Gilroy
– College campuses are no longer the dominion of men, that’s for
sure.
Nationwide, 57 percent of the classrooms are filled with women
and at Gavilan College the disparity is even more significant with
63 percent of the student body female. Statewide the average is 55
percent.
Gilroy – College campuses are no longer the dominion of men, that’s for sure.
Nationwide, 57 percent of the classrooms are filled with women and at Gavilan College the disparity is even more significant with 63 percent of the student body female. Statewide the average is 55 percent.
College campuses may now be swarming with women, but this shift didn’t happen over night.
“It’s not a new phenomenon,” said Gavilan College Trustee and retired instructor Kent Child. “It had gradually increased over probably a decade and a half.”
Child saw the change with his own two eyes. During the early years of his 35-year teaching career the male to female ratio was 2-to-1 in most of his classes.
Bit by bit, the make-up began to change. Initially, the female increase occurred in two-year vocational education programs, traditionally woman-friendly fields such as nursing and secretarial school.
But eventually, Child noticed the metamorphosis had slowly leaked into the male-dominated sectors of math and science.
“Clearly there has been a gradual, continuous increase in females being able to access education and community college being a prime example (of that change),” he said.
And it appears that the trend toward an influx of women in higher education institutions will continue, said Terrence Willett, former director of research at Gavilan. A few years back, the school board popped the question “why” after a campus survey suggested that men were “slightly less engaged with the campus culture.”
That the median age of Gavilan students is 25 for women and 21 for men may have some bearing on the extreme gender gap but that’s only one tile in the mosaic.
“Some theorize it is due to women receiving greater economic returns on education than men who are more likely to be able to earn higher incomes with relatively less education and training, although this possibility needs verification,” Willett wrote in an e-mail. “In addition, with the average age of females at Gavilan being higher, there is speculation that females are also more likely to delay education, possibly in response to child care matters or other factors.”
The fact that high-paying, male-dominated jobs – think auto repair and construction – don’t require an associate’s or bachelor’s may rock the scales. Students searching for hands-on training in those vocational fields, won’t find it at Gavilan, which no longer offers auto shop or construction classes.
Individuals interested in working with cars tend to flock to technical institutes that not only call for a shorter stay but also don’t require the academic requisites of a two-year degree. And if 63 percent seems like a high number consider the statistics at the Universal Technical Institute, Inc.
UTI is overwhelmingly male, with a slight 1 to 2 percent make-up of women, Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Haslip said. Graduating mechanics will earn an initial wage of between $12 to $15 an hour, but their paycheck will rapidly balloon.
“They will quickly be able to gain experience and if they continue to get training they will easily earn in the $40,000 to $50,000 (range),” Haslip said.
Gavilan student Paul Bergkamp thinks the allure of high-paying, post-high school jobs that are more readily available to men, is a possible answer. The 18-year-old Morgan Hill resident said “a bunch of my friends” landed construction jobs after high school and are taking home fat paychecks.
Still, Bergkamp and his friends Blake Voegele and Tamura Mozzone were all stunned to hear that Gavilan’s student body is more than half women. The three students said it’s obvious when wandering by the nursing and cosmetology departments but not in the classroom or on campus.
“Walking around I never noticed,” Bergkamp said. “It always seemed pretty balanced.”
But as Voegele began to mull over the notion, the 18-year-old changed his mind.
“All my other classes are really small so you can really tell, now that I think about it,” he said pointing out that in his communication class there are eight women and only four men.
Explaining the Gap
Willett’s personal hypothesis is that the influx of women on campuses has more to do with the result of the elimination of gender exclusion at public schools in the 1970s, that resulted in greater access to college for females, than any other factors.
Willett attributes the bloated numbers to simply a “correction in gender representation in education that I think will return to a 50-to-50 ratio in the next several decades.”
Gavilan Instructor Russell Lee also thinks equal access for women is a major player in the shift. The instructor – he teaches physics, math and engineering – thinks women in this generation are more concerned with independence and know that education “is the great equalizer between the genders in the professional workplace.
“Most importantly, women today are aware that the boundaries (glass ceiling) were false and that they are capable of achieving whatever they choose to pursue in education,” he wrote.
Educators, pundits and politicians are weighing in on the issue, some are calling it a crisis and wonder what can be done to remedy the problem.
But Lee doesn’t see reason for concern, any extra faces in higher education is positive.
“Is it a concern?” he said. “I don’t think we should go out and try to increase the number of men. I think we should go out and increase the number of people in college, independent of gender.”
At least one instructor thinks the gender gap is a serious problem and that the disparity doesn’t solely impact the student body.
He pointed out that the male faculty continues to decline and in the past two years Gavilan has hired three full-time female instructors, one female counselor and no males in either of those categories. Also, the college closed down the engineering department and welding, auto repair, construction and agriculture, he said.
The instructor thinks ridding the college of those traditionally male disciplines dissuades men from enrolling.
But Board President Tom Breen said those disciplines are no longer offered because there weren’t enough students to fill the classes. The college still offers some pre-engineering courses.
Also, Lee said, although his engineering classes were too small to support the program, about half were women and they were always the top students in those classes.
To students, particularly men, the disparity is a non-issue. Voegele and Bergkamp both smiled and shook their heads when asked if they minded, probably considering the ample dating pool.
But for women, social life on a campus filled with an overflow of the same sex, means a lot more competition on Friday night. Mozzone experienced those conditions at Presentation High School, an all-girls Catholic school in San Jose.
The Gilroy resident didn’t enjoy the environment of an all-girls campus and transferred to Gilroy High School after two years. When told that some universities are worried about recruitment since prospective students often consider the men-to-women ratio when looking at schools, Mozzone said she understands the dilemma.
“I could see how that could pose a problem,” she said.
Heather Bremner is a staff writer. Reach her at
hb******@gi************.com
or 847-7097.
