Over the past two decades, significant gender gaps have emerged in undergraduate college enrollment, with women substantially surpassing men in enrollment rates.
In 2021, colleges experienced the biggest gender enrollment gap with 70% of female high school graduates and 55% of male high school graduates enrolled. This trend continued in 2022, with 66% of female high school graduates enrolled in college compared to 57% of their male counterparts.
In 2024, 8.9 million women attended college as undergraduates compared to 6.5 million men.
The disparity has worsened in the last couple of years. Richard V. Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM), attributes that sharp decrease to the pandemic. After COVID-19, male enrollment plummeted more than female enrollment did and hasn’t recovered.
“Male students also struggle more with online learning, and as the extent of the learning loss becomes clearer in the months and years ahead, it seems almost certain that [underperformance] will prove to be greater for boys and men,” Reeves wrote in his book Of Boys and Men.
This gender gap can also be attributed to school environments being more suitable for girls than boys. Reeves argues that because girls mature earlier than boys, they are able to pull ahead academically and behaviorally from the start.
“Girls are 14 percentage points more likely than boys to be ‘school ready’ at age 5,” Reeves wrote.
As a result, girls’ academic advantage tends to persist through high school and into college enrollment.
However, some students do not notice a gender gap in their classrooms, even though girls tend to dominate in the humanities and boys are more prevalent in STEM classes.
“In my classes, I think it’s quite even, especially in math or history or sciences, but I have heard that other classes are predominantly one gender or the other,” junior Julian Haddaway said. “[Gender imbalance] shouldn’t affect students’ learning, but obviously it does, because not a lot of males like to associate with females and have female friends, so I feel like it [creates] a weaker classroom connection.”
Other students have observed a gender split in their classes, like senior Eboni Freeman.
“I see less engagement from boys [in my classes]. And it’s not necessarily that they don’t have opinions or thoughts, but a lot of them feel like they’re going to be judged. A lot of them are less confident in their answer, so they just simply don’t give one,” Freeman said.
“Girls, even if they’re wrong, they still have confidence in their answer, or they’re still willing to engage in open discussion. I feel like a lot of boys steer away from that for a lot of reasons,” Freeman said. “A lot of them are very polarized, and they kind of see it as ‘us versus them’ mentality, and they don’t feel like they have support in their views.”
Girls also consistently achieve higher average GPAs in high school than boys, with an average of 3.23 compared to 3.00 for boys. Class composition could contribute to this difference.
“When we look at the regular classes—the non AP ones—they’re very boy heavy, and teachers are like, ‘Can you add more girls?’” counselor Siliva Torres said. “We try to evenly distribute the girls among those classes. I know last year a teacher had, out of 30 kids, 22 boys. And that’s in a regular class. So then that tells me all the girls must be in the AP classes, right?”
For college enrollment overall, Torres noted that she and her colleagues have been writing fewer recommendation letters.
“The thing is that there are less college age high school students than there were 10-15 years ago. The birth rate dropped a little, so naturally by the time they become 18 years olds there’s not as many kids as there were 10 years ago,” she said.
The Fiske Guide to Colleges 2026 reported the male/female ratio for 320 four-year colleges. The chart below highlights colleges and universities that enrolled more than five M-A students from the class of 2025. All but two of the 20 colleges highlighted are predominantly female.
*These colleges are not included in the Fiske Guide so male/female ratio is not available.
Although the Supreme Court has ruled against affirmative action, it has left some flexibility for universities to consider sex in their admissions process when balancing gender ratios on campuses. This is sometimes referred to as “affirmative action for men.”
In response, colleges are taking a more cautious and marketing-based approach to boost the number of male applicants.
Over the past decade, 73 schools have added football teams along with more affordable sports such as rugby and men’s volleyball, a strategy that has proved effective at attracting male students.
While athletics may influence who applies, students’ decisions about college are also shaped by changing attitudes toward higher education and the job market.
“There used to be [a lot of pressure to go to college], but now it’s not really pushed onto people,” senior Jackson Wright said. “Before, having a college degree would get you that job a lot. But now I feel like it’s more just connections and experience.”
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between fall 2010 and fall 2021, undergraduate enrollment dropped by 15%, from 18.1 million to 15.4 million students. Enrollment is expected to increase by 9% to 16.8 million students by fall of 2031, but enrollment is projected to still remain below 2010 levels.
“The freedom to choose college has never been greater than now. What stands in the way for most people is the cost, and the real or perceived return on investment,” college counselor Mai Lien Nguyen said.
“I want to be able to go to college knowing that my family members really haven’t gone, and I want to be able to just have a supportive future, to support my family and everything within myself,” Wright said.
As college decisions are made this season, applicants may look closer at the male-female ratio on campuses as they consider their next step.
