Abby Terry, a junior at Miami University in Oxford, sees the gender gap when she goes to class.

        “All of my classes are dominated by girls, and the guys are intimidated,” she says.

        The minority male population may be slowly losing its voice in college, she says. “I think they're scared of offending someone.”

        Women have outnumbered men on campuses across the country since 1987, and the gap has slowly widened each year. Federal statistics released this summer show that women make up 57 percent of all college students nationwide.

        Last year at Miami University, 55 percent of the student population was female. At Xavier University, women accounted for almost 58 percent of the student body and 53 percent of the degrees awarded.

        Women accounted for 52.7 percent of the enrollment at University of Cincinnati, 52 percent at University of Kentucky and 51 percent at Ohio State University.

        Some experts fear that if the trend continues, men could become a distinct minority on college campuses within the next few decades.

        Men won't necessarily disappear from campus, says Thomas Mortenson, a national expert on college trends through his work as senior scholar at the Center for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. “But I can tell you that we're going to continue on that trajectory for the foreseeable future because of the ways boys are not graduating high school, not going on to college (and) not completing college.”

        That's bad news for everyone, Mr. Mortenson says. He noted that although men make up 51 percent of the college-age population, they receive just 44 percent of the bachelor's degrees awarded. This is the smallest proportion since 1946, at the end of World War II, when men received 43.1 percent of bachelor's degrees — a number that jumped to 76 percent after the war with the passage of the G.I. Bill.

        Mr. Mortenson says he expects that percentage to drop to the point where men will receive only 35 percent of bachelor degrees within the next few decades, unless something is done to help men succeed in school.

Women make progress

        The bottom line, he says, is that “women have made simply stunning progress throughout the educational system over the last 30 years. Men have not.”

        In a recent report, he wrote: “In a word, males are failing in the educational system. They are failing compared to women, failing compared to the needs of a college-educated work force, and they are most certainly failing to achieve the potential of their own lives.”

        It's great that society has done so much to help women succeed in school and in the work force, but now the same effort needs to be made for men — or we're in for serious problems, Mr. Mortenson says.

        “There will be twice as many educated women as educated men,” he says. “But by the time they see it coming, it will be too late to address it. You do not manufacture college-educated men out of thin air. It takes decades of investment to get to that point.”

        Despite efforts to keep a balanced ratio, most colleges and universities are reporting an increasing number of women students.

        Brown University in Providence, R.I., for example, has averaged about 54 percent women for the past several years, spokesman Mark Nickel said.

        Jan Wenzel, spokeswoman for the University of Rhode Island, said about 58 percent of the students there are women, and they're more likely to be found in what used to be traditionally male majors — especially the pharmacy program, where women have become the majority.

        And even though more students are attending college than ever before, the increase is attributed primarily to women.

        Mr. Mortenson said the number of college-age people ages 18 to 24 has increased from 5.1 million in 1967 to 9.5 million in 2000.

        But during that time, the percentage of young men attending college decreased from 33.1 percent in 1967 to 32.6 percent in 2000, while the percentage of women in that age bracket attending college increased from 19.2 percent to 38.4 percent.

        Nationally, college enrollment first hit the 50-50 mark in 1982, and remained constant until 1987, when women first outnumbered men.

        And they're not showing any signs of relinquishing their reign.

        Mr. Mortenson said women are breaking into every field. Women now outnumber men in medical and law schools, and they're increasing their ranks in business, science and math programs as well.

        It's part of an overall shift toward the increased presence of women in the work force, and the societal shift to jobs that favor the talents offered by women, Mr. Mortenson says. “Women usually have better social and communications skills, and they're better at networking, and these are the kinds of things that are important for success.

        “The challenge now is to prepare little boys for jobs other than farming or construction or any of the old heavy-lifting jobs that men kind of held out and did well in for a long time. There is literally no future for boys who think they're going to get these high-wage, low-skill jobs.”

        So society has to push them forward in the education system, to retain gender equity in schools and in the work force, he said.

Boys less focused

        High school and college experts cite a variety of reasons for the gender shift on college campuses, from males dropping out of high school at higher rates (especially among minority groups) to females being clearer about their educational goals at earlier ages.

        “The girls are much more focused early on about what they want to do for a career,” says Judy Tucker, school counselor at the Feinstein High School in Providence. “They come in in ninth and 10th grade and they have plans for what they want to do when they get out of high school, where the boys start later — sometimes too late for them to pick up the extra science, math or foreign language (class) that will make them competitive at the college level.”

        Boys are also more susceptible to “distractions” on the streets, Ms. Tucker notes. They're more likely to want to hang out with friends, or get involved in other activities — legal and illegal — that they find more interesting than school.

        Indeed, Mr. Mortenson says, a major contributing factor to the discrepancy between men and women on campus — especially among minorities — is that more college-age males are being jailed than ever before.

        “The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world,” he notes, and the vast majority of inmates are young men.

        Then again, some boys simply don't want to go to college.

        They may find jobs, ranging from construction work to computer programming, that don't require a college degree. “If they've got a full-time job that's paying them $10 to $12 an hour, some of them may be opting for that,” Ms. Tucker said.

        But it's often a short-sighted decision, she says. “It's great for a kid in high school to make that kind of money, but 10 years down the line, or 20 years down the line, where is that job going? You can triple your salary with graduate degrees.”

        Still, it's tough to convince an 18-year-old computer whiz about the value of a college degree when he's been offered “Blue Cross and $30,000 a year,” notes Louis Toro, who is director of guidance at Classical High School, a college-oriented public school in Providence. But, he said, the computer industry is changing so quickly that what they're doing now will soon be obsolete, so they can still benefit from college training.

        While college officials say they're making a concerted effort to attract men as well as women, women on college campuses have to deal with the dearth of men on campus today.

        Dating has become an issue. Some young women feel the competition for the available single men.

        “There's higher expectation for women than guys, as far as looks go,” Miami junior Greg Piedel says.

        Erin Wallace, also a junior at Miami, has heard students talk about how female competition is less than healthy.

        “I heard in a class that since there's more competition, that might be a reason for higher numbers of eating disorders,” she says.
        Laura Meade Kirk of The Providence Journal and Mike Pulfer and Ellen Blevens of The Cincinnati Enquirer contributed to this report.

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