The Selection of Academic Top Leaders

Abstract This article reports on a study of the selection of academic top leaders from 1900 to 2025 in six highly ranked universities on the 2024 Academic Ranking of World Universities. These institutions represent the United States (Harvard and Stanford) with presidents as leaders, the United Kingdom (Cambridge and Oxford) with vice-chancellors, and Scandinavia (Copenhagen and Oslo) with rectors. For the population as a whole, the study shows an increase in the length of tenure, and in the selection of female leaders and of externals, while there has also been a decline in the number of recruitments per decade, in recruitment ages and the recruitment of persons with a background in STEM disciplines and Medicine (STEMM). A comparison between the six universities has demonstrated that Harvard and Stanford differ from the other four by having much lower numbers of recruitments, longer length of tenures, lower recruitment ages and recruiting externals earlier than their European counterparts. The Europeans started recruiting externals and female leaders in the 1990s. Oslo has so far not recruited any outsider, and Stanford has picked only male leaders. High shares of STEMM leaders are exhibited by Stanford and Oslo, while Harvard and Oxford have had low shares. An analysis of the most recent recruitments demonstrates that Harvard, Stanford and Copenhagen include outsiders in the decision process and keep candidacies secret. The latter is also the case for Cambridge and Oxford, which, however, do not include externals in the decision process. Oslo also leaves it to internals to decide but has a process where candidacies are publicly known. For the future, it is expected that non-US institutions will follow the top US universities more and more, thereby increasingly involving search consultants. The patterns on the Anglo-American market for academic leaders found in the present study are likely to develop further.