25% of the world’s 200 best institutions are led by women

Female college students have outpaced their male counterparts for up to four decades, while the proportion of women at the helm of United States institutions still lags far behind. While there has been little movement to address this gap, a new report from Times Higher Education suggests that colleges and universities are moving steadily – if slowly – in the right direction, writes Alcino Donadel for University Business.

Among the top 200 global universities identified by Times Higher Education in 2024, 50 are now run by women, marking a steady incline over the past five years: 43 in 2022, 41 in 2021, 39 in 2020 and 34 in 2019 and 2018. This year’s gains mark a new milestone now that women run a quarter of the world’s highest-ranked institutions.

These results may come as a surprise to some, considering that two recent female presidents, at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, resigned following their disastrous showing before the United States Congress regarding student safety and antisemitism. Their exit from the world of elite academia means that the US has only 15 women in the top position, a one-point decline from the year prior. However, the number of women US leaders is still higher than in the rest of the world, and the proportion of female leaders leading the top universities is higher than the global average at 27%.
Full report on the University Business site