PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Nicole Bessette, a freshman at Rhode Island College, was upset when she arrived on campus and quickly discovered that women outnumber men by more than two to one.
Fresh out of high school, she was looking forward to the opportunity to meet new friends - including a fresh crop of men. But they're few and far between at RIC, where women comprise nearly 70 percent of the student body.
"There's like two boys in every class," bemoaned Ingrid Rothe, 21, a junior from Coventry, R.I. "The honors program is even worse. There's like one boy."
"It's disappointing," said Bessette, 19, of Pawtucket, R.I. The lack of men not only affects her social life; it affects class discussions, which she believes could benefit from more male perspective. "It would just add some different opinions," she said.
But the numbers aren't likely to change anytime soon.
Women have outnumbered men on college campuses across the country since 1987, and the gap has slowly widened each year. Federal statistics released this summer show that women now comprise 57 percent of all college students nationwide.
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Some experts fear that if this trend continues, men could become a distinct minority on college campuses within the next few decades.
Men won't necessarily disappear from campus, said Thomas Mortenson, a national expert on college trends through his work as senior scholar at the Center for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. "But I can tell you that we're going to continue on that trajectory for the foreseeable future because of the ways boys are not graduating high school, not going on to college (and) not completing college."
That's bad news for everyone, Mortenson said. He noted that although men make up 51 percent of the college-age population, they receive just 44 percent of the bachelor's degrees awarded in the United States. This is the smallest proportion since 1946, at the end of World War II, when men received 43.1 percent of bachelor's degrees - a number that jumped to 76 percent at the end of the war, with the passage of the GI Bill.
Mortenson said he expects that percentage to drop even further, to the point where men will receive only 35 percent of bachelor degrees within the next few decades, unless something is done to help men succeed in school.
The bottom line, he said, is that "Women have made simply stunning progress throughout the educational system over the last 30 years. Men have not."
"In a word, males are failing in the educational system," he wrote in a recent report. "They are failing compared to women, failing compared to the needs of a college-educated work force and they are most certainly failing to achieve the potential of their own lives."
It's great that society has done so much to help women succeed in school and in the work force, but now the same effort needs to be made for men - or we're in for serious problems in the years to come, Mortenson said.
"There will be twice as many educated women as educated men," he said. "But by the time they see it coming, it will be too late to address it. You do not manufacture college-educated men out of thin air. It takes decades of investment to get to that point."
Despite efforts to keep a balanced ratio, most colleges and universities are reporting an increasing number of women students overall.
Brown University in Providence, for example, has averaged about 54 percent women for the past several years, said spokesman Mark Nickel. And the Ivy League school is aggressively seeking women students for the science and engineering programs. Women are making inroads in these traditionally male fields, he said.
Jan Wenzel, spokeswoman for the University of Rhode Island, said about 58 percent of the students there are women, and they're more likely to be found in what used to be traditionally male majors - especially the pharmacy program, where women have become the majority.
Providence College runs about 57 percent women to 43 percent men, said Christopher Lydon, dean of enrollment management for the private school. "My sense is that men seem more attracted to larger comprehensive universities, and the women, partially because of the environment of smaller schools, often find the fit seems better for them."
And even though more students are attending college than ever before, the increase is attributed primarily to women.
Mortenson said the number of college-age people ages 18 to 24 has increased from 5.1 million in 1967 to 9.5 million in 2000.
But during that time, the percentage of young men attending college decreased from 33.1 percent in 1967 to 32.6 percent in 2000, while the percentage of women in that age bracket attending college increased from 19.2 percent to 38.4 percent.
Knight Ridder Tribune
