The Next Generation of College Presidents are Ready: Why Aren’t They Hired?
Supporting the Profession Gender and Sexuality Womxn in Student Affairs Mid-Level Senior Level
Women are earning the majority of PhDs, but are still lagging in higher education leadership, particularly the college presidency (Melidona et al., 2023; National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics [NCSES], 2024). The pipeline appears, at surface value, to be flush with highly qualified women scholars to ascend to the presidency. In 2023, women were awarded more than half of the doctorates in psychology, education, health sciences, other non-science and engineering programs, social sciences, biological/ biomedical sciences, and agricultural sciences/ natural resources (NCSES, 2024). Mathematically, women should constitute the majority of college presidents. Yet, women continue to make up only a third of the college presidents in the U.S., only 29% of college presidents at research institutions (R1; Carnegie Classification - Very high Research Activity) were women, and only 10% of all college presidents in the U.S. are women of color (Melidona et al., 2023). Given there is no shortage of women with PhDs in the U.S., why the leadership gap? The answer lies in two flawed structures within higher education: the rigid tenure timeline and outdated expectations for becoming a qualified candidate for college president.
The Tenure Clock
The tenure-track process typically aligns directly within the final years of a woman’s fertility, often leading women to consider devoting their energy to work or family, and whether to have children (Blair-Loy, 2003). Research shows that the division of labor at home often continues to penalize mothers. In a recent study, mothers were more than twice as likely as fathers to manage childcare logistics from pediatrician visits to sick-day pickups (Heffernan et al., 2025). This uncompensated mental load mothers carry diverts the time and energy necessary to meet the demands of a tenure system that largely has not been revised to meet the needs of working parents. It comes as no surprise that the majority of women hold contingent appointments, rather than tenure-track appointments, and that only a small fraction of full professors are women relative to their male peers (American Association of University Professors, 2023). The traditional academic path is filled with potholes and insurmountable roadblocks for many mothers, often sidelining women from obtaining tenure. An even smaller pool of women are able to go on to obtain full professorships (American Association of University Professors, 2023).
Pipelines to the College Presidency
At the heart of equity and inclusion in the college presidency lies a historical belief by the academies that college presidents ascend through a traditional faculty rank to academic leadership. This is a dated, classest, and exclusionary belief that is neither practical nor realistic and restricts the candidacy pool– disproportionately impacting otherwise qualified women– from obtaining the presidency. Seven competencies were recently identified for the college presidency: trust-building, demonstrating resilience, communication savvy, crafting a cabinet and team-building, emotional intelligence, leading with courage, and data acumen and resource management (Burmicky et al., 2024). It’s not clear on how ascending through the faculty ranks makes one more qualified than someone that advances through a non-traditional pathway via student affairs, for example. Search committees, and all too often search firms, continue to cling to tradition, despite the published qualifications leading to small, often male-dominated candidate pools.
As a working mother myself, I can not imagine attempting the tenure process during this era of my life. Nor can I envision myself, even after finishing my PhD, moving into a tenure-track position. While I would love to be a college president someday, such a career path would likely require halving my salary and taking intentional steps backward in the hierarchy. At 42 years old, most faculty my age are already tenured. I can count on one hand the number of friends or colleagues I have met who had children while going through the tenure process– all of whom had family support, such as grandparents and aunts/ uncles to help support them. Perhaps broadening the scope of viable leaders to include more than a single path to the presidency, particularly the leaders who serve on the president’s cabinet that are not from academic affairs and do not necessarily have tenure?
A Defense of Non-Traditional Pathways to the Presidency
With 19 years of higher education experience, I have developed skills in leadership, policy management, student affairs, compliance, operations, strategic planning, course instruction, etc. How does my background and experience make individuals like me less qualified than a tenured faculty member who writes publications, serves on committees, and receives grant funding for higher education presidency? While I do not intend to disparage faculty, I aim to shed light on those of us serving in non-academic and student affairs units of a university who also have exemplary skills fit for college presidencies.
There are multiple other functional areas, in which higher education professionals could gain experience within an institution, such as student affairs, finance and operations, and research. Student affairs professionals bring a wide breadth of knowledge and experience to the table. We’ve seen success in student affairs professionals in college presidential positions, such as Lori S. White, who spent over 40 years in student affairs before ascending to the college presidency at DePauw University, or Robin-Holmes Sullivan, who spent over 30 years in student affairs before ascending to the presidency at Lewis & Clark College (Long, 2022). Student affairs professionals are largely women, with over half of the leadership roles in student affairs driven by women (Pritchard & McChesney, 2018). Considering other aspects of student affairs, such as higher level of pay equity than other areas of higher education, a history of addressing how to perform job duties through tight budgets with diverse student populations, and the necessity of student affairs for serving the student community at institutions, the pathway from student affairs to the presidency is a strong option (Pritchard & McChesney, 2018). Bermicky et al. (2024) identified in their study that women presidents were more likely than men to be committed to equity-mindendeness and weighing the consequences of their decisions, skills that align with being a successful student affairs professional.
Proposed Directions for Change
As I explore the college presidency, one thing is clear: women in higher education leadership are poorly examined in research, and there is little data to connect the numbers to how and why we continue to see such disproportionately low numbers of women presidents. It is necessary for research to commit to not just examining the real and perceived barriers to ascending to the college presidency but to challenge outdated policies and practices that continue to pose barriers for women to ascend to the presidency. Furthermore, institutions and search firms need to expand their search parameters to include successful leaders from student affairs and other key administrative roles that do not require tenure. Leadership development needs to support anyone that has a high potential for success as a higher education leader, through focused and concerted efforts into research of the formal and informal support systems that effectively transition women to the presidency. In the current political climate and evolving higher education landscape, the pool of viable candidates is likely to shrink. Inclusion of all qualified leaders in higher education can broaden the pool of candidates and leverage the all too often overlooked talent in higher education.
Author’s note: I understand gender is not binary and more fluid than man and woman. In this blog post, the literature and studies evaluated did not specify if they only examined cis-gender women or people who self-identified as women.
References
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Blair-Loy, M. (2003). Competing devotions: Career and family among women executives.
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Heffernan, M.E., Alfieri, N.L., Keese, A., Bendelow, A.C., Casale, M., Smith, T.L., Menker, C.G., Parker, J.J., Garfield, C.F., Davis, M.M., & Macy, M.L. (2025).
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Long, C. (2022, February 9). The unconventional path of one college’s first black woman
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Melidona, D., Cecil, B. G., Cassell, A., & Chessman, H. M. (2023). The American college president: 2023 edition.American Council on Education. https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/American-College-President-IX-2023.pdf
Modern Campus. (2025, August 5). Non-traditional student management: Essential strategies for supporting today's diverse learners. https://moderncampus.com/blog/traditional-vs-non-traditional-students.html
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2024, December 2). Doctorate recipients from U.S. universities: 2023. National Science Foundation. https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earned-doctorates/2023
Pritchard, A. & McChesney, J. (2018). Focus on student affairs 2018. College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. https://www.archive.cupahr.org/surveys/research-briefs/focus-on-student-affairs-2018/