Overall Developments in the 1900-2025 Period

In terms of the number of recruitments per decade (Figure 1), there has been an obvious decline from above 20 per decade in the early twentieth century to between five and ten in the present decade. This decline is the clear reflection of an increase in the longer tenures of the top leaders from below two years in the first few decades to six years in the 2020s (Figure 2). For the length of tenure, it is particularly worth noting that, while there was a relatively smooth increase for this variable in the decades up until the 1980s, the following decades exhibited more dramatic changes. As will be demonstrated below, this was an effect of the European universities abandoning the principle of taking turns during a shorter period and increased pressures on university leaders, sometimes leading to resignations.

Figure 1.

Number of recruitments per decade.

Figure 2.

Average length of tenure of leaders per decade (in years).

As regards the age of the leaders recruited, there has been a slightly decreasing trend from an average of 58 years with a lowest value in 2000 of 54 years and a highest value of 61 in the 1950s (Figure 3). Over time, variation in age has thus not been very great. A more dramatic change could be observed for the recruitment of female leaders (Figure 4). No female leaders were recruited before the 1970s, when one of the 15 leaders recruited (7%) was a woman. By the 2000s the share had increased to three out of 11 (27%) and in the 2020s to four out of seven (57%). All in all, the decades after the turn of this century have thus meant a breakthrough for female academic leadership within the six universities. As will be further demonstrated below, in 2025 among the selected institutions only Stanford has not had a woman at the top.

Figure 3.

Age of leaders at recruitment per decade.

Figure 4.

Share of female recruitments of leaders per decade.

Regarding the disciplinary background of the top leaders, with only two exceptions ‒ the 1970s and the 2010s ‒ STEMM recruitments have been below 50% (Figure 5). For the other decades, the Humanities and Social Sciences (Law included) have dominated. Among these non-STEMM recruitments, the Humanities have faced a decline from the beginning of the last century, while the Social Sciences have steadily gained in representation, from 9% in the 1980s to 71% in the 2020s.

Figure 5.

Share of STEMM recruitments per decade.

From the 1990s, there is not only a change in the disciplinary background of those recruited but also an increase in terms of the selection of external candidates (Figure 6). Until the 1990s, there were only a few cases of external recruitments, around 10% and below. From the 1990s a market for academic top leaders seems to have developed. A peak occurred in the 2010s, when 71% of the leaders were recruited from outside the institution. So far, in the 2020s, only one external recruitment (14%) has occurred.

Figure 6.

Share of external recruitments per decade.

As regards the development over the decades from the 1900s to the 2020s, the results presented so far thus mean that:

• • The number of recruitments has decreased.

• • The length of the tenure period has increased.

• • The recruitment age has decreased slightly.

• • The selection of females has increased, particularly during the last few decades.

• • The recruitment of STEMM persons has decreased from a peak in the 1970s.

• • The selection of externals has increased since the 1990s.

Variations Across Universities

An analysis of the variations across the six universities points to an obvious difference in the recruitment between the US presidents, on the one hand, and the European vice-chancellors and rectors, on the other hand (Table 2).

Table 2.

Number of recruitments, length of tenure (average in years) and age at recruitment (average in years)

At Harvard and Stanford, the number of recruitments has been considerably lower than at Cambridge, Oxford, Copenhagen and Oslo. The former had 10 and 11 recruitments, respectively, while Cambridge and Copenhagen had as many as 51, Oxford had 38 and Oslo 23. Obviously, this is also reflected in the average length of tenure: above 10 years for Harvard and Stanford, whereas the others have had tenures that are substantially lower. These differences are the result of the aforementioned long-time practice of European professors to take turns as institutional leaders for shorter periods. At Cambridge, two years was the standard until 1992 when the mandate of the law professor Sir David Williams was prolonged until 1996, giving him ‒ as the first full-time vice-chancellor ‒ a tenure of seven years. Oxford had the practice of three years (with a few exceptions), which was prolonged to four years in the period 1969‒1997. In the latter year, Oxford switched to seven years as the historian Sir Colin Lucas took office. An exception occurred with his successor John Hood, who stepped down after five years after considerable internal resistance. Copenhagen had only one-year mandates for a long time. This practice changed in 1936 when the professor of medicine, Carl Edvard Bloch, led the university for six years. After him, tenures have varied from two years to 12 years. Oslo, finally, had varying lengths of tenure from two years (twice in the 1910s, once each in the 1970s and in the 1990s) to eight years for the most recent rectors. As a result, its average is above the other three other European universities.

