Almost three in 10 universities in the THE World Universities ranking 2026 are led by women

More of the world's top universities in the world have female leaders in 2026 than in 2025, with 29% of them being led by women (up from 27% in 2025), according to a report from the Times Higher Education (THE) published on 04/03/2026.

THE said that 58 out of the 200 institutions in its World Universities ranking 2026 had a female vice-chancellor or president, an "evidence of slow improvement towards gender equality".

THE emphasised that it was the seventh consecutive annual increase, up from just 17% in 2019, when there were 34.

Female leaders at the highest-ranked universities include Irene Tracey at the University of Oxford in the UK, Sally Kornbluth at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and Deborah Prentice at the University of Cambridge (UK).

Universities in the top 50 have fewer female leaders than institutions in the rest of the ranking: a fifth of them have female vice-chancellors or presidents, compared with a third of the others.

China is the worst represented country: it is the only country to have at least 10 institutions to not have a single female president…