Women's Share of Degree Earners

In this edition of our newsletter on higher education trends and topics, we explore the gender imbalance in higher education today and how women's share of degree earners has grown over time.

Women earn nearly 6 out of every 10 degrees awarded in the U.S. today, and women are expected to continue to grow as a share of degree earners in the future.

• It was not so long ago that women were excluded (formally or informally) from large swaths of higher education

• But today, women account for about 60% of degree earners

• This is higher than women's share of total enrollment, meaning women are more likely to be retained and persist to graduation than men (Notably, the Department of Education does not require colleges to report retention by gender, but we can infer that if women account for 55% of all students and 60% of degree earners, they are staying enrolled and graduating at higher rates than men.)

• Anecdotally, we have heard that men were less likely to enroll in college programs during the pandemic (partially due to male-dominated fields like Automotive Tech being more difficult to deliver online); more data released later this year will tell us more

• Pandemic-related trends combined with labor market dynamics mean that women are likely to continue to comprise a growing share of degree earners in the U.S.

  The Implication

  Many institutions strive for gender parity, but the reality is that matching national trends means a gender balance that looks more like 60/40 than 50/50. Additionally, if men are not completing degrees at the same rates as women (as the data imply), what is contributing to this attrition and how can it be improved?