School the Cause of Male Minority?

Philip Fine
For the last 10 years, Canadian women have enrolled in university at a greater rate than their male counterparts. That steady climb seems to have abated slightly but their numbers are still so high questions are being asked why so many men are not enrolling.
This summer, Statistics Canada released its latest enrolment figures from the 2007-08 academic year showing a general slowing from past years. The 0.6% increase in total enrolments was down from the past decade's annual average increase of 2.9%. While growth in female enrolments was negligible, with a 0.1% increase, this compared with the 1.3% for males.
But the rise in male enrolment means little on Canadian campuses where women still far outnumber men: the StatsCan figures reveal that of the almost 1.1 million university students, 613,600, or 57.5%, were female and 452,600 or 42.4% were male. The same proportion of women to men has remained constant since 2002-03.
At the graduate level, women made up 55% of master's students but, as in the previous seven years, they are in the minority among doctoral students, at 46%.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0098 25 October 2009