Lies, Damned Lies and Statistiscs: The College Gap

Perhaps this is a bit of good news about the "college gap". Excerpt:

'Today, women earn far more Bachelor’s and Associate’s degrees as well as slightly more Master’s and Doctoral degrees than men. Fortunately for men like myself, there is a major flaw in how this data is interpreted. When you look at this chart, what is the first thing that comes to mind? In all likelihood, if your thought was similar to mine, it was that more women are going to college and fewer men are than in the past. Or in other words, women are going to college instead of men. However, it is wrong to assume that because men make up a smaller percentage of college students today than they did in the past, that women must be taking spots previously held by men. The pie is not static; it got bigger, a lot bigger. College admission has exploded since 1970: the number of men in college has actually increased substantially and the percentage of men going to college is greater now than it was in 1970.

In 1970, there were 7.4 million college students and the United States population was just over 200 million: just under 4% of the population was enrolled in college. In 2007, almost 18 million Americans attended a university out of a population of just over 300 million, or 6% of the population. College admission has increased almost 150% in absolute terms and 50% in relative terms in just less than 40 years. In 1970, 4.4 million men attended college, or assuming the population is 50% male (it’s about 49%), 4.4% of men were attending college. In 2007, 7.8 million men attended college, or about 5.2%. Male enrollment has actually increased 18% since 1970. What makes this statistic look so alarming is that female enrollment skyrocketed from 3 million to 10.1 million, or 3% to 6.7%, a 125% increase.
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Admittedly, this is not proof that there is not a problem. It only reveals that there are a host of lurking variables to unravel before concluding that the gap is even noteworthy. We’d have to conduct a very careful study to determine whether or not there was any “excess” in the gap between men and women. And it’s reasonable to conclude that if there is an excess, it is quite small. It could possibly even be that the proportion should be even greater than it currently is and women are getting the short end of the stick. What is important to note here is that this alarming statistic tells us very little on its own and is probably completely meaningless. All it says for certain is that the laws of supply and demand on college campuses have tilted significantly in men’s favor.'