PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - While latest data show the number of female college presidents has grown to 23% of higher ed institutions, it’s 30 years since women’s sports programs joined the NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and women haven’t done well in landing top jobs.

Females lead only 4% of programs in Division 1-A, in a field where they make up nearly half of all athletes in that division, according to the article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Is it lack of connections in the old-boy network, family considerations, or are search firms without enough women candidates? With concerted effort for diversity, minority males have occupied top jobs as football coaches; but the same energy to bring women leaders into high athletic positions hasn’t emerged.

The National Association of Collegiate Women Administrators is planning to adopt similar tactics to increase the number of women in top posts to make sure that the five women who lead Division 1-A programs — at Western Michigan, Universities of Nevada at Reno, University of California at Berkeley, Arizona State and North Carolina — and have been there for decades, have more female successors.

Reported By Dr. Marciene Mattleman, KYW Newsradio