A headline on the front page of The New York Times last year read, “At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust.” The article described growing gender gaps in college enrollment and academic performance and raised questions about what, if anything, should be done about “the new gender divide.” Many people reacted strongly to the piece, with some applauding the academic successes of women and others lamenting the seemingly dismal future facing today’s young men.
We have indeed reached a critical juncture in the history of women and men in higher education. Today — decades after the women’s movement started what became monumental gains for female students in terms of access, equity, and opportunity — the popular notion is that gender equity has been achieved. Some higher-education statistics do paint a rosy picture for women, who now are the majority of undergraduates (about 58 percent nationally), earn better college grades than men do, and are more likely than men to complete college.
Although it is easy to view those facts as a clear indication of the progress made by women — and of the challenges now facing men — interpretation of them depends on how deeply one looks. In fact, the real story is not that men are not going to college. Rather, college enrollments are on the rise for both genders; it’s just that women’s enrollments are rising faster than men’s.
As reports by the American Council on Education and the Education Sector have told us, the growing gender gap in college enrollments is attributable primarily to increases in college attendance among women from groups historically underrepresented in higher education — namely, African-Americans, Latinas, older students, and those of lower socioeconomic status — while enrollment gains among men in those groups have come at a much slower pace. The significant gender gaps in education among those groups show that we need a serious examination of the forces that keep men out of college. The gaps also have important implications for colleges, as female students and male students are becoming increasingly dissimilar.
I have had the opportunity to examine shifts in college enrollment through the data collected by the nationwide Freshman Survey, housed at the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles. Since 1966 the survey has annually polled hundreds of thousands of entering college students on a variety of topics, such as their family and academic backgrounds, interest in certain fields, intellectual and social self-confidence, political attitudes, and expectations for college and life after graduation. I have found that although women have become much more likely to attend college, they still encounter many old challenges and also face some new obstacles. Three are particularly hard to overcome.
The confidence gap. Despite earning better grades and being more likely to complete a college degree than men, women evaluate themselves lower than men do on nearly every assessment of their academic abilities. When asked to rate their intellectual self-confidence compared to that of their peers, for example, nearly two-thirds of male first-year college students put themselves in the top two categories — “above average” or “highest 10 percent” — compared to less than half of the women. Similarly, women rate their mathematical abilities significantly lower than do men.
Gender gaps of that magnitude have appeared on the Freshman Survey for more than four decades. Even worse, the difference becomes larger during college, as gains in intellectual self-confidence are greater for men than women, while declines in mathematical confidence are more substantial for women than men.
Some readers may question the importance of women’s lower academic confidence. After all, if women are getting good grades and graduating from college, why should we worry that they rate themselves lower than men do? Perhaps women are just being overly modest, or men too boastful. Indeed, research does show that women tend to underestimate their abilities, while men’s academic achievement often does not measure up to their opinions of themselves. However, research also tells us that low ratings of academic self-confidence, in and of themselves, can limit students’ futures.
That is particularly clear when it comes to women’s participation in the male-dominated fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, collectively known as the STEM disciplines. Studies have found that, regardless of aptitude, having low confidence in one’s overall academic abilities makes one less likely to choose a STEM field as an undergraduate major or for a graduate program.
The stress gap. Women enter college with higher levels of stress and depression, and with lower ratings of their own emotional and physical health, and those gender differences persist over four years of college. The gaps are partly a function of differences in how women and men choose to spend their time. Men in college spend more time than women do playing sports, partying, watching television, and playing video games. Women spend more time than men do studying, meeting with instructors, joining student groups, doing volunteer work, and performing household or family chores.
In other words, men spend more time on activities that can be considered ways to relieve stress, while women devote themselves to a range of responsibilities that tend to induce stress, at least as they attempt to balance them all.
The economic gap. Women’s financial situation as they enter college is an obvious cause of stress, but it naturally affects more than their emotional health. Although median family incomes for college students are on the rise for both genders, the gap between men’s and women’s family income has increased over the past 40 years.
That is, of course, mostly a function of the college-enrollment trends described above. As more women from lower socioeconomic classes choose to attend college, the average income for female college students falls further behind men’s. To be sure, financial concerns weigh heavily on both genders, and the majority of men and women in their first year of college worry that they may not have enough money to complete their educations. But one effect of the greater economic difficulty that women face is that they are now more likely than men to have jobs while in college.
What can colleges do to help reduce the gender gap? As the proportion of men declines on campuses around the country, many institutions are scrambling to attract more male students. Some colleges are promoting engineering or athletics programs in their marketing materials. Others are adding new programs in those areas.
Although efforts to encourage college attendance among men are important, colleges must also respond to the many challenges facing female college students. First, colleges and universities need to help female students feel competent. Because getting good grades does not guarantee that women will see themselves as academically strong, faculty members and administrators should not discount the concerns of successful female students who nonetheless doubt their ability to do well in their classes, thrive in their majors, or get into graduate schools. Such women may rule out academic or career paths that would bring them satisfaction and success.
Advisers and others who help students with academic decision making should understand the consequences of low self-confidence and know how to help women see their abilities more accurately. For example, the adviser of a female student who wants to drop out of a STEM major should probe more deeply into her reasons. Are her interests changing, or does she lack confidence?
Second, campuses must be equipped to handle the growing number of students — especially women — who experience stress and other mental-health problems during college. Administrators at the highest levels should make it a priority to evaluate which services are most essential, and to find ways to meet the need for them — being particularly mindful of female students who may be thriving academically but still experiencing problems like stress and depression.
Unfortunately, many institutions lack the staff and other resources required to meet the psychological-health needs of students who visit campus clinics, and not every student who could benefit from help seeks it out. Further, as suggested by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, students’ health concerns must be considered from a holistic perspective — taking into consideration the full range of campus influences, including the role of faculty members, peers, academic policies, and the institution’s geographic location and physical layout.
Finally, institutions need to pay special attention to the financial concerns of female students. Colleges should examine whether student aid and work-study opportunities are allocated fairly among women and men, including whether both genders have equal access to employment that pays well, offers good working conditions, and is relevant to the students’ career interests.
So are women really leaving men in the dust? Clearly not. Such thinking is counterproductive, as it pits one entire group against the other and allows us to presume that women, at least, are doing just fine. Rather than worrying about whether one gender is winning or losing the race, we need to worry about the fact that some members of both genders face serious obstacles in reaching their personal, educational, and professional potential.
Linda J. Sax is an associate professor of higher education and organizational change in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of The Gender Gap in College: Reinforcing Differences, forthcoming from Jossey-Bass.
http://chronicle.com Section: Diversity in Academe Volume 54, Issue 5, Page B46