Gender gap a trend at most universities
By Crystal Forester
Staff Reporter

Guys love it, girls hate it, and TCU doesn’t know what to do about it.

Over the last 40 years, the percentage of men at TCU has stayed between 38 percent and 43 percent, said Dean of Admissions Ray Brown.

“This is something that I figured last year would be easy to break and that was the one record we did not break,” he said. “It was a huge disappointment to me.”

TCU had an increase in all applications last school year and the majority were from women, Brown said.

“Guys are doing other stuff,” he said. “They are just not going to college like women are.”

According to the 2003 TCU Fact Book, 2,820 of the 6,933 undergraduate students this year were male. Last year, 2,850 of 6,851 students were male.

Karen Scott, director of international admission, said more women are in college nationwide and even more women are in private universities.

Nationally, the amount of women in higher education passed men about five years ago, Brown said. The percentage is now about 53 percent, he said.

Ben Alexander, director of admission marketing, said, “We are always trying to encourage men to apply and to express an interest in TCU. But because this is a national trend, it is hard to do.”

Yvette Nevarez, a junior English major, said the imbalance in the genders is not fair to the women at TCU for social and academic reasons.

“It’s great that more and more women want to better themselves but depressing that men don’t,” Nevarez said. “With each new class coming in, you see fewer and fewer men.”

Scott said certain majors, such as nursing, education and fine arts, appeal to women more than other majors. These majors are predominant at TCU, she said.

“Not to be stereotypical, but some majors just appeal more to women then to men,” Scott said. “A university with a bigger engineering program would typically have more males.”

Allison Liu, a sophomore nursing major, said mainly females are in her major and future profession. Therefore there are only two or three males in each of her classes, she said.

“I would be interested to see how my overall education would change if there were more males,” she said.

Men are interested in majors that deal with science, technology and professions that make more money, Liu said.

Another reason TCU may appeal more to females than males is because TCU is a friendly and safe campus, Scott said.

“Parents like that their daughter can go someplace and have somebody watch over them,” she said.

Although there is a big gap between males and females, Scott said she rarely hears anyone complaining about it.

“I occasionally hear people joking about the gender gap,” Scott said.

Brown said in the 1950s, when more men were at TCU than women, it was not a big deal, but now that more women are enrolled, it has become a big deal.

Recruiting more males to TCU is important to the females because women have a smaller chance of marrying a man with the same education, he said.

“One of the huge things that cause divorce is difference in education,” Brown said.

Alexander said the admissions office is trying to recruit more students, especially men, by simplifying the application process.

“Every additional step makes the process more difficult,” he said. “We want to make the process easier for everyone to get more students interested.”