalization of equity work represents a slow betrayal of the values to these professionals who deeply believe that higher education should be a place for all students to meet their educational goals. By reducing their labor to a matter of efficiency at a time when professionals are looking to Presidents and other senior leaders to lead with empathy, compassion, and strength to defend underlying values of the profession of higher education, professionals questioned their ability to continue on. Disillusionment kept coming up as they described migrating their work outside of formal reporting lines to “shadow" systems to maintain the integrity and level of support for students they’ve been fighting to do for so long.
How are you navigating the ways work is changing in higher education? Do you feel valued and values-aligned or do you feel like replaceable labor and increasingly disillusioned? How are you creating critical hope - embracing discomfort, anger, and grief alongside love and connection?
In the next part of this series, I’ll share more about the impact all of this is having on the profession. The impact could mean a vastly different landscape for higher education professionals in the coming years.
