2008 Woodie Awards
Girl problems? Women outnumber men at Mac
By: Jakob Wartman
Issue date: 3/31/06 Section: News
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Macalester is currently experiencing a trend that is sweeping the nation: females outnumbering their male counterparts on college campuses. Women are outperforming and out-achieving men in high school and more and more are finding their way into the college classroom.
At the start of the 2005 school year, males accounted for only 42 percent of Macalester's full-time student body-a ratio that seems to have become the norm in recent years. Since 1995, Macalester's student body has been at least 55 percent female.
“I have been doing admissions long enough that I remember when we needed to consciously appeal to women,” Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Lorne Robinson said. “Now, if anything, it is the exact opposite.”
The trend has affected all college campuses struggling to maintain an even male to female ratio. Men, who in 1970 represented 58 percent of the national undergraduate student body, are now the minority at 44 percent, and demographers predict that by 2009 only 42 percent of all graduates will be male.
Liberal arts colleges in particular have seen the extremes of this trend. Macalester's peer colleges vary, but many are around 40 percent male.
Low male enrollment is also a problem affecting major universities, both public, such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison (45 percent male) and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (40 percent), and private, including Loyola University, Chicago (34 percent).
However, colleges with business and engineering schools have been able to buck the trend and attract significantly more male applicants than colleges without these programs, Robinson said.
Colleges have a vested interest in keeping a fairly even male to female ratio because disproportionately female student body can lead to less interest for both males and females in the campus, Kenyon College's Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jennifer Britz wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.
At the start of the 2005 school year, males accounted for only 42 percent of Macalester's full-time student body-a ratio that seems to have become the norm in recent years. Since 1995, Macalester's student body has been at least 55 percent female.
“I have been doing admissions long enough that I remember when we needed to consciously appeal to women,” Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Lorne Robinson said. “Now, if anything, it is the exact opposite.”
The trend has affected all college campuses struggling to maintain an even male to female ratio. Men, who in 1970 represented 58 percent of the national undergraduate student body, are now the minority at 44 percent, and demographers predict that by 2009 only 42 percent of all graduates will be male.
Liberal arts colleges in particular have seen the extremes of this trend. Macalester's peer colleges vary, but many are around 40 percent male.
Low male enrollment is also a problem affecting major universities, both public, such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison (45 percent male) and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (40 percent), and private, including Loyola University, Chicago (34 percent).
However, colleges with business and engineering schools have been able to buck the trend and attract significantly more male applicants than colleges without these programs, Robinson said.
Colleges have a vested interest in keeping a fairly even male to female ratio because disproportionately female student body can lead to less interest for both males and females in the campus, Kenyon College's Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jennifer Britz wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.
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