At U.S. Veterinary Schools, Women Are 80 Percent of Students But 36 Percent of Tenured or Tenure-Track Faculty

The Association of American Veterinary Colleges has issued a report detailing the demographics of the application pool, student bodies, and faculties of its member institutions. The report includes information by gender for applicants, enrollments, and faculty.

In 1970, men were 89 percent of all students enrolled in veterinary medical colleges in the United States. By the mid-1980s, enrollments were about equally divided between women and men. This was remarkable progress in just a few short years. But the trend did not abate.

In 2017, there were 12,768 student enrolled in U.S> veterinary medicine schools. More than 80 percent of these students are women. Women hold a vast majority of all places at every college of veterinary medicine in the United States. Men are 27.1 percent of the students at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. This is the highest percentage of men at any veterinary school in the nation. The lowest percentage of men is at the veterinary school at the University of Minnesota, where men are just 13 percent of the student body.

In 2016, there were 4,356 faculty members at U.S. veterinary schools. Of these,1,827, or 42 percent are women. Women made up 42 percent of all administrators, up from 28 percent in 2012. But women were only 36.4 percent of all tenured or tenure-track faculty members. This is up from 32.6 percent in 2012. Women make up 59 percent of all nontenured clinical faculty and 49.5 percent of all nontenured research faculty.