CEOs as University Presidents

Peter Klein over at Organisations and Markets, raises an interesting question over who should head a university. He writes,

But I’m interested here in universities hiring former corporate CEOs, rather than career educators, as presidents.

This something many within a university would find totally unacceptable. But as Klein continues,

Gary Forsee, Sprint-Nextel CEO from 2005 to 2007, became my boss yesterday when he began his term as President of the University of Missouri System.

An issue with his appointment was that

... he holds only a bachelor’s degree and has no faculty or university administrator experience.

So how important is faculty experience to a university head? Is it really necessary that they have such experience? Isn't the head of a university just like the head of any other large corporation? The problems they face will be those that any business leader would face, so why is university experience considered so important?

As Klein notes,

Under the university-as-guild model, hiring a leader from outside the guild is unthinkable, akin to bringing in Richard Dawkins to head the Catholic Church, or hiring a guy who never played in the NBA to coach an NBA team.

Is it that universities are not just like any other large organisation. After all how many other organisations are run along the lines of a university? Are the rather odd rules for the head of a university just the result of the rather odd organisational form of the university in general? Universities are normally set up so that rights to residual income are suppressed entirely and control rights are apportioned in a complex system between academic and non-academic staff, executives, outside trustees and current and past students of the university. This is not the manner that most business are run (for good reasons). But does such a corporate governance structure mean that the head of the university must come from inside the organisation and from a subset of insiders, the academic staff?