Men have fallen further behind women than ever in terms of university
applications, according to figures released
this week.
Figures from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) showed
that women were significantly more likely to apply to study for a degree
than men, following warnings from experts that men are becoming an
“under-represented group” in higher education.
Some 376,860 women had applied for a place at university by the end of June -
the official deadline for courses starting this year - compared to 282,170
men. The gap - 94,690 - is a difference of a third, and is up from 86,630 at
the same time last year.
Professor
Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment
Research at Buckingham University, said there were several reasons for this
widening gap, but that it can be traced back to the very first years of
education.
“Females are doing consistently better at school, compared to about 15 years
ago, when men were ahead in the number of top grades,” Professor Smithers
said. “So females have a very good platform for going into higher education;
it’s more natural for them to continue.
“This is because, by and large, girls have stronger verbal abilities than
boys, who are stronger in terms of numerical and spatial abilities. Because
girls are more comfortable with communication they settle down earlier in
school than boys. There is testing even at a primary level now, and the
focus is more on verbal rather than spatial abilities, so girls are favoured
all the way through the system.”
Professor Smithers also pointed to the fact that training for careers in which
women tend to dominate, for example nursing and social work, has in recent
years been incorporated into higher education, leading to a rise in the
number of women applying through UCAS.
He added: “Statistically, males are more likely to take up vocational
qualifications, for example in plumbing and construction. If better pathways
to those sorts of employment are opening up then they are more likely to
take them and so not apply to university.”
But the education expert said that the widening gap in university applications
was still “very concerning.”
Professor Smithers said the Government’s move away from coursework and towards
end-of-year exams at GCSE and A-Level would go some way to redressing the
balance, but that more needed to be changed in the early years of education.
“We need to go with the grain of what children are really like when they come
to school. I think we need to accept that there are differences between the
sexes and that currently our system favours girls.
“That’s a problem for boys in terms of their personal development but it’s
also a problem on a national level. We don’t have enough people coming
through in areas where men are traditionally strong - for example maths,
physics and engineering - which in turn means we don’t have enough strong
teachers in those subjects.”
Mary Curnock Cook, the chief executive of UCAS, said
last year that men should now be seen as an underrepresented group.
The “very worrying difference between application rates for men and women”
should be treated as an “important widening participation issue,” she said.