The rise of women undergraduates has been concentrated in liberal-arts schools.
Philadelphia Inquirer, September 8, 2010
By Grant Calder
For the past 20 years or so, women have earned the majority of bachelor’s degrees awarded at American institutions of higher learning. Today, they constitute almost 60 percent of the total undergraduate student body, and even that mark may be exceeded in the near future.
But the story is more nuanced. A closer look reveals that gender ratios in college and university applicant pools vary considerably.
Many state universities enroll roughly equivalent numbers of women and men. Technical universities continue to struggle to attract qualified women. On a recent visit to one of the latter, I was told by the admissions officer who met with me that the proportion of females in incoming classes had almost doubled over the past several years – from around 15 percent to just shy of 30 percent.
Liberal-arts bias
So where are all the women who account for their nearly 60 percent share of the total? At liberal-arts colleges.
And why do female high school seniors apply to this particular type of institution in such large numbers? Because liberal arts colleges are home to some of the best undergraduate programs in the country and, in general, girls are more likely than boys to choose colleges for academic rather than extracurricular reasons.
Professors at liberal-arts colleges often pursue their own research interests, but teaching is typically the top institutional priority. The scholarly achievements of the faculty may receive less attention than their graduates’ success in job placement and graduate-school admission. A couple of years ago, members of the chemistry department at an excellent small college in the South told me with obvious pride that each of their (mostly female) chem majors who had applied to medical schools over the past three years had received at least one offer of a full scholarship – a very impressive return on investment.
Affirmative action
Liberal-arts colleges clearly feel pressure to address the gender imbalance. One sign has been the lengthening “wait lists” these colleges maintain so that they can add students to classes when not enough of those admitted choose to enroll.
Last spring, a high school senior I was working with received notice that she had been “wait-listed” by a school that was her first choice, a New England liberal-arts college. She visited the campus a couple of weeks later and, she said, was told by someone in the admissions office that the college planned to fill any remaining spaces with boys.
The student got the message loud and clear that she would not be admitted. She was understandably disappointed, but the realization helped her shift her focus to the options she already had. In the end, she chose to attend another liberal-arts college, one of the relatively few located in a city. It lacked the traditional college-town setting she had envisioned, but it offered other benefits she had previously overlooked.
The college admissions playing field has never been level. The increasing dominance of girls in many applicant pools, coupled with economic uncertainties, simply means that this continues to be true in new and sometimes unexpected ways.
A good piece, Grant. It never occurred to me that colleges are using waitlists as a “stealth” way to approach gender balance. But of course they would.
Keep those insights coming!
Dodge
Do you support affirmative action?
Jan
Interesting you should ask.
I wrote the piece but not the title or the subheadings.
Someone at the newspaper decided to make it a little more provocative by adding the term “affirmative action” to that section of the article.
I was surprised to see it myself, though they’re right that using the waitlists in order to try to bring in more males is a form of affirmative action.
The colleges just want gender balance. Girls such as the student I mentioned don’t want to be turned down by this particular college simply because they are female. On the other hand they would be less interested in attending that school in the first place, if the student body didn’t include a reasonable number of male students.
A quandary.
Grant
Isn’t that funny…girls will want to attend colleges that have boys…I didn’t think of that…
I say…colleges and universities should accept people who are qualified and it shouldn’t be based on race or gender…
Jan
I agree in principle but if the percentage of girls gets too high at a co-ed college, then they start to lose both female and male applicants. The boys stop applying because they don’t want to be part of too small a minority.
Grant
I am curious…
How does Bryn Mawr College and Vasser and Smith and the rest of the women’s colleges…how do they remain all-women…?
Isn’t this unconstitutional?
My understanding is that women’s colleges and a handful of men’s colleges are allowed to exist because they are private and don’t significantly limit the opportunities of either men or women to attend a wide variety of similar sorts of institutions, even though, they do discriminate on the basis of sex.
But I think this exception only holds for undergraduate program. Graduate programs may not only admit one gender and that includes graduate programs at places such as Bryn Mawr whose excellent PhD programs in archeology and classics, for example, enroll both men and women.
Actually, Vassar went co-ed 30 odd years ago.
Grant
Nicely done, Grant.
Alan
Alan Haas, CEP
EDUCATIONAL FUTURES
http://www.educationalfutures.com
Thanks. Alan.
Hard to keep track of the shifting tides these days.
Even more difficult to figure out what’s coming next.
There was a good column in the Economist (Sept. 4) considering the possibility that the “leading” American universities with their virtual monopoly on global higher ed, could still go the way of GM which seemed 40 years ago to be equally unassailable.
Regards,
Grant
From the Admissionslab.com
College Gender Divisions Remain
Although it’s common knowledge that women are increasingly dominating the college scene, the admissions playing field hasn’t necessarily leveled out.
According to Grant Calder, a college counselor who teaches history at Friends’ Central School in Pennsylvania, gender ratios in college and university applicant pools vary considerably. Although women constitute almost 60 percent of the total undergraduate student body, they tend to be concentrated in liberal-arts schools, he said.
Many state universities enroll roughly equivalent numbers of women and men, he said. Technical universities, meanwhile, continue to struggle to attract qualified women.
The reason for this Calder suggests, is because women are more likely to choose colleges for academic rather than extracurricular reasons and liberal arts colleges are home to some of the best undergraduate programs in the country.
“The college admissions playing field has never been level,” Calder said. “The increasing dominance of girls in many applicant pools, coupled with economic uncertainties, simply means that this continues to be true in new and sometimes unexpected ways.”