New data from the U.S. Census Bureau offers detailed data on college enrollments by gender and specific year of enrollment in higher education.
In October 2017, there were 10,287,000 women enrolled in postsecondary education. Women were 56 percent of the total enrollments in higher education. Nearly 2.3 million of these women students were enrolled in two-year colleges.
There were 2,367,000 first-year women students in all undergraduate institutions, 2,212,000 women in their second year, 1,902,000 in their third year and 1,527,000 women in their fourth year of college. Thus, the number of women students in their fourth year of college was 65 percent of the number of women students in their first-year. In contrast the number of male students in their fourth year of college was 66 percent of the number of male first-year students.
The data also showed that in October 2017, there were 851,000 women in their first-year of graduate education and 1,428,000 women students in their second or further year of graduate school. Thus, the number of women in their second or subsequent years of graduate school was 1.7 times the number of women in their first year of graduate school. For men, the number of students in their second or subsequent years of graduate school was nearly double the number of first-year male graduate students.