New Report Examines the Gender Gap in College Graduation Rates

New data from the U.S. Department of Education gives us an updated look at the gender gap in college graduation rates in the United States.

The new dataset offers statistics for students who entered four-year colleges or universities in 2013 and earned a degree within six years of their matriculation. For all students who enrolled in 2013, 62.3 percent of women earned a degree within six years. For all men who entered four-year colleges in 2013, only 56.2 percent had earned a degree by 2019.

At state-run, four-year colleges and universities, the graduation rate for women was 60.9 percent. For men. the graduation rate was 54.5 percent. At private four-year institutions of higher learning, almost 70 percent of women earned a degree within six years compared to 63.2 percent of men.

The data also broke down the gender gap in graduation rates by racial and ethnic group. Women had a higher graduation rate than men in every racial and ethnic group. The largest gender gap was for African American students. Slightly more than 44 percent of Black women earned their degree within six years, compared to 34.3 percent of Black men.

The smallest gap at all four-year colleges and universities was for American Indians where women graduated at a rate of 37.6 percent compared to 32.4 percent of men. If we look just at private, four-year colleges and universities, the smallest gender gap was for Asian Americans. Asian women graduated at a rate of 82.1 percent, compared to 78.3 percent of Asian men. For Black students at private, four-year colleges and universities the gender gap in graduation rates favored women by a margin of 50.6 percent to 38.6 percent.