Big man on campus likely a woman

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Women's share of college enrollment is at an all-time high as education researchers continue to debate what is causing the trend of more women than men going to college, and what the future impact of the trend could be.

"It is a topic of some conversation within the admissions community, and they certainly are looking at it," said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "I don't think we have a proper understanding of what would be at the root."

"It's well-documented that there's a female majority on college campuses," said Jacqueline King, director of the American Council on Education's Center for Policy Analysis and author of a 2006 study on the topic. "I think where there's not a consensus is why this is the case."

Historically, more men than women have graduated college. In 1870, the first year a national survey was conducted, 7,993 men and 1,378 women received bachelor's degrees. But by the 1980s, women were outpacing men and that trend has continued through today, even though overall numbers for both groups continue to rise.

In the 2003-04 school year, 595,425 men received bachelor's degrees, compared with 804,117 women, according to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. The department's fall 2004 numbers show that 57.2 percent of college enrollees were women -- the highest percentage ever.

The department estimates that by the time the 2013-14 school year rolls around, women receiving degrees will outnumber men by more than 300,000.

"Every year, the situation gets worse and worse and worse," said Tom Mortensen, a higher-education policy analyst who publishes Postsecondary Education Opportunity newsletter and has beat the drums on the issue since the 1990s.

"It's a very serious and long-standing problem, and there's no solution in sight," said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and author of "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men."

Some, however, say the trend has been overblown and misunderstood. Sara Mead, a senior policy analyst with the Education Sector, a liberal think tank, said the public has wrongly been led to think that boys are doing worse than girls.

"The rate at which men go to college has not fallen; women have just increased their numbers more rapidly," she said. In a report titled "The Truth About Boys and Girls," she says, "The idea that women might actually surpass men in some areas ... seems hard for many people to swallow. Thus, boys are routinely characterized as 'falling behind' even as they improve in absolute terms."