Women Now Dominate Higher Education at Every Degree Level; The Female-Male Degree Gap Grows

It's college graduation season, and according to data available from the U.S. Department of Education, an estimated 3,092,800 degrees will be granted this academic year (2008-2009) for Associate's degrees (714,000), Bachelor's degrees (1,585,000), Master's degrees (647,000), Professional degrees for MD, DDS and JD (91,000) and Doctor's degrees for Ph.D and Ed.D (55,800).

Of the more than 3 million college degrees for the Class of 2009, women will earn close to 60% of those degrees (1,849,200), or almost 149 degrees for every 100 degrees earned by men.

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For all levels of higher education, women have earned more college degrees than men in every year since the Class of 1982, and the degree gap has widened in every year since then, and is expected to widen in the future through the 2016-2017 year (see chart above).

I blame... I dunno... video games.

I blame... I dunno... video games.

I don't know for sure. If I were to have a guess I would say that there are more opportunities in traditional male occupations for people without higher education. Also, I think there is less anti-academic achievement pressure for girls than for boys. I think there is a view that being good at academics is wussy.

This just in: I hate appraisals!

More specifically, I hate evaluating my performance on last year's Personal Development Goals. Ick ick ick.

More specifically, I hate evaluating my performance on last year's Personal Development Goals. Ick ick ick.

Oh that sucks. I just did the self evaluation phase a couple of weeks ago and thank god there was no personal goals stuff. The self evaluation form changes every year.

Dear Jessica's Boss: She kicks so much ass that those "goals" are as tiny specks in the dust she leaves in her trail. Also, snacks are better than goals.

there are more opportunities in traditional male occupations for people without higher education.

I would think that's becoming less and less true.

Ooh. Two-double-posts in a row on my new laptop. I have it setup so just tapping the trackpad results in a click. (My netbook is the same.) Huh.

One of my Personal Development Goals for last year was to be less blunt and more diplomatic. Unfortunately, all of the response fields on this form are yes/no, so it's impossible for me to respond with anything more verbose or diplomatic than "Yes." Oh well.