A new report from the U.S. Department of Education offers preliminary data on higher education enrollments in the fall of 2013. The report includes data on all students enrolled at Title IV institutions. These are educational entities that are permitted to participate in federal student financial assistance programs.
In 2013, there was a total of 20,847,787 students enrolled in high education. Of these 11,832,719 were women. Thus, women made up 56.8 percent of all enrollments in higher education.
The same report issued a year ago found that in the fall of 2012 there were 12,063,631 women enrolled at Title IV institutions in the United States. A year earlier, the same report listed 12,345,725 women enrolled in these institutions. Thus in 2013, there were 513,006 fewer women students enrolled in higher education than was the case in 2011.
In 2013, women were 56.0 percent of all students enrolled in state-operated colleges and universities and 57.4 percent of total enrollments at private, nonprofit institutions. But women made up 65.4 percent of all students enrolled at for-profit institutions of higher education.