Women Far Outnumber Men On Campus, Study Finds

A new, sweeping federal report details how women are quickly outpacing men in terms of college enrollment at every degree level -- although, on average, male degree-holders still earn higher median wages than their female counterparts.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has more details:

The report, a compendium of data published annually by the department's National Center for Education Statistics, projects that by 2019 women will account for 59 percent of total undergraduate enrollment and 61 percent of total postbaccalaureate enrollment at the nation's colleges and universities. Since the late 1990s, they have accounted for about three-fourths of the increase in the number of master's degrees awarded in the United States and nearly all of the growth in the number of professional degrees earned, the report says.

The bad news the report contains is that, in the eyes of some national experts on higher education, the United States is not making nearly enough progress in moving more students through high schools and colleges to become more significantly competitive in the world economy.

Despite the prevalence of women on campus, females are still "severely underrepresented" in fields such as engineering and computer science.

The report also states that from 2008-2008, college enrollment in total increased by 24 percent, and private postsecondary institutions saw a 44 percent rise in attendance.

From 2000 to 2008, overall undergraduate enrollment at postsecondary institutions rose by 24 percent, to 16.4 million, the report says. Private institutions, which experienced a 44-percent increase in enrollments, accounted for a disproportionate share of growth.

Read the Chronicle's distillation of the report, or see it in full here.

Comments

[fromdnorth]

01:52 AM on 05/31/2010

The twin nation in the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago just elected its first ever female Prime Minister... In Trinidad, an oil exporter, education is free as limited and clarified below:

[fromdnorth]

01:51 AM on 05/31/2010

Mr Manning, who has governed Trinidad and Tobago for more than 12 of the past 18 years, was re-elected in November 2007 thanks to a split opposition vote and a strong economy. An energy boom caused GDP to grow by nearly 8% annually from 2000-2007, and the islands’ 1.3m residents remain prosperous despite suffering a recession last year. Labour is scarce, roads are jammed with new cars and education is free up to post-graduate level.

Even when times were good, however, crime was soaring, just as in other Caribbean countries. Over the last decade, Trinidad and Tobago’s murder rate has quadrupled, caused by an influx of guns stemming from the drug trade, a weakening of family ties, and a growing gang presence. Another gripe is the unreliable water supply, which is particularly poor in rural areas, and was further disrupted by a recent drought.

Mr Manning’s government was also undermined by corruption scandals. In the best-known example, Calder Hart, the former head of a state development agency, granted a $136m contract to build government offices to a Malaysian company that allegedly had ties to his relatives.
www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=16211434

[fromdnorth]

01:49 AM on 05/31/2010

AS 2010 began, Trinidad and Tobago’s stale political equilibrium seemed firmly entrenched. Patrick Manning, the prime minister, and Basdeo Panday, the opposition leader, had alternated in power for nearly two decades. Their parties stood for races rather than policies: Mr Panday’s United National Congress (UNC) represented the 40% of Trinidadians of Indian descent, while Mr Manning’s People’s National Movement (PNM) was identified with the islands’ blacks. The next election was not due until March 2013.

Yet in the space of just four months, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, an energetic lawyer, has managed to topple both of the country’s political titans. On January 24th, she unseated the 77-year-old Mr Panday in a UNC leadership challenge. Her forceful opposition then panicked Mr Manning into calling a snap election on May 24th, in which her UNC-led alliance took 29 of the 41 elected seats. Thanks to Mr Manning’s miscalculation, Trinidad and Tobago now has its first female prime minister and a rare opportunity for political renewal.

[fromdnorth]

01:42 AM on 05/31/2010

The twin nation in the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago just elected its first ever female Prime Minister... In Trinidad, an oil exporter, education is free as limited and clarified below:

gen60 wrote:
May 27th 2010 9:11 GMT

To correct some information
Education is not free up to post graduate level - only up to first (Bachelor)degree.
Persons who graduated with first class honours after 2007 and are under 45 years of age can apply for a scholarship to study up to PHD level
Trinidad and Tobago has a population of ~1.3 million

[LeifEiriksson]

03:23 PM on 05/30/2010

Who would have thought an institution that makes kids sit on their butt for 17 years, little gym class, and demands kids sit upright with their hands folded for 7 hours a day would have no appeal to boys?!

