Women in the University

66.2% of college administrators are women and 33.8% of college administrators are men. Women have dominated college administration for decades. Their administrations are coterminous with the decline of American higher education.

Just 41% of students enrolled in a postsecondary institution in fall 2020 were men. For every man, there are now almost two women attending college:

In 1970, men outnumbered women in college, accounting for 59% of undergraduate enrollment in two-year institutions and 57% in four-year institutions. This was partly due to the high numbers of men enrolling for the purpose of avoiding conscription during the Vietnam War. In fact, the gender enrollment gap closed sharply as soon as the draft ended in 1973. By 1980, gender was perfectly balanced in four-year colleges, and women outnumbered men in two-year schools, accounting for 55% of enrollment in those institutions. Since 1980, the female-to-male ratio in two-year college enrollment continued to increase until it hit about 1.4 in 1995, stabilizing at that point. The relative female-to-male ratio in four-year college enrollment, however, increased steadily throughout this time period, reaching 1.3 in the fall of 2019.

At every level, men are graduating at lower rates than women. Men who enrolled in a four-year college in 2013 were ten percentage points less likely than women to graduate within 4 years.

Over 1.1 million women received a bachelor’s degree in the 2018-19 academic year compared to fewer than 860,000 men; put differently, about 74 men received a bachelor’s degree for every 100 women. Even fewer men graduate with an associate or master’s degree, relative to women. Doctoral degree conferral is the most gender-balanced, though even here 54% of degrees are conferred to women.