Ramphele joined the University of Cape Town as a research fellow in 1986 and was appointed as one of its Deputy Vice-Chancellors in 1991. She was appointed to the post of Vice-Chancellor of the university in September 1996, thereby becoming the first black woman to hold such a position at a South African university. Part of her executive roles was to take charge of the university’s Equal Opportunity Policy Portfolio, with the aim of changing the culture of the institution. In 1994, Ramphele was a visiting scholar at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.