The Board of Governors was, predictably, furious with Folt’s decision. “We are incredibly disappointed at this intentional action,” Harry Smith, the board’s chair, said in a statement. “It lacks transparency and it undermines and insults the Board’s goal to operate with class and dignity.” The board met the next day and accepted Folt’s resignation, but not effective at the end of the semester. Instead they gave her two weeks.

The accelerated ouster was the culmination of years-long tension at the university between the ideologically conservative board and university leaders. Margaret Spellings, the president of the UNC system, who announced she’d be resigning this year as well, had her own tensions with the board, including over her decision to ask the state governor for help in deciding Silent Sam’s fate. She had been hired after Tom Ross, the former system president, was himself forced out by the board in 2016. The rapid cycle of hiring, resignation, and removal creates a problem for the university. “I don’t know who would want that job right now, given the board and its ideology. And I worry about who they would find palatable enough to put in the position,” Harris told me. “One of the great university systems, and one of the great universities, is going to be damaged by this process.”

That tension between a college’s board and its president isn’t one exclusive to the UNC system. A few years ago, following a string of athletic scandals, Harris wanted to know whether more college presidents had been fired in recent years—or whether they had their resignation accepted on an accelerated schedule. Two years ago, he and Molly Ellis, a graduate student, published what they had found. Yes, the study said, over the past two decades presidents had been getting fired more often. But the why was perhaps more interesting: Boards have always had the responsibility of “hiring and firing” a president, but “there’s a sense of activism among boards now,” Harris said. “Historically there has been a little more deference than boards are willing to give now.”

Read: The liberal arts may not survive the 21st century

Of course, it isn’t just board oversight that could make the job of college president seem unappealing. Provosts, or even deans, who may have been groomed for the position might balk at the fundraising and politics associated with it. And these days, many open college presidencies come ready-made with crises. John Engler recently became the second president to leave Michigan State University in one year. The University of Oklahoma’s president, Jim Gallogly, is trying to navigate instances of racism at the institution, notably, a Snapchat video of students wearing blackface and saying the N word that went viral this month, which follows another racist viral video at the institution in 2015. There’s also an ongoing crisis at Baylor University, which is dealing with the fallout from a sexual-assault scandal.