Diversifying Leadership in Elite Universities: The Development of an Empirically Grounded Recruitment Framework for the Global Higher Education Sector

A cursory glance of the roll call of names across the 'top 100' universities internationally, reveals the dominance of predominantly white males in positions of power and influence. Men comprise 75% of VCs/Presidents in 2023. The recent appointment of women to lead Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge and MIT indicates an appetite to break down gendered and racialised conceptions of leadership within the context of the equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) agenda. But what is our understanding of the biographies of those who lead elite universities globally? And therefore, what are the wider implications for diversifying leadership at this level? This project brings together a team of established higher education experts to analyse the trajectories to leadership in the worlds' most elite universities. The project sets out to illuminate the basis on which VCs/Presidents are selected into, and from, the VC candidate pool and to develop a recruitment framework to support the diversification of university leaders in elite institutions internationally.

Currently, the 'success' factors that lead to being appointed to the position of VC are obscure. This paucity of information has led, we hypothesise, to unconscious bias practices in the recruitment and selection processes of these senior leaders. We seek to identify and interrogate these success factors in order to make the implicit explicit; to deconstruct unwritten assumptions and the concept of 'cultural fit'. A central aspect of the project is to consider to what extent 'merit' is a form of bias that masks 'indirect' discrimination and reinforces the status quo, drawing upon Manfredi and Vickers's (2017) concept of objective versus subjective merit and Sandel's (2020) argument that meritocratic credentialism is the last acceptable prejudice. The role of Executive Search Firms (ESFs) has grown significantly since the 1980s to become dominant in the appointment of VCs, and more recently, PVCs, Deans and Heads of Department (Watson, 2009, Manfredi, Clayton-Hathway and Cousens, 2019) and consequently is an important aspect of this project.

The project has two main aims: first, to identify any implicit biases in the recruitment processes and how this might impact on the appointment of leaders in elite universities; and second, to develop a recruitment framework for diversifying university leadership in elite universities. These aims will be pursued by means of the following three objectives: first, through collective biography and interviews, to profile, classify and identify the success factors associated with being appointed as a VC in an elite university; second, to interrogate by means of discussions with key stakeholders/end users, the basis on which VCs are selected; and third, to co-produce with key stakeholders and end-users an empirically-informed recruitment framework for use in the recruitment of senior leaders in elite universities.

The range of beneficiaries and end-users of this project is exceptionally wide owing to the multi-country scope, mixed-methods approach, and cross-disciplinary relevance of our study. Our sample of world leading universities encompasses institutions spanning 16 countries across North America, Europe, Australia and East and South-East Asia. Our empirically grounded recruitment framework will be of value to a range of end-users, including Executive Search Firms, university recruitment panels/governing bodies, human resources, emerging leaders and EDI specialists and practitioners. The project has far-reaching benefits to other elite professions, including medicine and law.