Within twelve months, the proportion of female managers at Germany’s state universities has risen by almost ten percentage points to 37 percent. At the end of 2022, a total of 30 out of 81 universities were run by women, according to the Center for Higher Education Development (CHE), which has been analyzing the demographics of German university management regularly since 2019. So the results of the CHE, the advance on the blog by the Tagesspiegel author Jan Martin Wiarda had appeared.
For comparison: At the end of 2018, the CHE had 19 women at the top of state universities, in the four following years their number rose only slightly to 22. The big leap is related to a generational change that is currently taking place at the universities.
14 top positions were filled between December 2021 and December 2022 – and apparently used strategically by many universities to increase the proportion of women (+8). At the same time, the average age of rectors and presidents at universities, albeit still high, fell by almost two years, from 60.6 to 58.8.
Since 2018, the proportion of women among university managers has developed quite parallel to the proportion of female professors. It remains to be seen whether this will continue to be the case, because the Federal Statistical Office is not expected to present the relevant data for 2022 until autumn.
However, reports from individual federal states already indicate that the proportion of female university professors has recently been more dynamic: In 2022, the large Berlin universities filled around 53 percent of their advertised professorships with women. The proportion of women at the Berlin universities of applied sciences (HAW) was lower. They accounted for 42 percent of new appointments there.
Only every fifth HAW manager is female
In fact, the HAW and universities of applied sciences are also significantly more male-dominated when it comes to nationwide appointments to their rectorates and presidencies. Between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022, as in the previous year, the proportion of female HAW managers even fell slightly, this time from 22.8 to 21.8 percent. This means that the proportion of women in the HAW management has almost fallen back to the level of 2018.
While between 2021 and 2022 more than every sixth university management was filled, it was only every tenth at the HAW. The average age of the HAW bosses remained almost the same at 57.3 years (-0.7) – and is only slightly below that of the university presidents and rectors.
In terms of their origins and educational biographies, however, they are still far removed from the heterogeneity on campus.
Isabel Roessler, Director of Studies
The fact that, unlike at the universities, the (few) new HAW bosses were again primarily men, may have something to do with the composition of subjects at HAWs, i.e. their higher proportion of engineering sciences. In these, women are still clearly underrepresented as students and teachers. On the other hand, there seems to be less pressure at the HAW to change something about the lack of representation of women in university management.
The fact that the debate in the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) is changing with the growing number of female university presidents was shown last year by the scandal surrounding a paper on equal opportunities. The informal working group of the Presidents and Rectors had complained that the proportion of women in doctorates was 45 percent – but in the case of habilitations it fell to 35 percent and in the case of professorships to 26 percent.
More successful than the cascade model?
They wrote down the conclusions they derived from this, core statement: The HRK “notes with great concern that the proportion of women at all career levels is increasing far too slowly”. There needs to be a culture change in the appointment process. However, there were heated discussions in connection with the paper at the HRK General Assembly, the resolution was postponed, but later made up for in a slightly different version.
Actually, the credo of German science policy – albeit with only limited success so far – was that the increase in the proportion of women should take place in the form of a cascade model from the bottom up through the hierarchy. Is there a reversal of principle here with the increasing proportion of female bosses: the increase in the proportion of women from top to bottom – and is this perhaps even making the cultural change demanded by the rectors possible in the first place?
If so, then only to a very limited extent. In the overall view of HAW and universities, study director Isabel Roessler comes to the conclusion that German university management has become “minimal younger and a little more female” compared to the previous year. “In terms of their origins and educational biographies, however, they are still far removed from the heterogeneity on campus.”
After all, there have been indications in recent years that the HAW executive floors are still strongly male, but in other respects are somewhat more diverse than at the universities. In 2019, only three of the HAW bosses explicitly stated that they had never worked outside of the university world.
And at least 13 of 101 bosses had completed an apprenticeship before their studies, three as bank clerks. But there were also gardeners, display designers and carpenters – although not all 13 had completed their apprenticeship. The claim of the HAW to make it possible for those who have just climbed the ladder to study was reflected in the demographics of its rectors, at least to some extent.
More closed shop than internationality
However, even the latest CHE analysis cannot say anything about the social background of university management, such as how many children of first-time academics and immigrants are among them. Because it is again based solely on research into publicly available CVs.
As in previous years, the evaluation of the birthplaces of university management is sobering. Only three of the 81 university heads in office at the end of 2022 were born abroad – and only two of the 101 HAW presidents or rectors. One person less than at the end of 2022.
Which shows that the internationality claimed above all by the universities is not something that their management staff embodies. Incidentally, this also applies to the level of professors, well over 90 percent of whom come from Germany – with depressingly little change over the years. The reply that many presidents and rectors have worked abroad at times does not change this closed shop impression.
Incidentally, only four university leaders were born in East Germany, at the HAW there are eleven more.
The proportion of executives who have made a long-term career at their own university is striking, said CHE director Roessler. Two thirds of the university heads and 70 percent of the HAW directors had previously worked at their university – and that on average for around 13 years.