[RosanneofTennessee]

12:25 AM on 05/30/2010

Here's a must- read book for those who are SERIOUS about understanding sexism in the USA, which continues today.

Sexism in America: Alive, Well and Ruining Our Future by Barbara J. Berg
Here's a brief video @ it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e11SGk9omA

[RosanneofTennessee]

12:18 AM on 05/30/2010

It is completely true that women have NOT achieved parity with men at this time.

I refer to:

The Status of Women in the Stateshttp://www.iwpr.org/States2004/PDFs/National.pdf which proves that women are still politically, economically, socially disadvantaged

The Gender Wage Gap: http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/C350a.pdf
and Are Women Now Half the Labor Force? The Truth: http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/C374.pdf

When you are done with those, learn about Who Makes the News? http://www.whomakesthenews.org/images/stories/website/gmmp_reports/2010/gmmp_2010_preliminary.pdf

If you do the above, you will clearly see that women have not reached anything close to parity and we have to create a Minister of Women and Equalities like the UK did in 2007 to get the job done!

[Usama]

07:32 PM on 05/29/2010

There is also the MYTH that women are a minority. They are NOT a minority. Meanwhile, Black, Latino males graduate high school at less than 50%. America is lost.

[bkrider9]

11:29 PM on 05/29/2010

Women are certainly a minority in most upper levels of society, from politics to business to higher education administration. In the middle class and lower, they are treated as a minority in the sense that their rights have been denied by convention for most of the history of civilization on all continents. So, politically and socially they are a minority, meaning their representation and their power are minor, and they are underrepresented.

[Usama]

07:30 PM on 05/29/2010

I foresee the demise of America. Not because women are excelling, but because men are 'checking out'. And one thing that men are engaging in is crime. Drugs, gangs, pimping women. As Ive said many times on HP, the DOJ reports that 300,000 American girls are subjected to prostitution each year, and the world contains almost 30 million slaves. Over 80% of them are women sex slaves. Men are "checking out" of mainstream culture and excelling at criminal culture.

[michelv]

12:56 AM on 05/29/2010

I think women are generally less susceptible to distraction and are better able to focus. Many guys have a hard time doing it until they become more mature. I think women have an easier time putting up with school and university systems.

It remains a fact, however, that at the advanced graduate levels in math, sciences, and engineering, there are far more men than women. What most people don't understand, however, is that the fact that there are more men in that group is completely useless in predicting how well a particular woman can do in those areas.

To give an example, we know that on average men are physically stronger than women. But if I were asked to pick the strongest person from a group, I would care less about those statistics. I would just look directly at the persons in the group.

[Etruscate]

01:09 PM on 05/29/2010

There are no women in computer science because they don't enroll in computer science classes, period. It has nothing to do with capability, but a lot to do with interest.

[bkrider9]

11:26 PM on 05/29/2010

Agreed.

[JStading]

06:29 PM on 05/29/2010

"I think women are generally less susceptible to distraction and are better able to focus"

Which would explain why women were in a stunning minority of college students until recent years. The reason for this inversion has little to do with biological drive (and in fact, I believe that a similar argument suggesting male biological superiority for anything would likely result in a deafening outcry) and far more to do with the disparate attention female students received starting around 1990 and extending through present day. I remember being a little boy in class and being told that "Take Your Daughters to Work" day was just for girls and that I would be punished if I tried to go with my father. I similarly remember that many of the curriculums for the various courses were tilted heavily towards the interests of the girls in the school (e.g. my 8th grade honors English class assigned books focused on love on the prairie. Books like Ethan Frome were assigned, not particularly engaging for a 12 year old boy).

