Gender Disparities Leveling Off: Gender Equity in Higher Education: 2010

According to the American Council on Education’s new report, Gender Equity in Higher Education: 2010, the question of a “boys’ crisis” first appeared in American public discourse in the late 1990s (1). The common narrative suggested that after gaining unprecedented access to education, women and girls came to dominate the classroom, resulting in devastating declines in educational success for men and boys. Like many tales that contradict long-standing popular perception and pit one gender against another, this one has had staying power. The debate has raged on among researchers (see Thomas Bartlett’s review of boyhood studies, 2009), the policy world (as the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights currently considers whether nineteen colleges are violating Title IX by giving men preference in admissions) (Inside Higher Ed 2009), and even in the pages of On Campus with Women.

This February, the American Council on Education returned once again to the question of the boys’ crisis with its 2010 update of Gender Equity in Higher Education, previously published in 2000, 2003, and 2006. Written by assistant vice president for policy analysis Jacqueline E. King, the report details men’s and women’s participation in higher education across race, socioeconomic status, and age. Like previous reports, it underscores that some—but by no means all—men are struggling. It also expands on the previous reports’ findings by including more data on Hispanic men’s notably low levels of educational achievement and on factors such as institutional type.

Illustrating the data with a series of compelling graphs and tables, the report describes patterns that are now well-known among those who follow higher education demographics. In both high school and college diploma attainment, white women slightly outpace white men, followed by African American women and then African American men, with Hispanic women and finally Hispanic men trailing considerably behind (3, 14). Significantly, though, the report finds that within each racial group, the gap between men’s and women’s college enrollment has leveled off in recent years—with one exception: the gender gap between Hispanic women and men of traditional college age (v). The report points to immigration patterns to explain this difference (one third of young adult Hispanic Americans are now foreign-born men, who as a group have lower levels of high school completion than their U.S.-born peers and are thus often ineligible to attend college) (4). It also points to the significant fact that “despite progress [in bachelor’s degree attainment] by African Americans of both genders and Hispanic women, the gaps between these groups and whites are larger today than they were in the 1960s and ‘70s” (15).

In addition to pointing out racial differences in enrollment and completion, the report details differences in enrollment across socioeconomic status for both dependent and independent students. While dependent undergraduates in the lowest quartile are 57 percent female, only 53 percent of middle-income students are women; and in the upper quartile, the gender gap levels out, and women are 49 percent of students (11). Among economically independent undergraduates, the gender gaps are more significant: 64 percent of low income, 63 percent of middle income, and 58 percent of high-income students are women (12). The gaps vary across race, and the report includes disaggregated figures, although the general pattern holds for all racial groups (12).

These gaps for economically independent students are almost certainly related to the significant number of older students now attending college: thirty-six percent of undergraduate students are 25 or older, and approximately three-fifths of these students are women (9). In contrast, 54 percent of traditionally aged college students are female (8). Expounding on these differences, the report suggests that older women have greater economic incentives to return to school than do older men (20)—which is perhaps one reason why they constitute 69 percent of all undergraduates at private for-profit institutions (compared to under 60 percent at all other institutional types) (12).

These figures seem to confirm that American women are doing quite well in comparison to their male peers (although men still slightly outnumber women in PhD and MD attainment and far outpace them in fields like engineering) (vi, 17). But King is clear in articulating the take-away lesson: the gender gap, she says, “should not obscure the larger disparities that exist by income and race/ethnicity for students of both genders,” and moreover, “education is not a zero-sum game.” Both women and men are earning more degrees, even if the growing population has resulted in level rates of growth (22). Thus the gender wars in education are something of a moot point: it’s access to education for particular groups of students (particularly men of color), and the quality of that education for all students, that matters.

A PDF of the report, which includes a wealth of data variously disaggregated by race, age, socioeconomic status, and other factors, is available for purchase at www.acenet.edu.

—Kathryn Peltier Campbell, editor

References

Bartlett, T. 2009. The puzzle of boys. Chronicle of Higher Education, November 22. chronicle.com/article/The-Puzzle-of-Boys/49193.

Inside Higher Ed. 2009. Quick takes, December 17. www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/12/17/qt. 

King, J. 2010. Gender Equity in Higher Education: 2010. Washington, DC: American Council on Education.