Higher Education Executive Roles — Universities, Research Institutions
More than 346 executive roles classified in Higher Education, with 22 new this week. Provosts, Deans, Chief Financial Officers of universities, and senior administrators at research institutions and academic medical centers.
Tier breakdown
3
Founder130
C-Suite131
VP1
Sr Director81
DirectorWhat this category covers
Higher Education covers executive roles at universities, colleges, research institutions, and academic medical centers. The leadership lattice is unique — Provosts and Deans sit at exec-tier alongside CFOs and CIOs.
Academic medical center leadership is often dual-tracked between Higher Education and Healthcare Payers & Providers. The classifier includes such roles here when the primary org is the university.
Across the 346 active roles in this category, the largest tier is VP. The classifier weighs company size, scope, and reporting line — not just the title prefix — so the tier mix reflects real responsibility, not vanity titles.
Sample Jobs (10 of 346)
| Title & Company | Location |
|---|---|
| Director of the Center for Medical Cannabis Research The University of Utah The Director will organize, implement, and oversee scientific and administrative aspects of the CMCR, in partnership with the Health Research Office, as well as CMCR’s senior manager, the steering committee, the external advisory board, and key collaborators. Director | Salt Lake City, UT Unknown |
| Executive Director, Government Relations Queen's University The Executive Director, Government Relations at Queen's University will provide strategic leadership for government relations, advising on public policy, and developing advocacy strategies. C-Suite | Toronto or Ottawa, ON, CA Onsite |
| Executive Director ... Texas Association of School Boards, Inc. (TASB) The Executive Director of TASB leads the organization in collaboration with the Board of Directors, overseeing strategic vision, advocacy, governance, and operational services for Texas school boards. C-Suite | Texas Unknown |
| Executive Director of Development, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Arizona State University Foundation The role involves development leadership for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University Foundation. C-Suite | Tempe, Arizona Unknown |
| Associate Vice President for Human Resources, Training and Performance James Madison University The role involves strategic leadership in HR and talent development, supporting the VP for Administration and Finance, and ensuring alignment with the university's mission. It includes leadership in labor relations and compliance with labor laws. Director | Harrisonburg, VA, United States Onsite |
| Director, Clinical Strategy Stepful The Director, Clinical Strategy will serve as the clinical voice for Stepful's go-to-market organization, building relationships with clinical executives and validating program designs. The role involves significant travel and requires extensive nursing leadership experience. Director | Remote Remote |
| Senior Vice President for University Communications and Marketing Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Rutgers seeks a dynamic leader to serve as Senior Vice President for University Communications and Marketing, responsible for developing and executing a unified communications and marketing strategy. C-Suite | New Brunswick, New Jersey Onsite |
| Chief Risk and Compliance Officer Syracuse University The Chief Risk and Compliance Officer (CRCO) at Syracuse University is responsible for shaping an integrated risk and compliance program across the university. The role involves strategic leadership, oversight of compliance programs, and collaboration with university leaders. C-Suite | Syracuse, NY Onsite |
| Head of Customer Support Preply Lead and scale Preply's global customer support team, manage vendor partnerships, and integrate AI into support operations. VP | Barcelona Hybrid |
| Senior Director, Internal Audit & SOX Coursera Coursera is seeking a Sr. Director, Internal Audit & SOX, responsible for oversight and monitoring of internal control environment, leading audit plans, managing SOX compliance, and providing strategic insights for risk management. Sr Director | San Francisco, CA Hybrid |
How classification gets to this category
Higher Education classification follows the same multi-stage pipeline as every other category, with category-specific signal at three stages:
- Title recognition. Direct title hits resolve fast — common variants are recognized immediately, including the senior, VP, and Director-tier flavors.
- Compensation threshold. An exec-tier base-comp floor filters out individual-contributor roles that share the title language. Roles below the floor in unambiguous category titles are flagged for manual review rather than auto-classified.
- JD signals for ambiguous cases. GPT reads the JD for academic-leadership signals: Provost-vs-Dean scope, faculty governance ties, and budget authority. The classifier handles non-corporate title conventions correctly. See the AI Classification page for the full signal hierarchy.
Negative filters explicitly block adjacent IC and analyst roles whose titles can resemble executive ones. The result: Higher Education as a category in your inbox is the executive cut, not the entry-level cut.
How matching works for your search
Matching on Higher Education is conjunctive. Every dimension you add narrows the result set rather than expanding it.
Example: select Higher Education + CXO-tier and you see Provosts, COOs, and CFOs at major universities and research institutions — your inbox shows the intersection, not the union. You won't see roles that match only one of the filters and not the other.
Tier filtering layers on top. If you only want VP-tier and above in this category, the seniority-tier filter does that cleanly. Restrict further to C-suite only to see the most senior seats, or open it up to Director-tier to widen the funnel during early-stage exploration.
Remote mix