In pictures

Next to the elevator on the 7th floor are two photos. One of the class of 1932




and one of the class of 1957.



The 1932 class is mixed gender-wise, but the 1957 class is almost entirely male.

Back when college and grad school were more for the elite, the journalism school had gender balance. After the war when returning vets went to school and women went back home, women were not attending j-school as much.

The 2008 class picture is more women than men--in a time when women are out-pacing men in undergraduate degrees, etc.



Also, in terms of awards, for the past two years, 60 percent of the Pulitzer Fellowships went to women.

Some data visualizations which might prove handy

So according to the above graph, sourced from the data which Eliza kindly tracked down, it looks like the trend started in the 70's and pretty much continued on a smooth path upward. That seems concurrent with the rise of serious feminism, the ERA, etc.

This data, however, sourced from Cornell's graduate schools, shows a lot of parallel lines. Male and female seem to be trending up and down at the same rates, and not converging. Note the drop in the early 90's -- economic slump? The first Gulf War?


















And this one, sourced from a document put out by the folks who do GRE testing, shows nearly the same trend lines, complete with a dip in the early 90's.

Underlying Causes

Below is a link to an article from the National Bureau of Economic Research Web site, which takes a stab at trying to explain why women outnumber men is college.

Why Do Women Outnumber Men in College?

Here are some of the reasons that the author, columnist David R. Francis, sites in the article:

• In the 1950s, most women majored in education, English, and literature. A decade later, young women were aiming higher than becoming teachers and social workers, and so they took more science and math courses in high school. As a result, their twelfth grade math and reading test scores increased relative to those of boys.
  
• The age of female college graduates' first marriage increased by about 2.5 years in the 1970s, raising the median marriage age to 25. This delay allowed many women to focus on their education instead of searching for a mate.
  
• The popularization of the "pill" allowed women to plan their futures better.
• Changes in government policies reassured women that job discrimination by employers against women would not be tolerated.
• Cognitive development: boys tend to mature more slowly than girls, and as a result, they have more behavioral problems in school than girls, who are more diligents about their studies. These factors can explain virtually the entire female advantage in getting into college.
• In 1980s and 1990s, teenage boys had a higher rate of arrests and school suspensions than teenage girls.

Affirmative Action For Men

Below is a a very poignant blog post that appeared on the web site insidehighered.com in 2006 following a New York Times article about the widening gender gap in American colleges.

Affirmative Action For Men

Many institutions of secondary education are now starting to consider affirmative action as a way to level out the playing field by bringing in more male students.

The legality of it is a bit tricky, though: Under Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972, institutions that are receiving federal funds cannot discriminate applicants based on their gender bars. But Title IX has a loophole: it does not cover private institutions, such as Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, which embraced affirmative action. According to the latest data, 56 percent of Kenyon students are female.

But that's not the end of the story. It gets more complicated once you consider possible ulterior motives that colleges may have when instituting a policy of affirmative action that favors men: the possibility to beef up male athletics programs, which typically bring in more revenue than their female counterparts. Title IX, however, is very clear on that: athletics participation has to demonstrate “proportionality”of male to female athletes, and this rule applies to private institutions as well. This statute poses a challenge to colleges that are majority female.

Increases early and in most (but not all) degree categories

Women earn more undergraduate and graduate degrees than men. In 2002-03 women earned 60 percent of all associate's degrees, 58 percent of all bachelor's degrees, and 59 percent of all master's degrees.

Today, women make up 48.3 percent of medical school matriculants. (up from 42.7 percent in 1996)

Today, women make up 46.7 percent of law students.
(Forty years ago, it was 6 percent. That number climbed to 34 percent in just 12 years.)

Women earn 45.1 percent of the doctoral degrees (across all fields).

"It's amazing what happens when you take the shackles off," said my mother, who earned an MBA (one of few women in the b-school at the time) and a PhD before having me.

But, in nearly every category of the sciences (engineering, physics, etc.), women lag behind men in getting PhDs.

Also, business schools continue to hover around 35 percent female enrollment. A 2004 Business Week article cites the lack of women in top board positions in business and the timing of the program (most b-school matriculants have a few years of work experience, unlike med school or law school, at which point more women are planning to start families). The article also mentioned salary considerations, gender stereo-typing of management and curriculums full of golf outings.

At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust

This 2006 article in The Times is worth reading. It's comprehensive. And it brings up the issue of video games (one of Gregory's theories).

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?pagewanted=1

One theory by Linda Sax, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA

From an article Sax wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education:

"We have indeed reached a critical juncture in the history of women and men in higher education. Today — decades after the women's movement started what became monumental gains for female students in terms of access, equity, and opportunity — the popular notion is that gender equity has been achieved. Some higher-education statistics do paint a rosy picture for women, who now are the majority of undergraduates (about 58 percent nationally), earn better college grades than men do, and are more likely than men to complete college.

Although it is easy to view those facts as a clear indication of the progress made by women — and of the challenges now facing men — interpretation of them depends on how deeply one looks. In fact, the real story is not that men are not going to college. Rather, college enrollments are on the rise for both genders; it's just that women's enrollments are rising faster than men's.

As reports by the American Council on Education and the Education Sector have told us, the growing gender gap in college enrollments is attributable primarily to increases in college attendance among women from groups historically underrepresented in higher education — namely, African-Americans, Latinas, older students, and those of lower socioeconomic status — while enrollment gains among men in those groups have come at a much slower pace. The significant gender gaps in education among those groups show that we need a serious examination of the forces that keep men out of college. The gaps also have important implications for colleges, as female students and male students are becoming increasingly dissimilar."