Universities struggle to recognise leadership beyond the academic template

In the shifting terrain of higher education, the figure of the “pracademic” has become increasingly prominent.

Straddling the worlds of theory and practice, pracademics bring external insight into the academy along with a restlessness about how knowledge is produced, shared, and valued.

They offer universities the opportunity to widen their epistemic horizons, but in doing so, they expose the inherent tensions in how academic leadership is defined and performed.

The rise of the pracademic

Pracademics rarely fit the established leadership templates; instead, they model heterodox approaches, navigating ambiguity, drawing from diverse methodologies, and unsettling conventional hierarchies. Arguably, this is not an accidental disruption, but a generative one. Pracademics challenge the orthodoxy of university life, and in doing so, they invite us to rethink the paradoxes that shape leadership in higher education.

As institutions seek to embrace diversity and interdisciplinarity, many still struggle to accommodate those whose career paths have not followed the traditional orthodox academic trajectory.

For second-career academics and pracademics, leadership can feel like swimming against the tide. Their experience and outlook can enrich higher education, but too often their value is under-recognised and under-leveraged. To lead in a heterodox community of contradictions, we must not only tolerate difference but structure our systems to nurture and embed it.

This leads to the question: are today’s universities ready for leaders who do not fit the mould? As Jill Dickinson and colleagues noted in a Wonkhe article, some academics are seen as more proper than others.

Not fitting the mould

University ecosystems are not tidy places. They are heterodox ecosystems populated by the idiosyncratic, the idealistic, the quietly radical, the wildly inconsistent. This is perhaps their greatest strength, but also perhaps their greatest challenge.

For those of us asked to lead within these environments, the traditional managerial playbook may not suffice. Our colleagues are not staff in the conventional sense. They are academics and professionals, each with their own epistemologies, rhythms, and values.

It may be tempting to assume there are defined academic personalities. A shorthand often emerges: the aloof theorist, the star researcher, the endlessly enthusiastic educator. But these caricatures are too narrow. In reality, we work alongside colleagues who are motivated by very different things. Autonomy, impact, status, security, social justice, or simply the deep and personal satisfaction of learning. Some are collaborative; others prefer to work in isolation. Some want to change the world; others just want to understand it. To lead effectively in this landscape is not to standardise, but to navigate. Thoughtfully, deliberately, and with care.

Increasingly we share this space with those whose paths into academia were far from linear. As a self-identified pracademic, I followed that linear progression, culminating in a PhD in entrepreneurship in my mid twenties before taking a right turn and transitioning into a career in industry and consultancy. Re-entering the academy many years later, I found myself in an environment which confused, frustrated and excited in equal measure. A world that both welcomed and resisted difference. As a pracademic I sought to blend my experience of industry with my academic credentials and apply this to teaching and scholarship. I thought this would be a straightforward career move, but it has been less than easy. I am not alone in this. I have several colleagues who have travelled similar paths. This is not a new phenomenon, and is highlighted in a previous Wonkhe article by Jacqueline Baxter.

Where do pracademics fit?

The academy is not against us; it simply does not yet know how to include us. And at times, we are not sure how to include ourselves. Recruitment, induction and promotion systems often presume conventional trajectories and narrow definitions of success. CVs weighted towards delivery, leadership and impact can sit awkwardly alongside expectations for peer-reviewed outputs and theoretical depth.

The result is unease.

Heterodox colleagues from non-traditional backgrounds are welcomed for their distinctiveness but expected to assimilate. Over time, they become weary; their fresh perspective blunted by institutional habits. And so we risk losing them. Or worse, we fail to attract pracademics in the first place.

This would represent not only a loss of individual talent, but arguably it is a structural failure to evolve. In an era that prizes engagement, interdisciplinarity and real-world relevance, universities cannot afford to cling to a single model of academic identity. Heterodox colleagues are not silver bullets, but they are essential to the richness and resilience of the sector.

The compliance trap

Despite the diversity of perspectives and epistemologies, our systems often reward sameness; uniformity in careers, outputs and leadership behaviours. Interdisciplinarity is celebrated rhetorically but stifled procedurally. Innovation is encouraged but only when it conforms to measurable outcomes. Leadership frameworks borrowed from corporate life bring useful tools, but they are not neutral.

These models often fail to accommodate heterodox approaches, undervaluing forms of leadership that thrive on difference, improvisation, and autonomy. Performance metrics and standardised objectives often marginalise the creative, the hybrid and the experimental.

If we value diversity and heterodoxy, we must accept that excellence takes many forms: some measurable, others intuitive; some harmonious, others deliberately disruptive. We need frameworks that flex, processes that adapt, and cultures that embrace the very contradictions they generate.

Herein lies the paradox: universities demand diversity to survive, yet they reward conformity to preserve reputation. They seek innovation but measure it through established norms. This tension is not a flaw, rather it is the condition of the heterodox university. The question is whether our leadership structures are capable of holding that contradiction.

This reflects the recent call for a new leadership framework in HE, to address the shifting landscape, the advancements in technology, social and regulatory change. Leadership “is now a crucial component in the higher education sector’s efforts to successfully navigate current challenges”.

Leading with empathy

So what might leadership look like in this context? It means creating the conditions in which individuals can flourish. It is stewardship not control. It involves being comfortable with ambiguity and openness to challenge. It involves intellectual empathy: understanding how colleagues think, not only what they do and recognising the inherent value in other academics. It is about creating the conditions in which others can flourish, even when their values or methods differ from our own.

University leadership can carry a heavy emotional load. The balance of advocacy with accountability; innovation with institutional demands; scholarship with scheduling. We were not trained for this; we stepped in because we care. We want to fix what frustrates us; to create space for ideas; to support people we believe in. Through listening we discover a form of leadership that builds a shared capacity and nurtures potential even in those who are manifestly different from ourselves.

Permission to lead differently

In spite of all the challenges, there is real opportunity. The best leaders I have worked with were not necessarily the most strategic or the most visible. They were the ones who listened well; who noticed when someone was struggling; who quietly, or even loudly, championed a good idea even when it wasn’t their own. They had the confidence to admit when they did not know the answer to something, and the humility to let others shine.

Leadership of this kind may be less celebrated in glossy strategy documents, but it is deeply generative.

We need, perhaps, to give ourselves permission to lead differently. To resist the false dichotomies. To stop trying to fix people and instead start asking what might enable them. To see conflict and contrast not as a threat, but as evidence of a living, thinking, thriving, modern institution. Above all, we must remind ourselves that leadership is not something done to others, it is something enacted with them.

This is not leadership as compliance. It is leadership as contribution. And it is time we gave ourselves permission to practise it.