The recruitments at Harvard and Stanford do not differ solely in terms of number and length of tenure. The recruited presidents were also younger than their European counterparts. While the latter on average were in their late 50s, the presidents at the two US universities were in their early 50s, which of course facilitated their longer tenures. The chemistry professor James Bryant Conant, who was Harvard president for 20 years between 1933 and 1953, was just 40 when he took office, and the law professor Derek Curtis Bok, president between 1971 and 1991, was 41. Presidents in their early 40s at Stanford were the professor of medicine Ray Lyman Wilbur, aged 41 with a tenure of 27 years, and the historian J.E. Wallace Sterling, aged 43, with a tenure of 19 years. The oldest to take office as Harvard president is the present one, Alan M. Garber, who was 69 at the time of his appointment.Footnote ^b As will further be developed below, this was an emergency recruitment.

As shown above, the recruitment of female leaders, externals and non-STEMM leaders increased for the total population in recent decades. As regards the various institutions, Harvard scores at the top, although still at a low level, with respect to the percentage of female leaders: two out of the ten recruitments (Table 3). The first one to be selected was the history professor Drew Gilpin Faust in 2007, who also was the first Harvard president since 1672 without a degree from Harvard. Her tenure lasted 11 years. Much shorter was the time of service for the second female Harvard president, Claudine Gay, who had to resign after only half a year (see further below).

Table 3.

Share of females among the recruited

As for Stanford, the male dominance has been total, while the four European universities have had some female leaders. Since 1975, Cambridge has had three female vice-chancellors. First there was the chemistry professor Dame Alice Rosemary Murray, President of New Hall, with a two-year tenure. Second, in 2003, was Dame Alison Richard, professor of anthropology and previous provost of Yale 1994‒2002, who stayed in office for seven years. The third and latest one is the present vice-chancellor Deborah Prentice, appointed in 2023 with a background as professor of psychology, faculty dean at Cambridge in 2014‒2017 and provost at Princeton 2017‒2023.

Oxford did not recruit a female vice-chancellor until 2010. The selected leader was Louise Richardson, professor of political science, former vice-chancellor at St Andrews in Scotland and dean at Harvard. When she stepped down after seven years, she was succeeded by another woman: Irene Tracey, professor of neuroscience and former warden of Merton College.

Among the Scandinavian universities, Copenhagen has only recruited one female rector, the law professor Linda Nielsen, who was recruited in 2002 and stayed for three years. In Oslo, another law professor, Lucy Smith, was recruited as the first female in 1993. After a tenure of five years, she was succeeded by five male rectors. However, in 2025, the University of Oslo elected another female law professor: Ragnhild Hennum (see further below).

All in all, the six universities have recruited ten women as leaders: Cambridge three times, Harvard, Oxford and Oslo twice, Copenhagen once and Stanford never. The first female recruitment occurred at Cambridge in 1975 and the second at Oslo in 1993, while the other eight happened after the turn of the century. A peak occurred, as shown in Figure 4, in the present decade, when 57% of the recruitments led to the appointment of a female leader.

In terms of STEMM background (Table 4), it was demonstrated above for the whole period that on average about four out of ten recruited leaders had such a background. However, Stanford and Oslo outnumber the other four institutions, with more than half of the recruited leaders having a STEMM background. Copenhagen and Cambridge have shares just below 50% (47% and 41%, respectively), while Oxford and Harvard are both on the lower side with 11% and 20%, respectively. The other side of this state of affairs is that both Oxford and Harvard have had high shares of leaders from the Humanities and the Social Sciences. In terms of the differences between Harvard and Stanford, a likely explanation is that Stanford had an engineering school from its start, while Harvard only got its engineering school in the twenty-first century.

Table 4.

Share of STEMM background among the recruited

As for the recruitment of externals, Figure 6 demonstrated that something happened from the 1990s onwards, with a peak in the 2010s. In this respect, we see again that the two US universities differ from the European ones (Table 5). Harvard and Stanford exhibit shares of external recruitments around one-third and above, while the corresponding figure for Cambridge, Oxford and Copenhagen is around one-tenth and for Oslo zero. However, looking at numbers and not shares ‒ which are highly dependent on the number of recruitments ‒ Copenhagen is at the top with six externals, followed by Stanford with five, Cambridge with four, and Harvard and Oxford with three external recruitments.

