Want to be a college president? Better sharpen your money management skills.

Want to be a college president? Better sharpen your money management skills.

College presidents are more like CEOs of Fortune 500 companies than educational leaders, according to a recent survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The survey - taken by 60 percent of the nation's 1,338 college presidents and chancellors last summer - reveals they spend a good deal of their time on money matters. When asked to rank their concern about 29 issues their schools face, three of the top four involved money: increasing health-care costs, inadequate faculty salaries and rising tuition.

Only 41 percent of presidents said they dealt with educational leadership daily.

University President Mary Sue Coleman called the survey interesting but "a bit simplistic in focusing on financial concerns of presidents."

Coleman, who did not take the survey, spends a lot of her time on matters concerning the University's bottom line, she wrote in an e-mail interview. She said she spends time securing resources for the University from its four main revenue sources: the state, private donations, tuition and from the federal government, which mostly supplies research funds.

The state's budget cuts, which have stripped the University of 13 percent of its state allocation since 2002, have heightened her attention to financial matters.

"For me, the focus on financial matters is important only because of our ability to fund great ideas from the faculty and to give our students ever expanding opportunities in the classroom, laboratory, studios and libraries," she said.

One of Coleman's main initiatives during her four years at the University has been securing fundraising for The Michigan Difference campaign, which seeks to increase charitable donations with the goal of raising $2.5 billion. More than $1.89 billion has already been raised.

In last spring's survey by the Faculty Senate polling instructors about University administrators, instructors gave Coleman her second-highest score on her success in raising funds for the University, a 4.1 out of a possible 5. But ratings concerning her focus on more academic matters lagged behind. She scored a 3.84 on promoting teaching excellence, a 3.72 on inspiring confidence in her overall leadership and a 2.99, her lowest, on consulting faculty before making important decisions.

The Chronicle survey found 49 percent of presidents meet with the chief financial officer on a daily basis, only slightly less than the 53 percent who said they meet daily with the provost, the chief academic officer. Next in line was the director of development, who oversees fundraising, at 43 percent.

But Coleman declined to comment on which top-ranking administrators she meets with every day because such a distinction was too simplistic."

"Sometimes I spend hours with the provost," she said. "Other times I spend a great deal of time with our CFO or with our VP for student services or with any of the other VPs."

Presidents ranked U.S. News and World Report rankings, a good record of student placement in jobs and graduate school, favorable publicity and good town-gown relations at the bottom of their list of concerns.

The survey also asked presidents about their views on other issues relating to higher education. When asked if big-time college athletics are more of a liability or an asset, 59 percent said they're more a hindrance.

Coleman said she disagrees.

"Having a strong, vibrant and respected intercollegiate athletics program is a great advantage for UM," she said.

Coleman said she agrees with the 77 percent of presidents who think affirmative action has a relevant place in college admissions.

Only 41 percent of presidents said they were well prepared for their first presidential job. Again Coleman put herself in the minority.

"Since I have spent my entire life as an academic, I was pretty well prepared," she said.

Coleman served as a professor, researcher, vice chancellor and provost before she became president of the University of Iowa in 1995, a post she held for seven years before coming to Michigan in 2002. Her resume is studded with experience at public schools at the universities of Kentucky, North Carolina and New Mexico.

Coleman said her biggest challenge as president is the unrelenting pace of the job.

"The one factor that surprised me a bit about my first position at Iowa was how often I would receive requests to speak," she said, adding that she hates to decline requests but often has to. "Anyone who does it has to have a lot of energy."

Six percent of presidents who took the survey said if they had to make the decision again, they would not have become a college president. Coleman said she agreed with the other 94 percent.