The nation has been seeing a new trend on college campuses — more women than men have been enrolling in higher education.
As colleges nationwide review applications for the fall semester, some may be seeing a gap in numbers of male and female candidates.
National data in recent years shows a 57-43 percent split favoring women in enrollments and in graduation. This may be a case for some colleges but for others, everything is gender balanced.
'We are not part of the national trend. Nationally, a significant gap exists between men and women on campus, men being in the minority,' said Dennis Black, Vice President for Student Affairs. 'At UB there's a gap between men and women but it's the opposite.'
UB's massive enrollment totals approximately 19,000 undergraduate students and 28,881 altogether as of fall 2009. The application process has already begun for the Fall 2010 semester. Even though the trend for greater female enrollment is spotted nationwide, UB's trends go against national statistics. There is a higher percentage of men in undergraduate courses at UB than women.
'About 46 percent of them are women and 54 percent male. That's about a 10 percent swing from the national averages today,' Black said.
Although UB does meet the demographics for the state, different factors could be causing this gap. One of the examples Black gave was the elementary school programming for first and second grade.
'UB doesn't offer [the program] because Buffalo State has a very large program and it doesn't make sense to offer a program here,' Black said.
The Institute for Research & Education on Women & Gender (Gender Institute IREWG) is a university-wide office dedicated to the promotion of research and teaching that addresses issues of gender, sexuality, or is sex-specific, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary work.
'I don't want people to think we play this activist role. It's really to promote research on education in women and gender,' said Rosemary Dziak, co-director of the Gender Institute.
The IREWG also offers scholarships, internships, work study positions, work-in-progress sessions for Graduate Students to present a chapter or a paper; support for SA or GSA student club activities with significant content on women or gender programs, and films.
'We're always looking at issues with respect to gender differences in anything, basic science, medicine, and the humanities,' Dziak said.
It is a trend that is still being studied and watched. Since UB is not part of the trend Dziak also added 'there's not much we could do but study [the trend], have meetings about it and present the information.'
The question remaining is will UB fall into the trend in the next five to ten years?
'The only other thing that would radically change [the gap] would be if we change the programs that we offer,' Black said. 'There are some programs that we don't have that are traditionally female. If we offer different programs we attract different people.'
Black also added that he did not see UB 'changing the numbers of schools that we have or the programs that we offer significantly.'
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