David Clinton

What will that mean for universities…and for 21st century work?

A while back, I mentioned the strange case of the disappearing university male. In that context I wondered how the educational establishment – in whose eyes a university degree is a primary success metric – are addressing the 58% (female) to 42% (male) disparity blocking male success. But I didn’t get around to asking why it’s happening.

However, here’s a fascinating recent post from American writer Celeste Davis that dives deep, deep down the rabbit hole. The article first references a handful of more mainstream theories seeking to explain the gap, including:

• High tuition costs (which, I guess, just don’t bother women?)
• Boys having weaker academic skills
• Boys being exposed to negative messaging in early grades
• Politically left-friendly campuses that attract more women
• More high-paying career alternatives for men

Davis agrees that those are probably all contributing factors. But she turns her attention to what she feels is the big driver: male flight. Perhaps, goes the argument, young men just don’t see themselves thriving in career fields that appear to be dominated by women. The more women enrolled in last year’s university cohort, the more of this year’s men decide to check out of university altogether.

Or, as Davis puts it:

“For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied. One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition!”

According to Statistics Canada, overall male enrollment as a proportion of total university populations has dropped by 4.4 percent since 1992. Canada might not be experiencing the same painful overall drops in university enrollments they’re seeing south of the border, but we may not be too far behind.

All this seems to be true of universities in general, but the impact might be more visible in specific programs. In fact, the biggest changes have impacted a handful of university program categories:

• Personal, protective and transportation services – which include law enforcement and fire fighting. Male participation dropped from 85 percent of enrollment in 1992 to just 43 percent in 2021.
• Agriculture, natural resources, and conservation, which saw a decline from 55 percent to 38 percent.
• Physical and life sciences and technologies saw male enrollment drop from 49 percent to 24 percent.
• Social and behavioural sciences and law enrollment fell from 38 percent to 29 percent.

Celeste’s theory is that, rather than external forces driving declines in male participation, it’s the entry of more and more women into academic programs that lies behind the changes.

I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that the solution to the problem is to impose enrollment quotas to limit entry for women. Quotas are evil.

In fact, I’m not 100 percent convinced that this is a problem that even needs solving. That’s partly because I don’t buy the line that university is always the most reliable route to social and economic success. It’s also because I don’t see a down side to relaxing and allowing market forces to work things out for us.

One thing that is worth our attention is the damage these trends might cause the higher education industry over the long term. Upwards of three percent of Canada’s GDP can probably be attributed to the higher education sector. And Canadian universities employ more than 343,000 people – around one of every 80 employed Canadians. You and I may or may not have a direct connection to higher education, but its decline would definitely leave a mark.

It’s worth noting that, for all the chaos those trends might spark within the higher education industry, they appear to be having a surprisingly minor impact on the actual workforce.  Employment data from Statistics Canada shows us that the proportion of male workers changed by less than three percentage points between 1987 and 2023 in all but a few of the 18 job categories tracked. The exceptions included:

• Public administration, where the percentage of workers who were male fell from 61 percent in 1987 to 48 percent in 2023.
• Educational services, which saw the number of male teachers and administrators fall ten points from a representation of 42 percent to 32 percent.
• Male participation in the finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing industries actually rose from 41 percent to 47 percent.

But the exceptions were far less interesting than the fields where there was no significant change. Compare the four percent drop in agricultural employment to the 30 percent by which enrollment in agriculture, natural resources and conservation programs fell.

Similarly, the 25 percent drop in male participation in science and technology programs doesn’t seem to play out in the real world: male employment in professional, scientific and technical services is effectively unchanged since 1987.

Those enrollment vs employment designations aren’t perfectly aligned, of course. And employment data does have a far longer built-in lag than university attendance. But the gaping disparity does suggest there are a lot of women signing up for courses but not following up by getting related jobs.