Why Are More Women Than Men Going to College? [View all]

[ismnotwasm]

Women are attending and obtaining degrees from U.S. colleges and universities at a pace exceeding that of men. In concordance with the burgeoning women’s rights movement that exploded in the 1960s and 1970s and provided a plethora of new opportunities for advancement, this trend has translated into ever-increasing college enrollment for women.

On some co-ed campuses, the girls outnumber the boys by a ratio of almost three-to-one – an astounding figure.
First, the stark numbers.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), between 1999 and 2009, overall college enrollment increased by 38 percent, from 14.8 million to 20.4 million. But, over that time span, the number of enrolled females climbed by 40 percent, versus 35 percent for men.

But why is this happening? Are young women simply more ambitious and harder-working? Are men becoming increasingly disengaged from academia? It is unclear.

Sax cautions that while women are indeed attending college in record numbers, men are attending in record numbers as well.

“What has changed is the relative balance between men and women, since women's enrollments have risen faster than men's,” she said.

“Further, the growing gender gap in college enrollments is attributable primarily to increases in college attendance among women from groups historically under-represented in higher education -- namely, African Americans, Latinas, older students, and lower-income students.”

An article in the Wall Street Journal recently stated: “Women now graduate from college in greater numbers than men and enter the workforce at similar rates. Yet at every career stage, men are more likely to advance than women.”

Dominic Barton, global managing director of McKinsey & Co., told the Journal: “The number of women participating in the workforce went from about 41 percent to 56 percent over a 40-year period. If they didn't join the work force, that would have been a 25 percent hit to GDP.”

He added: “But while we've seen a lot of progress over a 40-year period, our sense is that it's begun to plateau. I look at our own firm on that front, where we're trying to find the best talent in the world, and 25 percent of our intake are women, even though 58 percent of the college graduates are women.”

Barton further explained that at the entry-level, 53 percent of new hires are women. However, their participation rate steadily decrease as one ascends the corporate ladder -- 37 percent in lower-middle management; 28 percent at the vice-presidency level; then only 14 percent at the executive committee; then finally only a pitiful 3 percent at the highest echelons of corporate America.

I was wondering about this, after it was brought up-- not the gender gap itself so much-- this I've known about--(No one can quite explain Why--I sullied myself reading quite a few rw opinion pieces on the 'why' of the gender gap. Lets just say it was disgusting.). But who is attending college and what happens after. That was about what I expected.


http://www.ibtimes.com/why-are-more-women-men-going-college-213255