More than half of all elite president appointments in last 2 years were women
The rate of women taking the helm of higher education institutions has steadily increased since ACE began collecting gender data on American presidents. Now, it seems they are beginning to break into one particularly esteemed segment of higher education: R1 research universities.
A new report by the Women’s Power Gap has discovered that more than half of all presidents appointed to an R1 research university since May 2021 were female (53%). Now, the percentage of women presidents serving the nation’s most elite universities has increased by 8% in the last two years, totaling 30%.
Ten of the 20 schools to have appointed a female president are doing so for the first time in school history. These schools include Columbia, Dartmouth, George Washington, New York University, Ohio University, Oregon State, Penn State, University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of Pittsburgh and University of Texas at Arlington.
Among the cream of the crop of R1 universities, 75% of the Ivy Leagues are now led by a woman. Dartmouth, Harvard, UPenn appointed a female president in 2022. Minouche Shafik of Columbia is the most recent selection in January of this year. Consequently, Princeton and Yale are the only two Ivy League schools currently led by a man, the latter now being the only Ivy school to have never elected a female president.
