Are university leaders always the same? A longitudinal analysis of Vice-chancellors’ profile in English universities over the last twenty years

While the effects of new managerialism and the internationalization of higher education on university structures and functions have been widely examined, their impact on university leadership has been less investigated, although both phenomena suggest the need for different and more powerful leaders. This article aims to examine if the core features of university leaders’ profiles have been affected by the two aforementioned phenomena, and whether differences can be identified according to different types of universities. To answer these questions, this article develops six hypotheses and tests them by using a unique dataset on several dimensions of the profiles of 324 Vice-chancellors from 98 English universities and covering a period of more than 20 years (2000–2020). The analysis highlights that the nature of the universities as professional organizations profoundly affects the characteristics of their leaders’ profiles. Vice-chancellors are predominantly academics who have held academic leadership positions and whose appointment is also shaped by a rule of representativeness. Statistically significant differences among university types can be identified instead in terms of the research profile of Vice-chancellors and their recruitment patterns. Finally, this article shows that even decades after the emergence of both new managerialism and the increasing internationalization of HE, the profile of university leaders still resembles that of the last century with just minor changes that can be retrieved only in certain university types.