Education policy tends to be a pendulum. It has swung too far in favor of girls and has begun to detriment boys. It will likely begin swinging back soon (we have already seen a shift in this direction as schools and parents are increasingly skeptical of behavior control medications that were doled out to boys as a matter of course when I was a student).

[bkrider9]

03:08 PM on 05/28/2010

Women are superior to men in general, physically, intellectually and spiritually.

See Ashley Montagu, "The Natural Superiority of Women".

Regarding math, women are as accomplished as men:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/25/science/sci-math25

In the past lower women's scores was due to cultural factors. For example: teachers expected females to become housewives, and therefore attended to and encouraged female students far less than boys.

[x004Ronin]

11:40 PM on 05/28/2010

Women are superior to men in general, physically, intellectually and spiritually.

Right, that's why female Olympic athletes are faster and stronger than male athletes, right? Oops, not.
That's why Nobel Prize winners in the sciences tend to be mostly women, right? Oops, not.
Spiritually - how the heck do you measure "superiority in spirituality"?

I agree that women aren't really worse than math than men (the disparity is due to cultural factors), but all your other claims are bunk.

[bkrider9]

01:06 AM on 05/29/2010

1. Physical strength is measured in different ways. Men have more powerful muscles, but women have greater endurance, especially in difficult life circumstances such as war, natural disaster. They are generally healthier. Montagu goes into great detail on this.
2. Nobel prizes have been given to men during a time when women were discouraged or actively prevented from entering higher education and the professions. The Ivy League universities opened their doors to women only beginning in the late 1960s, so they have come a very very long way very quickly.
3. By spirituality you can understand basic qualities like responsibility, honesty, etc. One of the greatest recent proofs of this is that the Grameen Bank, the first micro-credit organization to lend to the very poor, has long had a policy of lending only to women, primarily because they have consistently proven themselves extremely reliable whereas men have proven themselves to be unacceptably irresponsible and selfish. Women also are far more responsible in caring for children than men.

[x004Ronin]

11:42 PM on 05/28/2010

*at math than men

[sporty1]

10:14 AM on 05/28/2010

Yeah but they still won't put out

[Norge]

10:27 AM on 05/28/2010

Well Sporty 1

They do not put up with hunters when they know you have two fine hands for a 10 finger discount.

Norge

[madisonhack]

09:58 PM on 05/28/2010

Is that what those smart women told YOU?

[Norge]

10:11 AM on 05/28/2010

Where have all the young men gone,
gone to soldiers every one

when will they ever learn
when will they ever learn

where have all the soldiers gone
gone to graveyards every one

when will they ever learn
when will they ever learn

[dogface]

09:44 AM on 05/28/2010

Lessons from the higher education mafia over the past 8 to 15 years.
1) Whether crops, teen pregnancy or women on campus - whatever one subsidizes one will have more of;
2) If you're the parent of boys prepare to pay full price (unless one is a Rhodes Scholar);
3) If you're the parent of girls, you hit the lottery (regardless of whether the girls' credentials match or are lower than are the boys from the same family) - enroll initially as an engineering, math, computer, science major to be awarded a near free-ride while the kid completes the basic courses over the first two years, then there is plenty of time to change majors;
4) Rather than taking the harder course of raising everyone through and in education, the government and higher education policy was to pick winners - despite that having virtually no record of long term success.

[sporty1]

10:16 AM on 05/28/2010

Ha you make interesting point kimo sabe

[A dean89]

08:38 AM on 05/28/2010

So, what's the point, does that women are more educated than men, hmm... I don't think so. Generally men are much more smarter than women in certain expects. Same thing goes for women.

[pfc1369]

03:36 PM on 05/28/2010

They are certainly "much more smarter" in every "expects" than you, pal.

[madisonhack]

09:59 PM on 05/28/2010

Could that post be sarcasm, or is he that dumb?

[A dean89]

07:33 AM on 05/31/2010

I didn't invite you to speak, that's my view, what a moron. I,m trying to be fair and square.