A Continuing Decline in the Enrollments of Women in Higher Education

A new report from the U.S. Department of Education offers preliminary data on higher education enrollments in the fall of 2014. 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 2014, there was a total of 20,663,464 students enrolled in high education. Of these 11,713,439 were women. Thus, women made up 56.7 percent of all enrollments in higher education. This is down from 56.8 percent in 2013.

Of the 11,713,439 women enrolled in higher education, slightly more than 10 million were enrolled as undergraduates at Title IV institutions in the fall of 2014. Of these women undergraduate students, 60.2 percent were enrolled at four-year institutions.

The same report issued a year ago found that in the fall of 2013 there were 11,832,719 women enrolled at Title IV institutions in the United States. Two years earlier, the same report listed 12,345,725 women enrolled in these institutions. Thus in 2014, there were 632,286 fewer women students enrolled in higher education than was the case in 2011.

In 2014, women were 55.3 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 65.8 percent of all students enrolled at for-profit institutions of higher education.

The full report, Enrollment and Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2014; and Financial Statistics and Academic Libraries, Fiscal Year 2014, may be downloaded by clicking here.