The just-released American Council on Education report, The American College President, found that there were no gains in the number of presidencies for African Americans. Research that I conducted in the spring of 1996 on data collected from African American and White women who were college presidents demonstrate, to some degree, why this is particularly true for African American women while women in general — clearly, White women — are experiencing progress.
I specifically looked at the kinds of jobs women had on the way to the presidency to see if I could tell African American women exactly what jobs were needed to gain access to the highest rank in higher education administration. My findings suggest that the situation we are dealing with is very complicated and not achievable merely by getting the right jobs. There are some answers, but still more questions.
In examining the careers of African American and White women college presidents, the good news is that I found that they had similar jobs on the way to the presidency. Both groups followed not one career track, but several. Actually the tracks were too diverse and complex to enumerate. However, most women came to the presidency directly from an appointment in academic affairs — including chief academic officer, school dean, dean of instruction, and related positions.
Women can come to the presidency from just about any series of positions — including various positions in student, business, and development affairs. There are even instances where a woman can become a college president without ever having held a position in higher education. While this usually happened with women who were members of religious orders, none of them were African American. No African. American women became president directly from the faculty while several White women were able to do so.
However, it sometimes depends on where women have these positions whether or not women can leave them to become president. For example, a woman can go from the position of dean of students to a presidency if she is employed at a two-year institution. But no woman with that position at a four-year school rose immediately to the presidency.
I found that African American women had more jobs before becoming president than White women. This was particularly true for African American women in the private sector, even though the amount of time all the women presidents spent in higher education was about the same. It is apparent that African American women have had to risk taking on more jobs to showcase their talents, make connections, and get ready for when the opportunity presented itself.
African American women shared more than similar career lines with White women. They also shared similar experiences with tenure, rank, age, number of children, and marital status. Although a majority of the women had held rank or tenure at some time during their careers, there are enough women who had not held rank or tenure who became college presidents to suggest that neither is a necessary condition to becoming president.
However, African American women were more often married to faculty than White women. I think this was possibly an advantage to African American women who place a high value on maintaining intact families. Having a faculty spouse would make it easier to move from one higher education institution to another since it is possible that the trailing spouse can get a job more easily than if the spouse had some other occupation or business. But if African American women have similar marital status as White women and have, perhaps, the advantage of being married more often to faculty, why aren’t there more African American women presidents? Is it possible that having a faculty spouse compensates for some other barrier African American women confront?
Is the fact that African American women higher education administrators are concentrated in two-year institutions a major barrier or benefit to reaching any college presidency? It is clear that women are not able to move immediately from administrative positions at two-year institutions to the presidency at four-year institutions. However, African American women have been able to move from administrative positions at four-year institutions to become presidents of two-year institutions.
Is working at a public institution advantageous to African American women? It does seem that African American women experience more success in becoming a college president when they are employed at institutions in the public sector than in the private sector, However at private institutions, despite having to have more jobs than their sisters in the public sector, African American women seem to spend less time in higher education before becoming presidents of those institutions. White women do not share this experience.
Becoming a college president is not a simple task, and clearly, there is no specific blueprint of jobs to do so. There were no significant differences between the careers of African American and White women, but is it possible that each of these not so significant differences can add up to make one big difference.
So far, I can say that an African American woman who wants to become a college president apparently needs to consider not only the jobs she has previously had, but where she has had them — two- or four-year institution, and public or private institution.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Cox, Matthews & Associates
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