By William C. Symonds

In retrospect, it's easy to see why Harvard University thought Larry Summers would be the perfect president. The brilliant economist and former Treasury Secretary was a change agent determined to shatter campus complacency with a sweeping agenda to reinvent Harvard. But five years later, it's equally clear that neither Summers nor his board understood just how difficult it is to achieve such change in the modern university.

Summers is just the latest in a string of university presidents who have taken office with bold visions for change, only to resign after they ran into fierce opposition. "These are high risk, high-stress jobs, and I see more presidents leaving," predicts James E. Samels, CEO of the Education Alliance, a Massachusetts-based higher-education consulting firm. The result of such a climate, says Patrick Callan, president of the National Center on Public Policy and Higher Education, is that "we have a fairly passive generation of university presidents."

FIERCE INDEPENDENCE.  On the surface, the task might not look so different from the job of a CEO brought in to fix a troubled corporation. Just as the CEO would develop a turnaround plan, Summers quickly unveiled an ambitious blueprint, including updating the undergraduate curriculum, beefing up Harvard's role in the sciences, and a massive expansion across the Charles River in the Allston section of Boston.

But Summers quickly found that university presidents are not corporate CEOs, says former Rollins College President Rita Bornstein, an expert on college presidencies. A CEO has the implicit authority to implement a new agenda by ordering subordinates to execute -- and firing those who resist. But in the university, "a bold vision is not enough," says Bornstein. "You have to build consensus."

There's nothing simple about that, as Summers found out. "It is akin to being mayor of a city with decentralized authority, and every constituency wants their street plowed first," says Richard Chait, a Harvard professor of higher education. Summers had to grapple with a long tradition in which the major schools, from law to business to engineering, jealously guard their own interests, a tradition known at Harvard as "Each Tub on its Own Bottom."

"MUSH INTO MUSH."  To have any chance of success, a president must woo the tenured faculty, who tend to see themselves as the stewards of the institution, even as presidents come and go. Caustic criticism of the kind Summers was notorious for making can quickly poison this process. Consider William Cooper, who announced his resignation as president of the University of Richmond in January. Cooper had a bold plan for elevating Richmond's national status.

But last fall, in his "state of the university" speech, Cooper alienated many by declaring that "the entering quality of our student body needs to be much higher if we are going to transform bright minds into great achievers, instead of transforming mush into mush." That passage sealed his fate.

At the same time, the president has to carefully cultivate the trustees, who hold the power to fire. Failure to do that felled Cornell University President Jeffrey S. Lehman last June, after just two years in the job. "The Board and I have different approaches to how the university can best realize its long-term vision," Lehman told alumni attending their Cornell reunions. Similarly, at Harvard, Summers lost the board's once-strong support as faculty opposition mounted in recent weeks.

LONG WAIT?  Harvard now seems likely to enter a protracted transition. Although he's a lame duck, Summers will remain in office until June 30, when he'll pass the baton to former Harvard President Derek Bok, 75. That suggests a permanent successor won't be named for months. Meanwhile, work on many urgent matters, like the appointment of a Harvard Business School dean, may come to a halt. But already, it's clear that Harvard doesn't want to repeat the Summers debacle.

"I don't think you're likely to hear words like bold and visionary" from a new president, predicts Chait. Instead, the next leader is like to be a consensus-builder first and foremost.