Women Now Dominate Higher Education At Every Degree Level; The Female-Male Degree Gap Grows

It’s college graduation season, and according to data available from the U.S. Department of Education (data here), an estimated 3,092,800 degrees will be granted this academic year (2008-2009) for Associate’s degrees (714,000), Bachelor’s degrees (1,585,000), Master’s degrees (647,000), Professional degrees for MD, DDS and JD (91,000) and Doctor’s degrees for Ph.D and Ed.D (55,800).

Over the more than 3 million college degrees for the Class of 2009, women will earn more almost 60% of those degrees, or almost 149 degrees for every 100 degrees for men.

And it’s now official: Women dominate men at every level of higher education, in terms of degrees conferred. Here’s the breakdown for graduates of the class of 2009 (Department of Education estimates):

Associate’s Degrees: 167 degrees for women for every 100 degrees for men.

Bachelor’s Degrees: 142 degrees for women for every 100 degrees for men.

Master’s Degrees: 159 degrees for women for every 100 degrees for men.

Professional Degrees: 104 degrees for women for every 100 degrees for men.

Doctoral Degrees: 107 degrees for women for every 100 degrees for men.

In fact, the last time men had more degrees than women at any level was the Class of 2006, which had slightly more men than women for both Professional and Doctoral degrees. For the other levels, it hasn’t been even close for decades. The last year that men earned more Master’s degrees than women was 1984-1985, for Bachelor’s degrees it was the Class of 1981, and for Associates degrees it was 1976-1977. Foll all levels, women have earned more college degrees than men in every year since the Class of 1982, and the degree gap has widened in every year since then, and is expected to widen in the future through the 2016-2017 year (see chart above).