Table 5.

Share of externals among the recruited

At Harvard, the first external President during the twentieth century to be recruited was Nathan Marsh Pusey, a professor of literature. He was selected in 1953 after having been the President of Lawrence College from 1944 to 1953. Later external recruitments were the literature professor Neil L. Rudenstine between 1991 and 2001 ‒ at the time of his recruitment executive vice-president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ‒ and Lawrence H. Summers between 2001 and 2006. However, the latter was a homecomer, since he was a former Harvard professor, who since 1991 had worked with the World Bank and the Treasury.

Stanford had an early external recruitment in 1910 when the geology professor John Casper Branner from Indiana University took office. It was then not until 1949 that the head of the Huntington Library and Art Gallery J.E. Wallace Sterling became President. In 1968 he was succeeded by another external, the chemistry professor and president of Rice University, Kenneth S. Pitzer. Due to student unrest, he stepped down after only two years to be succeeded by two internals. After them, Gerhard Casper, a law professor and provost at the University of Chicago, was then the third external Stanford president to hold office during the 1992‒2000 period. After the 16-year presidency of the internally recruited computer scientist John Hennessy, in 2016 Stanford recruited the president of Rockefeller University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist, who had earlier been at Stanford. Due to allegations of manipulations in published articles, he resigned in 2023.

Cambridge had a long tradition of internal leaders, which is related to the principle discussed above for faculty members to take turns as vice-chancellor. However, in 2003, Cambridge converted to external recruitments. The first such person to be recruited was Dame Alison Richard mentioned above. She was followed in 2010 by Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council of the United Kingdom. In 2017, after his seven-year tenure, Cambridge brought in Stephen Toope, who had been president of the University of British Columbia (2006‒2014) and who at the time of his recruitment was director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. After Toope’s retirement, Cambridge turned to the United States to recruit Deborah Prentice from Princeton, also mentioned above. However, she was already well-known to Cambridge as a faculty dean, 2014‒2017.

Like Cambridge, Oxford long kept the tradition of selecting vice-chancellors among its faculty members. The first external to be appointed was John Hood, a businessman from New Zealand, who had been vice-chancellor of the University of Auckland between 1999 and 2004. His ambitions to reform Oxford were met with resistance, and he resigned after five years in 2009. Nevertheless, Oxford continued to search outside the university for its next vice-chancellor. Hood’s successor was Andrew D. Hamilton, professor of chemistry and provost at Yale. As he stepped down in 2016, he became the president of New York University. Hamilton was succeeded by Louise Richardson, mentioned above, who became the first female leader of Oxford, followed by another woman who was an internal candidate: the above-mentioned Irene Tracey.

In Copenhagen there were five early external recruitments in the 1910s and the 1930s, four of whom came from the Hospital of the Realm, an institution close to the university. It was then not until 2017 that the microbiologist Henrik Caspar Wegener, director of the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University was recruited. He was the first rector in Copenhagen who had not been educated at the university he headed. In contrast to the others, the University of Oslo has never recruited outside the university, a circumstance that is associated with its recruitment processes (see further below).

The above implies that the two US universities recruited outsiders much earlier than the Europeans. For the latter, a change occurred after the turn of the present century. It appears that rankings and the influence of New Public Management were important factors behind this change.

In terms of the differences between the six institutions, it can be concluded that:

• • The number of recruitments has been much lower at Harvard and Stanford.

• • The length of tenure has been much longer at Harvard and Stanford.

• • The recruitment age has been lower at Harvard and Stanford.

• • Since 1975, female leaders have been recruited to all universities except Stanford, with Cambridge at the top (three), followed by Harvard, Oxford and Oslo (two) and Copenhagen (one).

• • Stanford and Oslo have had a majority of STEMM leaders, Copenhagen and Cambridge close to 50%, while Harvard and Oxford have had low shares.

• • Harvard and Stanford have been earlier to recruit leaders from the outside, while Cambridge, Oxford and Copenhagen started that practice after the turn of this century and Oslo has not yet recruited outside the university at all.

Recent Recruitments

After having provided results regarding the overall development over time for the six universities and for each of them specifically, this article will now turn to the most recent processes for the selection of top leaders.

