Male Decline Continues

Geoff Maslen
For the past 20 years, the Australian higher education student population has been dominated by women who have increased their numerical superiority over males year by year until now they comprise nearly 58% of the total student body. A mere four of the 12 fields of university study now enrol more men than women and that could soon be reduced to two, leaving engineering and IT the only places on campus where males are in the majority.
As is the case across most of the developed world, women have long held top spot in the 'typically female' professions of education and health (where three out of four Australian students are women), food and hospitality, the arts and humanities, and creative arts (where almost two in every three are female).
But for most of this decade, women have also outnumbered their male counterparts who used to occupy most seats in the physical sciences lecture rooms and in agriculture and environmental sciences. Not any longer: in the natural and physical sciences, women comprise 54% of the students and in the other field they make up just over half.
In management and commerce, women are closing the gender divide with almost 49% of enrolments although they lag behind in architecture (40:60%).
Even among postgraduates undertaking higher degrees by research, 54% of the students are women while in the other postgraduate courses they hold a substantial 57% lead over the males.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0098 25 October 2009