Next Generation President

Inside Higher Education
February 7, 2008

Next Generation President
Some high profile appointments — most notably Drew Faust at Harvard University last year — have created a sense that the college and university presidency is diversifying. Actually, while the numbers of women leading campuses have been increasing, the rate of growth has slowed, and the increases for non-white presidents have become minimal. In fact, the most dramatic change among college presidents in recent years may not be increased diversity, but increased longevity in office.
Since that means presidents are increasingly likely to be hitting retirement years, two higher education groups wanted to check out the demographics of the people likely to be in the next generation of presidents — those serving as provosts and in other positions that are frequently held immediately prior to a presidency. The results — released Wednesday by the American Council on Education and the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources — found that these higher education employees are more likely than those in the presidential suite to be female, but are not likely to be much more diverse in other ways.
As a result, the two groups are planning new campaigns to get more minority candidates into presidential pools. The data released Wednesday illustrate, officials said, why more ambitious efforts are needed if academics expect to see more diversity in the upper ranks of college administration.
To start, here are the demographics for college presidents in 2006 and a comparison from 20 years earlier. While the comparison suggests substantial progress, most of that took place early in the 20 years, and diversification has been more minimal recently.
Demographics of College Presidents, 2006 and 1986
Demographic characteristic
2006
1986
Women
23.0%
9.5%
Black
5.9%
5.0%
Hispanic
4.6%
2.2%
Asian American
0.9%
0.4%
American Indian
0.7%
0.5%
Other or multiple race
1.5%
na
All minority
13.6%
8.1%
Age 50 or younger
8.1%
41.6%
Age 51-60
42.6%
44.4%
Age 61 or older
49.3%
13.9%
Average years in position
8.5
6.3
A report on the data, “On the Pathway to the Presidency: Characteristics of Higher Education’s Senior Leadership,” notes that the advancing age and longer tenures of current presidents “may present an opportunity” to diversify the presidency in the years ahead, as more presidents retire.
But as Jacqueline E. King, assistant vice president of the American Council on Education, noted in a press briefing, that is only the case if those preparing to move into presidencies are younger than current presidents and more diverse. The first bit of good news, King said, is that those in the positions that are feeder positions for presidencies are in fact younger — so there will be someone to take over. But on the question of whether the next generation will be more diverse, she said the answer was “Yes, with respect to gender.”
[To read the entire article, go to: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/02/07/path]