Women leading universities

For all the attention paid to the controversy last month over how three presidents of America’s most elite universities handled questions about anti-semitism on their campuses, one fact drew little note: all three of the presidents were women.

In 1986, only 9.5 percent of presidents in higher education were women, and over a third of those women led women’s colleges. By 2000, women led about 15 percent of the nation’s major research universities. Last year, 32.8 percent of all college presidents were women. The percentage is roughly the same for presidents of major research universities.

These figures are from the American Council on Education.