Rectors

At the University of Copenhagen, the recruitment of rectors is regulated by the University Act of 2018. It states that it is the University Board that ‘appoints and dismisses the Rector and appoints and dismisses the University’s other senior management on the recommendation of the Rector’ (Bekendtgørelse af lov om universiteter (universitetsloven), §10, my translation from the Danish). The University Board comprises academic staff, including employed PhD students, technical and administrative staff and students. However, the majority of the members are external. This implies a certain, though limited, collegial influence. It should be noted, however, that there are limitations in the law regarding the background of the rector, who ‘must be a recognized researcher in one of the university’s subject areas and have insight into the education sector [and] have experience in the management and organization of research environments and […] have insight into a university’s activities and interaction with the surrounding society’ (§14, my translation from the Danish). Nothing is said about the length of tenure.

The latest transition at the University of Copenhagen was prompted by the retirement of the professor of microbiology Henrik Caspar Wegener at the age of 66 after holding the office of rector for five years with an extension of three years, eight years in total. As a professor of veterinary medicine, before his appointment to the Rectorate he had been director of research at the Danish Institute for Food Research and pro-rector at the Technical University of Denmark. As his successor, the University Board chose in 2025 the 52-year-old economics professor David Dreyer Lassen. It thereby selected an insider, who had been pro-rector for Science and Innovation since 2021 (Københavns Universitet 2025b).

At the University of Oslo, the process is much more open than at the other five universities, and also more open than in many other Norwegian universities that do not have elected leaders (see further Universitetet i Oslo 2025b). The process is managed by a specially appointed election committee. To this body, groups of at least 20 faculty members and students are invited to propose candidates for the posts as rector and pro-rector. In addition, candidates are identified by a search committee appointed by the University Board. All nominees are required to have professorial competence, and, although it is not a requirement, it is stated that it is an advantage for candidates to have experience of leadership in knowledge-based organizations and in administration. At a point in time decided by the election committee, the names of candidates are made public. After that, the proposed teams of rector and pro-rector have to present themselves to faculty members and students. A period follows during which faculty members and students can vote for their preferred team. The votes of faculty members are given the weight of 75%, and the votes of students are given 25%.

The most recent election of a rector at the University of Oslo occurred in spring 2025. The chemistry professor Svein Stølen, aged 65, had stepped down after eight years, which is the limit for tenure according to the rules at the University of Oslo. In the election of his successor, three teams were competing: the two professors of medicine, Hanne Flinstad Harbo and Giske Ursin, and the law professor Ragnhild Hennum. It meant that three women around the age of 60 were competing for the rectorate. The outcome of the election was that Ragnhild Hennum ‒ vice-rector from 2009 to 2014 and pro-rector from 2014 to 2017 ‒ got 53% of the votes, while Hanne Flinstad Harbo and Giske Ursin received 31% and 16%, respectively. As a result, Ragnhild Hennum and her fellow candidate for pro-rector, the professor of geology Bjørn Jamtveit, were appointed to lead the University of Oslo (Universitetet i Oslo 2025c).

Comparing Recruitments

From the above it is clear that the recruitment processes at the six universities differ in terms of the openness of the recruiting bodies and the candidacies (Table 6). Cambridge and Oxford are, according to their present rules, closed in terms of both the recruiting body and the candidacy (lower right corner of Table 6). Their processes are run inside the universities with internal search committees and decision bodies. They are also characterized by keeping candidates confidential. The latter is in strong contrast to the University of Oslo (top right corner of Table 6), which is completely open about the candidates. Like Cambridge and Oxford, the Norwegians do not include externals in the recruiting body.

Table 6.

The different recruitment models

Harvard, Stanford and Copenhagen (lower left corner of Table 6) share the closed principle regarding candidates with Cambridge and Oxford. Names of candidates are kept within limited circles. However, at the same time, the three institutions differ from their two UK counterparts by including externals in the recruiting bodies. None of the institutions under study are open in terms of both the candidacies and the recruiting body (top left corner of Table 6).

Comparing the latest recruitments with the earlier ones (Figure 7), it is evident that the average age was almost the same as earlier, while the share of female leaders has increased considerably. While they were only 4% among the earlier appointments, half of the latest recruited leaders were female. The share of STEMM was somewhat lower and the share of externals somewhat higher. The share of externals was still rather low.

Figure 7.

A comparison between latest recruitments and earlier ones.