This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2005, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Women are the rulers of the college world, outnumbering male undergraduates in the United States by more than 2 million.
But women's dominance doesn't extend to the University of Utah. And nobody knows why.
The U.'s student body is 46 percent female, when the national average is 57 percent.
While each year women command a larger share of the student body nationwide, the U.'s gender split is almost exactly the same as it was a decade ago.
"I don't know if I should be concerned or not, but I am intensely curious," said U. President Michael Young, who has commissioned a study of the U.'s gender imbalance. "The most serious question to me is: Are there women who want to go to school out there but they face barriers?"
Researchers might want to talk to experts like Misty Brown.
Brown, who hurdled the barriers in her path - but barely - is the definition of a nontraditional student. She's 32 and a mother of four, with an associate's degree from Salt Lake Community College that she earned in 1992.
Without university-subsidized child care, she would probably still be a secretary instead of a woman striving to become a scientist, her lifelong goal.
Four days a week, she drops off her 2-year-old daughter, Beach, at the child care center sponsored by the student government, known as the Associated Students of the University of Utah, or ASUU. She was one of the last students to get a spot for her child.
"If we didn't have the ASUU day care and it wasn't subsidized, I wouldn't be at school," she said. "I was ready to drop out."
Being a mother and a full-time student still isn't easy. She leaves her genetics class early twice a week to pick up Beach. Finding time to study is almost impossible.
"It is easier to not go back to school," she said. And with a long waiting list at the child care center, Brown assumes other women have gone that easier route and set aside any dream of a college degree.
That's exactly what Young is worried about and why he hopes to double the size of the ASUU day care center, which currently has a capacity of about 90 children. He also wants to expand the number of scholarships offered to women.
Young sees his role as twofold: making it easier for women to become students and explaining to them the benefits of a college degree. But he knows the decision rests with them.
"If somebody tells me their goal in life is to graduate from high school, get married and have a family, it is not my business to change that," he said. "It is my business to point out that a very high percentage of women will be in the work force. Do you want to position yourself to do that with a college education or without a college education?"
GENDER SHIFT
The growing concern over the national gender split spurred U. faculty to examine their own student body, said Allison Regan, president of the U.'s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women.
Throughout the country a number of universities, many of them private, have started programs to attract more men, citing concerns that an undereducated male work force could harm average families and the nation's economy.
An Iowa-based journal called Postsecondary Education Opportunity published an issue earlier this year devoted to the declining share of male students nationwide, saying, "Young men need our help - the women are doing very nicely without our help."
The article singled out Utah as the state with the highest percent of its undergraduate degrees going to men: "Apparently Mormon culture, especially church expectations for young women, have delayed the gender shift in Utah."
During the past academic year, Utah's public universities and colleges awarded 47 percent of bachelor's degrees to women. At the U., women received 46 percent of bachelor's degrees.
Young said the national trend "can't be a good thing." But he is not so sure about the U.'s numbers. He says maybe Utah's men are enrolling in college at a higher rate than the national average, while the women are keeping pace. Or maybe the state's largest public university has a gross imbalance.
U. finance professor Elizabeth Tashjian leans toward the imbalance theory after a preliminary examination of the U.'s enrollment figures.
Tashjian first brought the issue to Young and the commission. The commission promises to conduct a more thorough statistical study that also will include a student poll about campus life. The commission also is planning focus groups of parents, prospective students and possibly high school counselors.
The poll and focus groups are in reaction to Tashjian's and Regan's suspicion that women may not feel comfortable in the U.'s spread-out, impersonal environment.
"We all have theories," Tashjian said.
OUT-OF-WHACK
Young and Tashjian believe Utah's conservative ideals and predominant LDS faith influence the gender imbalance.
But the level of influence is difficult to gauge.
The average Utah woman marries at 22. At that age, most have not yet graduated. Following the wedding, the average couple will move out of their parents' homes into their own place, increasing their bills.
"It is often simply a matter of economics, whether or not both the husband and wife can stay in school," said U. Vice President of Student Affairs Barbara Snyder.
But if this explained why the U.'s student body looks drastically different than the national average, then every other Utah college should have a similar gender gap.
They don't.
Utah State is 52 percent to 48 percent in favor of women. Weber is 50-50. And Brigham Young University, a private college owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is 49-51, with men in a slight majority.
The U. is not the only college with a wide gender split, however. Southern Utah University mirrors the national average with 57 percent of the student body being women. And Utah Valley State College is the exact opposite at 57 percent men, making it the only Utah college more male than the U.
"We know we are totally opposite from where we should be," said Andrea Brown, UVSC's assistant director of institutional research. "We are by far the most out-of-whack in the state and we haven't figured out why."
Brown said UVSC officials noticed the trend a year ago.
"It is a concern of the college," she said. "The shift started happening within the last five years."
UVSC plans to launch its own study, following the completion of a massive computer software conversion, which is now under way.
Some U. professors and administrators suggest the university's devotion to the hard sciences may explain why so many students are men.
That claim may have some validity, when the student body is broken down by those who major in overwhelmingly male fields, such as engineering, business and science, and then by the female-dominated fields of nursing, education and social work.
A little fewer than one of three U. students are in programs where at least 60 percent of their classmates are men. Engineering has the largest gender imbalance. Nine out of 10 engineering students are men.
Fewer than one of 10 U. students are in programs where women make up 60 percent of the student body. The College of Nursing has the largest percentage of women at 83 percent.
Utah State, Weber and Brigham Young universities all show more balance between the male- and female-dominated areas of study.
CONTINUING EDUCATION
A bigger issue appears to be how a student gets her start at the U.
Just under half of first-time freshmen are female, while transfer students are predominantly male and growing more so. In 1999, the U.'s transfer students were 52 percent male, in 2005 they were 57 percent male.
"The difference is the transfer rate," Young said. "Why are women dropping out after junior college? Hard to say."
About three-fifths of the U.'s gender gap can be explained by the high number of male transfer students, who mostly come from SLCC and UVSC.
"Part of the story that I don't understand is what is going on at Salt Lake Community College," Young said.
This year, 942 SLCC students transferred to the U., and 60 percent of them were men - the highest male percentage in the past five years.
SLCC Vice President of Student Services Deneece Huftalin (cq)says she is at a loss to explain the U.'s situation. SLCC doesn't keep statistics on the students after they leave; half of SLCC's current students are male.
Tashjian doesn't understand the transfer phenomenon but she is adamant the U. must try to persuade more women to continue their education past their first two years.
The U.'s statistics also show a retention problem with female freshmen, with only 73 percent coming back for their sophomore year. By comparison, 85 percent of sophomore women become juniors.
As a finance professor, Tashjian knows how a college education can benefit a woman whose life doesn't go as planned.
She said: "The most common cause of poverty among children is being with a single parent who is not well-educated, and frequently, that is the mother."