In my decades of management roles in higher education, I’ve been evaluated on pass rates, completion of initiatives, perceived demeanor, success at handling difficult situations and even the cleanliness of my desk. (That last one has never been a strength.) I’ve never been evaluated based on how I treat the people who report to me.

Kevin McClure’s new book, The Caring University, builds a compelling case that there’s something fundamentally wrong with that. Higher education is a deeply relational enterprise, built on the talents and efforts of people with various skills, backgrounds and personalities. McClure’s book builds on that premise, noting the many ways that colleges and universities often fall short of their own ideals, to their detriment. It’s well written and disarmingly accurate; later chapters in my copy are full of checkmarks and “yes!” affirmations in my handwriting. I can easily recommend it to anyone interested or involved in higher ed administration, or anyone who wants to understand why the work is as hard as it is. In the current climate, though, it feels like it’s missing a key chapter.

McClure analyzes mission and vision statements, which must have been wearying. Mission and vision statements are written collectively and they tend to bear the signs of writing by committee: Generally speaking, they’re inoffensive, vague and weirdly abstract. But if you’re reading for a particular object, the absence of that object can be telling. In this case, McClure notes a conspicuous absence of employees among the target populations for the mission, vision and values of many institutions. Given the nature of higher ed work, that’s both surprising and dangerous. It’s surprising, in that so much of the work is necessarily relational. It’s dangerous to the extent that employees who don’t feel valued have ways of spreading their discontent.

At one point, McClure encapsulates the work of administration using almost the exact words that I’ve used for years: The task is “creating organizational cultures and structures so that employees can do their best work” (p. 68). Exactly so, but it’s harder than it sounds.

The book is full of examples of colleges and universities (what he unfortunately calls “the university”) working at cross-purposes. They’re in the business of human development, but “many higher education jobs are dead ends” (138). Professional development is often the first funding line to be cut when budgets are tight. Cost-of-living raises outside of collective bargaining agreements have often been treated as extras; over the course of my career, administrators have had more years of frozen pay than years with raises. As McClure notes, the “deferred maintenance of human resources” that happens when pay lags inflation over time leads to burnout and/or turnover. The fact that the average length of service of chief academic officers nationally is only three years suggests that something is wrong.

McClure lands on variations of respect as the key. When people feel heard, seen and taken seriously, they are more likely to bring their best selves to work. That entails pay, yes, but also psychological safety and what he quotes David Perry as calling “universal design for work-life balance” (117).

Some of those issues are attitudinal. My most frantic note taking occurred in the chapter about senior leadership. He quotes Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s observation that “critical humility is neither selected for nor encouraged in the academy” (247), which is inarguably true and arguably easy to fix. It’s possible to stop mistaking confidence for competence and extroversion for expertise, but it takes conscious effort. The key word there is “conscious.” The attitudes run so deep that many people aren’t even aware they have them. Admitting the problem is the first step.

The structural issues are harder, and this is where the book is missing a key chapter. One need only notice the current political climate around “inclusion” to see the challenge. Colleges—especially public ones—don’t exist in a political vacuum. For college leaders to do much of what McClure advocates, they need room to move. That room is getting squeezed from multiple directions, most of which have roots in anti-egalitarian politics. Cuts to Medicaid, for example, are likely to push states to move support from public higher education to health care. College budgets already struggle under the weight of health insurance cost increases for their own full-time employees; picking up the slack for Medicaid for states will be that much harder. In my own state, the state places a cap on the percentage of courses that can be taught by adjuncts, but it does not have to increase its support to match the rising cost of health insurance. As the very online folks like to say, the math isn’t mathing.

Still, the question of navigating public institutions through hostile political moments may warrant a book of its own. In the meantime, it’s worth a reminder that leaders don’t just get results; they set examples by how they treat people. McClure’s book does what it sets out to do, and it does so in a surprisingly readable way. This was my first time reading it, but it won’t be my last. Nicely done.