Retirements, personal peccadillos, health issues, campus controversies, fractious relationships with governing boards, and visions of greener pastures have resulted in a remarkable period of instability in the leadership of the Big Ten universities.gettyWithin just the past two years, two-thirds of the universities in the Big Ten Conference have had a change in presidential leadership. Counting system heads and the leaders of flagship campuses, 12 of the 18 member institutions have seen turnover at the top since the start of 2025. The circumstances surrounding the exits vary, ranging from routine retirements, campus controversies, personal peccadillos, serious health issues, fractious relationships between campus leaders and governing boards, and visions of greener pastures. Regardless of the reasons, the past two years are remarkable for the instability in leadership this group of institutions has had to weather. Board Turmoil and Campus DramaMichigan State University might serve as the poster child for the Big Ten’s revolving door presidencies. Last week, Kevin Guskiewicz announced he was leaving Michigan State to become the new president of Clemson University.Since 2018, MSU has had a total of six presidents, with three serving in an interim capacity during the period. Guskiewicz decided to step down after only about two years on the job, citing a history of dysfunction within the MSU Board of Trustees. In his farewell message to the Spartan community, Guskiewicz said that “effective university leadership requires a shared commitment to collaboration, trust and a forward-looking vision," and while he noted that many members of the university had “embraced that spirit, it has become increasingly clear that there are differing perspectives within the Board of Trustees regarding how best to move MSU forward.”MORE FOR YOUCiting “an unsustainable situation,” Guskiewicz added that "while I firmly believe we are all better when there is a diversity of viewpoints informing decisions, our ability to make meaningful progress is hampered when disagreements move from offering alternative perspectives into publicly undermining decisions and putting personal interests above the best interests of the university and our faculty, staff and students. What is perhaps most troubling is the actions of some to abuse their access to privileged and confidential information to mispresent facts, manipulate situations and selectively use and leak that information to promote personal agendas."When it comes to turmoil at the top, the University of Michigan is a close runner-up to its in-state rival. In 2022, Mark Schlissel was fired after the board discovered he had an affair with a university employee. He was succeeded by Santa J. Ono, who left UM in 2025 for what he thought would be the presidency of the University of Florida, only to have the job yanked from underneath him when conservative activists pressured the university to renege on his selection. Domenico Grasso was appointed UM’s interim president last year. Kent Syverud, the former chancellor and president of Syracuse University, was then named president-elect, but this April he withdrew after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Following that, the regents returned to Grasso, tapping him to become the institution’s 16th president.The University of Wisconsin is currently searching for both the head of the system and the chancellor of its flagship campus at Madison. UW President Jay Rothman was fired in April by the System’s Board of Regents in a unanimous vote during a closed meeting. The abrupt termination was accompanied by a war of words, with Rothman writing two letters to the board, protesting its pressure on him to resign and claiming he was given no reason for threats to fire him. He refused to step down, writing that he found the “process to be nearly (if not completely) indefensible.” Board Chair Amy B. Bogost fired back with her own letter denying that Rothman was unaware of his evaluation. “President Rothman was not without notice, nor was this process sudden," she maintained. "The Board has engaged with President Rothman in good-faith discussions over the past several months.”In January, UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced she was resigning at the end of the current academic year to accept the presidency of Columbia University. Eric Wilcots, the university’s Dean of the College of Letters & Science, was named interim chancellor.After roughly three years on the job, Purdue University President Mung Chiang was selected by Northwestern University to be its next president. Chiang is succeeding Northwestern’s interim president Henry Bienen, who stepped in after Michael Schill announced his resignation last September, following criticism of how he handled pro-Palestinian student protests. Schill had been preceded by Morton Shapiro, who led the university from 2009 to 2022. Northwestern had originally turned to Rebecca Blank, the former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin -Madison, to follow Shapiro, but a terminal cancer diagnosis forced her to withdraw before she died in 2023.At Purdue, past university president Mitch Daniels will return to the office on an interim basis. Daniels, former governor of Indiana, served 10 years as president of Purdue, from January 2013 to December 2022.Scandals and No-Confidence VotesOne of the most embarrassing presidential departures involved Ohio State University’s Ted Carter, who was forced to resign in March after a report documented that he had tried to funnel university resources to benefit Krisanthe Vlachos, a woman with whom he was having an inappropriate relationship. “Carter intentionally put his own interests before Ohio State’s interests when he used the authority and influence of his university position to secure benefits for Vlachos,” found the report. “Carter’s actions betrayed Ohio State’s Shared Values and violated university policy.”Carter had left the presidency of the University of Nebraska in 2023 to take the Ohio State job. He was succeed at Nebraska by Rodney D. Bennett, who stepped down in January, 2026, following months of controversy over his academic restructuring plan to eliminate an ongoing budget deficit. Last November, the University of Nebraska Lincoln Faculty Senate voted 60-14 in favor of a no-confidence resolution against Bennett. Katherine Ankerson, dean of the College of Architecture at UNL, is currently serving as the university’s interim chancellor.For its part, Ohio State quickly turned to its internal ranks to name a new president, selecting Ravi V. Bellamkonda for the role the same month that Carter stepped down. Bellamkonda had joined Ohio State in January 2025 as its executive vice president and provost. Another exit following a no-confidence vote involved Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway who announced in 2024 that he would resign after five years at the helm. In 2023, the Rutgers University Senate had voted no confidence in Holloway, objecting to several of his actions, including not renewing the contract of Nancy Cantor, the popular chancellor of the Newark campus, and threatening to file an injunction against striking Rutgers faculty. In 2025, Rutgers hired William F. Tate IV, former president of Louisiana State University, to be its 22nd president. Orderly TransitionsAs an example of a more orderly handoff, University of Illinois System President Tim Killeen informed the Board of Trustees in January that he would step down at the conclusion of his current contract on June 30, 2027. “Serving as president of the University of Illinois System is the greatest honor of my professional life. This community — our students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners — inspires me every day," Killeen said. “Our momentum is stronger than ever and alongside our continuing this work, I believe this is the right moment to begin preparing for the next generation of leadership.”Charles L. Isbell, Jr., previously the provost at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was named the 11th Chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in July 2025. He succeeded Robert J. Jones, who retired after nine years at Illinois to become the 34th president of the University of Washington last August. Jones followed Ana Mari Cauce, who had a successful ten-year run as head of UW.Julio Frank became chancellor of UCLA on January 1, 2025. He was appointed after Gene Block, the previous chancellor, announced his retirement the prior year, closing out a 17-year run as the school’s leader. In February, the University of Southern California chose Beong-Soo Kim to become the university’s 13th president. Kim, who had been USC’s interim president since July 1, 2025, succeeded Carol Folt, who served as USC’s president from 2019 through 2025.Turnover in university leadership is not unusual. However, the frequency and largely unplanned nature with which it’s recently occurred at Big Ten schools are alarming. These institutions are among the most influential universities in the world, operating multi-billion dollar budgets, making new research findings, commercializing them into advanced technologies, providing cutting-edge health care, stimulating economic growth, employing thousands of employees, and educating hundreds of thousands of students. At a time when these activities are facing strong headwinds from a federal government that often treats universities like an enemy and a public that’s grown more skeptical of their value, the job of leading such institutions has become more perilous at the very moment that stability in their leadership has become more essential. Strategic continuity and orderly transitions of authority help large, complex universities thrive. When those qualities are in doubt— as has recently been the case too often in the Big Ten — institutions are rendered much more vulnerable to forces that can undermine them.