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27 chapter 2 what has happened? describing the Reversal of the Gender Gap in college completion T he general outlines of the gender gap reversal in college completion are now well known.1 This reversal occurred through a sharp slowdown in the rise in educational attainment of men, starting with cohorts born around 1950. The rise in educational attainment for women also slowed around this time but only temporarily; thereafter, women continued to make steady progress. For men, the slowdown in the growth of college completion rates lasted longer, and when growth did resume, it was as strong as that for women. The distinctive trends for women and men combined to reverse the gender gap in educational attainment in women’s favor. consider this: in 1960, 65 percent of all bachelor’s degrees were awarded to men. women lagged behind men in college graduation rates until 1982, when they reached parity with men. From 1982 onward, the percentage of bachelor’s degrees awarded to women climbed steadily until, by 2010, women received 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees (Snyder and dillow 2012) and comprised 57 percent of all college students. By all predictions, women’s advantage in college enrollment and Ba completion will continue to grow over the next decade, albeit more slowly than in past decades (Snyder and dillow 2012, table 283). in this chapter, we describe these trends in the united States in detail and situate them within the broader international context. educational Gender Gaps in Comparative Perspective: A Global Phenomenon The striking reversal in the gender gap in higher education is not solely a u.S. phenomenon. Today more women than men attain higher educa- 28 The Rise of women tion in most european countries as well as in many other parts of the world; see figure 2.1, which reports data collected by uNeSco (united Nations educational, Scientific, and cultural organization 2012). among the thirty member nations of the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd), the once-prevalent male advantage in college completion has disappeared in all but four countries: Switzerland , Turkey, Japan, and Korea (oecd 2006). This fact is all the more striking when we consider that thirty years ago women lagged behind men in completing college degrees nearly everywhere in the world. From 1965 to 1985, women’s share of higher education increased, on average , from 27 to 40 percent across a range of countries (Bradley and Ramirez 1996). But in the 1980s, women began to reach parity with men and in many cases surpassed men in the amount of education they received . Figure 2.2 shows the rise of women’s share of enrollment in higher education in oecd countries between 1990 and 2008. countries are ordered by women’s share of enrollment in 2008, from women’s smallest share (Korea) to their largest share (iceland). projections suggest that women’s advantage will grow in most countries. By 2020, females are expected to comprise at least 60 percent of tertiary students in austria , canada, hungary, iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the united Kingdom. Note that several oecd countries have higher female shares of tertiary enrollment than the united States. This fact is related to another noteworthy comparison in overall tertiary completion: after leading the world for much of the twentieth century, the united States has fallen behind other industrialized countries in terms of the percentage of the population attaining tertiary degrees. This fallback is readily apparent in figure 2.3, which compares the fraction of the population at different age ranges who have completed a tertiary 5a degree. By this method, the united States ranks first among the fraction of fifty-five- to sixty-fouryear -olds who have a tertiary 5a degree, but only eleventh among twenty-five- to thirty-four-year-olds who have this degree.2 although the united States remains in the upper middle of the distribution of countries, it has nonetheless dropped substantially in the rankings . That fact raises a question: was the american decline in tertiary completion relative to other industrialized countries largely driven by the educational problems of american males? Figure 2.4 sheds light on this question by comparing tertiary completion rates for men and women in the united States and selected oecd countries for two cohorts —those born between 1945 and 1954 and those born between 1975 and 1984. For the 1945 to 1954 birth cohort, the united States had the highest rates of completion among industrialized countries for both women and...

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