Snail Males

In 2004–2005, following six straight years of increased enrolments, over one million full- and part-time students registered at Canadian universities. It was a historic first, and today, on top of a burgeoning undergraduate population, there are currently more than 90,000 students enrolled in master’s programs and roughly 35,000 doing their doctorates. Despite higher tuition fees and in many cases more rigorous entry requirements, young Canadians have clearly embraced higher education. Many of these students are positioning themselves to compete in a globalized economy rooted in innovation, services, and information-based technologies.

Beneath this rosy picture, however, lies a sobering reality. Among other studies, a 2004 report by Statistics Canada called “Where the Boys Are” reveals that in terms of high-school reading skills, educational engagement, and university enrolment, young men are lagging significantly behind similarly aged females. Although men sometimes outpace women in enrolment growth, for two decades the percentage of males versus females entering university has dropped steadily, and men now represent just 42 percent of total enrolments. Moreover, their higher dropout rate means that they will represent an even lower proportion of graduates. It appears that in terms of higher education it is women who are flourishing; by comparison, young men seem to be on autopilot.

In undergraduate streams, females are more likely to complete their degrees; there are now more females than males enrolled in master’s programs; and, whereas ten years ago over 60 percent of doctoral students were men, today the numbers are approaching parity. In ever-increasing numbers women are finding success at Canadian professional schools. Two decades ago, women represented less than 40 percent of lawschool graduates. By 2003, nearly 50 percent more females than males graduated from Canadian law schools. Last spring, at the University of Toronto and Queen’s University law-school convocations, female students won the gold, silver, and bronze medals. At the University of Calgary females took home the top two law awards. In medicine, there are similar trends. While in the mid-1980s, roughly one-third of Canadian med students were women, in each year since 2001 more females than males have graduated from Canadian medical schools. This year, 57 percent of first-year students at the University of British Columbia medical school are female, as are 60 percent at the University of Toronto, and over 75 percent at the University of Montreal.

It is true that males continue to outnumber females in mathematics, computer science, engineering, architecture, and business, but even in traditionally male-centred fields women are in the ascendancy. Female engineering students now represent almost one-quarter of the total, up from 15 percent in the early 1990s, and at business schools, there is a significant upward trend in female enrolment. In growing numbers, females are pursuing mbas at the country’s elite universities, some of which are catering to the needs of women who already have a career and, perhaps, a family, as with the University of Western Ontario’s new twelve-month mba program at the Richard Ivey School of Business.

“What is going wrong with men at universities?” a father and lawyer asked us. He was distraught and demanded anonymity. His daughter is soaring in a professional program at a prestigious university while her dropout brother languishes in the basement, he explained. Theories abound about male underachievement, but part of the answer is that universities themselves have changed. With students paying more to get in, large numbers of dedicated older students on campus, more overseas students (roughly 7 percent), and higher numbers of graduate students, there is a level of seriousness to university life that was less obvious in the past. Young men, it appears, are less acclimatized to this new environment and less prepared to compete within it. More to the point, perhaps, the women’s movement, combined with special attention paid to female success and learning styles at the elementary- and high-school levels, is paying dividends. Large numbers of independent-minded females believe that their earning power will be significantly enhanced by obtaining university degrees with stellar grades attached. They are staying in school longer and delaying other life choices.

Superior high-school grades and a stronger societal expectation that they attend post-secondary school are the most obvious reasons for the surge in female enrolments. But some observers believe that this trend will self-correct over time. In 1969, before the rapid growth of the Canadian university system, women represented only 36 percent of the undergraduate population (and less than 15 percent of university professors were women). This disproportion favouring males began to change in the 1970s, and, as society became more integrated, the male domination of university enrolments was destined to diminish. By 1981, females constituted 47 percent of undergraduate enrolment.

Today, while that integration is far from complete, certain shibboleths of the past have fallen by the wayside. For one, the notion of man-as-provider has largely given way to two-earner families and an even greater degree of independence on the part of young women. The result is that women, long underrepresented in many fields of study, are pursuing higher education in general and areas of specialization with social cachet in particular. The questions are, has the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and will the numbers even out?

Could it be that young men are aware that women continue to drop out of male-dominated professions when they decide to start having families (or to have another child), and, as such, that they do not try as hard now in order to succeed later? Or is it just that the later maturation of male adolescents has begun—now that the expectations for young women to attend university are more manifest—to translate into higher rates of female participation, and that male adolescents fall behind and fail to catch up? Or is it something else?

One thing is certain: we live in a highly competitive society where skills need to be constantly upgraded. Here, there are trends on campus disturbing some registrars and professors, and not just in Canada. In numbers significantly greater than men, young women are honing their skills by taking advantage of remedial programs. A 2005 University of California, Los Angeles study noted that female students surveyed reported “more frequent interaction with faculty and teaching assistants [and] higher levels of academic engagement.” The same report stresses that female students take greater advantage of university services. Echoing sentiments expressed by others, Marion Hannaford, the associate registrar at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, says, “When workshops or seminars on study skills, time management, exam-taking and the like are offered, it is rare to see a male student sign up voluntarily, and even fewer attend.” To their obvious detriment, it could be that young men are hard-wired not to accept help from others.

Some observers speculate that female students are being driven to succeed by the growing number of women on campus in positions of responsibility. Whereas women were once seen in large numbers only in administrative jobs, the number of full-time female professors has risen to roughly 30 percent, and today there are more and more women leading the charge. The dean of the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business is a woman, as are the deans at the University of Toronto’s faculties of law, medicine, and applied science and engineering, to cite just two schools. While there remain wage differentials favouring male professors, greater numbers of strong and learned female role models in key positions on campus are sure to be having a formative influence on a new generation of younger women.