re: Ben fricking Sasse?

You have academic units like departments, schools, and/or colleges at a university.

So the hierarchy is University -> College/School -> Department.

Every now and then, there is a school within a college.

Chairs are over departments.

Deans are over Schools/Colleges

Presidents/Chancellors are over the whole thing.

However, in reality, Presidents and Chancellors are largely trying to establish partnerships, secure donations, and basically make connections that bring in money and growth. They also can establish missions for universities to pursue, and a lot of top end hires, like general counsel and so on, run through that office.

The real COOs on campuses are provosts and associate deans. Provosts are who handle day to day ops, approve new faculty and staff lines, and so on. Likewise, within a school or college, the associate dean is who is really running thing so the dean can concentrate on fundraising, partnerships, and so on.

Obviously, presidents and deans can step in wherever, but if a university and/or college is running correctly, they shouldn't really be handling faculty disputes, grade appeals, and so on. If that kind of stuff makes it up to them and isn't a seriously big deal, somebody in between in going to get a talking to.