Take a glance at recent statistics on full-time administrators in higher education, and you'll come away with the impression that minorities and women, particularly minority women, are moving up institutional ladders. Look closer, however, and you'll find that these gains--and there are gains, to be sure--are more complicated than meets the eye.

Between 1983-4 and 1999-2000, the percentage of full-time female administrators has increased 97.4 percent, while male administrators have gained only 4.6 percent. In the same time period, minority women's representation in the administrative ranks has increased 157.3 percent, compared to minority men's increase of 48 percent.

At the highest levels, minority women have also made small gains, though they remain underrepresented. Since 1993, minority women overall have gained 49 positions at the chief executive level, an increase of 72.1 percent. While the number of African American and Hispanic women CEOs have grown by 77.1 percent and 87 percent respectively, Asian American women CEOs have increased by 400 percent. What that last staggering percentage does not reveal, though, is the actual number of positions gained: Asian American women CEOsin our 3,191 colleges and universities now number only 5, compared to 1 in 1993.

American Indian CEOs are the only group to have declined in the past decade, loosing 10 positions overall, two of them women CEOs. At the full-time administrator level, however, the number of American Indian women nearly doubled between 1989-90 and 1999-2000.

Across the board, impressive gains for women administrators and CEOs belie the fact that women, particularly minority women, still have a long way to go before they are equally represented at the highest levels of administration. Calculated in percentages, the ranks of women, particularly women of color, in administrative have indeed grown in recent years. However, those percentage figures translate to a relatively small number of positions, as exemplified in the number of Asian American women CEOs. A growth in administrative positions has also helped boost the numbers of women and minorities in these positions.

See tables for more complete data on on full-time administrators and chief executive officers.