Gender Diversity in Higher Education: “The Women are Fine, but the Men are Not?”

In the United States, women across all boundaries from race and ethnicity to socioeconomic class and region have achieved, according to the data, unprecedented success in higher education, as evidenced by their enrollment numbers, graduation rates, and professional and postgraduate participation. Bonner (2001) described this notion of success utilizing U.S. Census data, showing that women accounted for large increases in enrollment in degree-granting institutions of higher education during the late 1980s. From 1988 to 1998, while higher education enrollment for men rose by 6% nationwide, enrollment increased by 16% for women. Moreover, enrollment of women in U.S. graduate schools outpaced men during that same decade, with the number of women increasing by 60% compared to an increase of 17% for men (see Table 2).