At the University of Vermont not long ago, it was move-in day for the class of 2027. About a thousand incoming freshman were meeting their roommates, finding their dorm rooms, and getting settled on campus. At first glance one might have thought this was an all-women’s college – 62% of this year’s class are women, a gender gap that has earned Burlington, Vt., a nickname: Girlington.
You see six or seven women for every three or four men,” said UVM’s vice provost for enrollment Jay Jacobs. His job is all about student diversity, and these days the male/female divide is now part of that equation. “Sure, I thought about racial and ethnic diversity,” Jacobs said. “Sure, at a public flagship in the state of Vermont, I’ve thought about geographic diversity. Never gender diversity like that. That’s where we are.”
UVM is hardly an outlier. Nationwide, women make up almost 60% of college undergraduates.
In 1972, when Title IX was passed to help improve gender equality on campus, men were 13% more likely to get an undergraduate degree than women; today, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, it’s women who are 15% more likely to get a degree than men.
Read more at CBSnews.com
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