According to new data from Times Higher Education, more than a quarter of the world’s top 200 universities are led by a woman vice chancellor or president.
As of 2025, 55 of the world’s top 200 universities are led by women, representing 27 percent of the top academic leaders around the globe. This is the seventh consecutive year of record-breaking growth in the number of women vice chancellors and presidents at top universities. In 2024, there were 50 women university leaders. In 2023, there were 48. When Times Higher Education first began reporting on this subject in 2015, there were only 28 women leaders at the top 200 universities around the world, equating to a 96 percent increase over the past 11 years.
Four of the world’s top 10 universities have a woman leader: Irene Tracy, vice chancellor of the top-ranked University of Oxford; Salley Kornbluth, president of the second-ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Deborah Prentice, vice chancellor of the fifth-ranked University of Cambridge; and Maurie McInnis, president of the tenth-ranked Yale University.
While the world as a whole experienced an increase in women university leaders, certain countries have better gender representation than others. Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States all experienced increases in their shares of women university leaders over the past year. However, 15 out of the 30 countries with institutions in the top 200 universities have no women leaders, including China, Canada, and South Korea. Furthermore, women of color continue to remain underrepresented among global academic leaders, representing just 2.5 percent of the world’s leading vice chancellors and presidents.