Time & Perspective Quote by James E. Rogers

A “rule of thumb” is supposed to be practical folk wisdom, the kind you can apply without thinking. James E. Rogers hijacks that cozy phrase to deliver an indictment: what’s being treated as normal in school leadership is, in fact, dysfunctional. The number “80%” is doing rhetorical heavy lifting here. It’s not a carefully footnoted statistic so much as a shock figure, an accusation that fundraising has metastasized from a necessary side task into the job itself.

The quote’s bite comes from how it reframes the presidency - presumably of a college or university - as a kind of full-time donor concierge. Rogers isn’t merely lamenting busy schedules; he’s pointing to a deeper shift in what institutions believe they are. When leaders must spend most of their time courting money, the campus starts to mirror the logic of the marketplace: prioritize what sells, narrate everything as a “return,” smooth inconvenient edges, avoid controversy that might spook benefactors.

The subtext is about power. Fundraising is not neutral labor; it tilts decision-making toward those who can write checks and away from those who do the work of teaching, researching, and learning. It also quietly absolves the public of responsibility. If a school’s survival depends on perpetual private pleading, that’s a story about eroded public investment dressed up as “philanthropy.”

Rogers’ intent, then, is a warning: when the president becomes a rainmaker first, academic leadership becomes performance - and education becomes the product being pitched.