To give you a great browsing experience free of charge, this site uses cookies. Cookies help us personalize content and ads, provide social media features, track your preferences, and analyze traffic. Forbes may share this information with its advertising, analytics, and social media partners, who may use it with information you have provided to them in connection with their services. Institutional reputation, internships, jobs, scholarships, and the party atmosphere all factor into that decision, though not necessarily in that order. The male-female ratio at schools could provide extra incentive for the hot-blooded teenagers; for those past those baser obsessions, a look at the dynamics of the male-female ratio could provide food for thought. The male-female ratio in higher education has been steadily moved in favor of the females ever since the 1970s. The superiority first came in public universities, but soon private universities saw female enrollment surpass male enrollment. What provides an interesting topic of study is a state-by-state examination of their male-female ratios in degree-granting institutions. All of the higher education data for this blog post came from the Digest of Statistics: 2010, and are based on 2008 total enrollment figures. All population data comes from the US Census Bureau. On a national scale, public universities had the most even division between male and female students, with a male-female ratio of 43. While that difference is substantial, it still is smaller than private not-for-profit institutions 42. The nearly 40-60 ratio of private schools was most surprising, though perhaps this is partly due to the fact that most all-female schools are private. Nevertheless, the female domination of higher education prevails across all types of schools. It should also be noted that the national male-female ratio for 18-24 year olds is actually 51-49, meaning there are more traditionally college-aged males than females. At the state level, some states have consistently even rates across the public and private educational sector. For example, Utah is the only state with more males than females in its public colleges, and it is very close to a 50-50 split in its private colleges. On the other hand, Alaska typically has among the lowest percentage of males across all types of colleges. There are, however, some limitations to these presumptions. People of all ages attend college, not just those in the 18-24 range, so only looking at the 18-24 age bracket gives an incomplete picture to the student sample. A final interesting detail noticed while examining these statistics is the trends of regionalism, especially with the public schools. Three of the five states with the largest male-female disparities are from the Southeastern US. The other two states have relatively small public school enrollments compared to their fellow schools: the total number of students enrolled in either Alaska or Rhode Island does not surpass the male students enrolled in Mississippi. On the other hand, no Southeastern school appears on the top 5 lists of closest male-female ratios, even though their 18-24 ratios are above 50% male. In a similar observation, the regions with the closest public school ratios are either West North Central or Mountain West, and the closest private school ratios have clumped primarily in the Northeast and Mountain West.
