Women outnumber men on college campuses in Colorado by nearly 24,000, evidence that the K-12 system isn’t preparing boys as well for college and that decent-paying jobs are luring them straight out of high school, experts say.
The gender gap has leveled off at 53 percent women to 47 percent men at the state’s four-year universities but continues to widen at community colleges.
Almost 60 percent of students at the state’s 15 two-year colleges are women, compared with 56.8 percent in 2001, according to the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.
The statistics follow a national trend building since the early 1980s, when the number of women earning bachelor’s degrees surpassed men. Women now earn 56.5 percent of bachelor’s degrees nationally.
“The girls are just thriving in the K-12 system right now, and the boys aren’t,” said Tom Mortenson of the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.
Metropolitan State College of Denver student Chris Bantu, 39, believes many men aren’t attending because they didn’t like elementary school as boys.
“Stereotypes are set up early,” he said.
Experts also attribute women’s increased college attendance to the women’s movement – by middle school, girls know that college will bring them financial success and less dependence on men.
“Women were really actively recruited and supported,” said Georgia Grantham, vice president for enrollment management at Adams State College in Alamosa, where 39.8 percent of students are men. “We’ve seen tremendous results from that.”
The next challenge for colleges is to develop ways to attract men, Grantham said.
The largest gender gaps are at community colleges, where enrollment fluctuates with the economy and demand for specific programs. Nursing, dental hygienist and surgical technician programs – fields dominated by women – are in demand at community colleges because there are jobs in those fields, said Matt Gianneschi, the higher education commission’s chief academic officer.
Also, a significant number of community college students are women in their 40s starting new careers after their children have grown, he said.
And as the economy picks up, young men are more likely to choose decent-paying jobs than sit in class learning skills, Gianneschi said. The booming oil and gas industry offers high-paying jobs for people with no higher education, for example.
At Morgan Community College in Fort Morgan, just 31.7 percent of students are men – down from 37.3 percent in 2001. The local economy is based on agriculture, with a cheese factory, a sugar factory and a beef plant all offering jobs that appeal to young men.
Several of the college’s most popular majors cater to women – nursing, massage therapy and the physical therapy assistant program – but the college also offers auto collision repair, marketing director Mary Zorn said.
The gender gap is “always a concern,” she said. “Do you need to add another program? Are you not meeting the needs of those people?”
When community college recruiters visit high schools, they push male-oriented programs, such as auto service technology, said Rhonda Bentz, spokeswoman for the Colorado Community College System.
Even at four-year schools, degree programs are a solid indicator of gender disparity.
Colorado School of Mines, for example, is 77.4 percent men. And the University of Northern Colorado, traditionally a teacher’s college, is 38.5 percent male.
Students have noticed.
“A single girl has to think about all the hot guys,” said Jennifer Hutton, a 21-year-old student at the Community College of Denver. “Almost all of my classes are mostly women.”
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
