Women Show Gains in Top College Jobs

Women, having long outnumbered men as college students, are increasingly beginning to break into the once male-dominated ranks of top executives at the nation’s institutions of higher education, two new national reports have found.

The share of women leading U.S. campuses has more than tripled over the past two decades, growing from 5% to 16%, according to a report by the American Council on Education. And California has more female college presidents this year than any other state, and has registered a higher rate of growth in women top executives than the national average, officials said.

The number of female administrators at the level just below president also has grown significantly nationwide, but women still hold only 13% to 31% of those jobs and earn lower average salaries than their male counterparts, said another report by the council.

“It is good news and bad news,” said Judy Touchton, deputy director of the American Council on Education’s Office of Women in Higher Education. “The reality is the progress for women chief executives nationally is steady and notable. But to only have 16% of the CEOs seems very low.”

Women fared better in California, the group’s records show. As of September, women accounted for 23%, or 62 out of 269, of the chief executives at regionally accredited, degree-granting institutions in the state.

And the number of female chief executives at California campuses increased 54% between April, 1992, and April, 1995, when the most recent nationwide data was tallied. That compares to a 30% increase among all surveyed institutions across the country during the same period.

Nationwide, women now head 453 of the 2,903 colleges and universities counted in the survey. The 16% share overall for women is similar among different types of institutions, except for two-year independent campuses, where women hold the top jobs at 27% of those surveyed, the report said.

Neither report addressed what differences, if any, women bring to higher education. In interviews, some female presidents at colleges and universities said women may act and be treated differently than men, while others insisted any differences are just individual.

“Both for better and for worse, yes, I think there’s a difference,” said Blenda Wilson, who three years ago became the first female president at Cal State Northridge.

Today, the 24,000-student university has women in two of its top four executive posts and three of its 10 deans are female. And it was a woman who administered the $350-million campus rebuilding project after the Northridge earthquake.

When Wilson arrived on campus from the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 1992, “there were some people who were used to a certain image of a president who found it off-putting to have a younger, different person,” she recalled.

Four of the nine campuses in the Los Angeles Community College District--Pierce, Southwest, Valley and West Los Angeles--are headed by women, the most ever, district officials said. Women also lead about one-third of the 106 community colleges in California.

In the California State University system, four of 22 campuses--Hayward, Northridge, Stanislaus and the California Maritime Academy--are headed by women, also the most ever, Cal State officials said.

And in the past several months, women have assumed the presidency of a half dozen California institutions, including large campuses such as Valley College in Van Nuys, Santa Monica College, the University of San Diego and City College of San Francisco.

Although enrollments and presidents constantly change, Touchton said City College of San Francisco, with about 28,000 students in credit-earning programs, appears to be the largest campus in the nation with a woman at the helm, following the hiring in August of Chancellor Del M. Anderson.

In the University of California system, only one of the nine campuses--UC Irvine--has a woman chancellor, Laurel Wilkening. And, no women’s names were publicly circulated among the finalists during the recent selection of a new president to head the UC system.

Touchton said that mirrors the situation nationally, with few women able to advance to the top jobs at large research institutions. “Things there are more entrenched, and somehow less susceptible to public pressures and shifting trends,” she said.

For example, women now hold the top jobs at only two of the 60 influential schools--including UCLA and UC Berkeley--that make up the Assn. of American Universities, a spokesman said.

“What has prevailed for a long time, and still exists somewhat now, is people’s perception of leadership as a male prerogative. And this has been very, very slow to change,” Touchton said.