Only nine of the nation's top 30 colleges and universities as ranked by Forbes now have a woman serving as president or chancellor. That’s a net decline of three from one year ago, when at the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, a total of 12 women held these same presidencies or chancellorships.

Claudine Gay, Liz Magill, Martha Pollock and Carol T. Christ have all stepped down from their posts at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively. In each case, they were replaced by a man, typically on an interim basis. At Yale University, Peter Salovey was succeeded by Mauri McInnis, the only instance this year in which a woman replaced a man at the top spot of one of these leading institutions.

The decrease is most obvious at the eight Ivy League institutions. At the start of last academic year, six of those schools had women at the helm. When the fall semester begins next month, only four (Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and Columbia) will be led by a woman.

As another indication of the extent to which women’s leadership of our premier universities appears to have hit the glass ceiling, only 11 of the top 30 institutions have their primary governing board chaired by a woman. They are Princeton University (Louise Sams), Harvard University (Penny Pritzer), Williams College (Elizabeth Anderson), the University of Southern California (Suzanne Nora Johnson), Dartmouth College (Elizabeth Cahill Lempres), Columbia University (where Claire Shipman serves as co-chair with David Greenwald), the University of Michigan (Katherine White). Janet Reilly is the new board chair for the University of California, whose Board of Regents oversees four campuses (Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego and Santa Barbara) ranked by Forbes in the top 30.

A look at the composition of the governing boards of these institutions shows that on most boards of trustees, visitors, overseers or managers, the majority of members are men. Princeton University is a noteworthy exception, with 20 women among its 35 current members.

But at many other institutions, women comprise fewer than a third of the governing board’s membership. Of the 13 trustees at the University of Florida, only 3 are women. On the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, it’s 4 of 19. Only 12 women serve on the University of Chicago Board of Trustees, which currently has 47 members.

These latest numbers show little progress for women taking on the top leadership positions at major universities. A 2022 report by the Eos Foundation entitled The Women's Power Gap at Elite Universities: Scaling the Ivory Tower, conducted in partnership with the American Association of University Women, found that:

• At 130 major public and private, R1 universities, only 22% had a woman in the top position of president, chancellor or system head, despite the fact that women have been earning the majority of Ph.D.s in the U.S. for about a decade.
• The gender gap extended to the leadership of the institutions’ governing boards as well, with women occupying only 26% of board chair positions.

College presidencies have always been demanding jobs, but lately they’ve become particular daunting as campus protests, financial shortfalls, political attacks and a slew of no-confidence votes have thrown more and more presidencies into doubt. In their searches for presidential replacements, boards have become more cautious, often turning to insiders or appointing interims to the post.

A natural place to look is the provost or vice-president for academic affairs, a position that has long been a stepping stone to university presidencies. At these 30 premier institutions, 14 women are currently the provost or hold a similar position with a different title, offering some promise for succession plans that might increase the number of women appointed to the top job.