Rejected: How the Increase of Women in Higher Education Leads to Admissions Discrimination

A sign outside the admissions office at Dartmouth College

The arrival of September means a season of new beginnings for many. As the leaves begin changing color and children wave goodbye to the last golden rays of summer, high school seniors prepare to start their own new undertaking: applying to college. The admissions process is somewhat of a mystery to many students, who compile the summation of their lives into essays and activity descriptions in hopes of gaining admission to their preferred universities. With the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling overturning affirmative action, the admissions process has grown increasingly convoluted, as colleges work to amend their policies and criteria to accommodate the change. As the issue of race-conscious admissions continues to make headlines, another group has found themselves facing disproportionately lower acceptance rates and higher standards for admission, to far less fanfare: women.

For the majority of its history, higher education in the United States was inaccessible to women. While Harvard University opened its doors in 1636, it would be over 200 years before women could attend university in the US, with Oberlin College admitting the first female students in 1837. Still, education was far from equal for over a century following Oberlin’s first class of women. Columbia University, for instance, did not admit its first class of women until 1983. Today, however, women are making up for lost time, attending college at higher rates than their male counterparts. In 2022, just 42.7% of US undergraduate students were men, a complete reversal from 1970, in which 41.2% of college students were women. 

Part of this trend may be explained by the potential financial benefits of a college degree, particularly for women. While non-college educated men earn a median salary of $50,000, women without degrees earn just $35,000 and face high levels of economic instability, with only 51% working a full-time job. College presents women with the opportunity to level the playing field. Women with a bachelor’s degree or higher have higher career earnings than men with only high school diplomas or associate's degrees, making college-educated women the only demographic to out-earn men in any capacity. While a college degree certainly does not remedy the disparities between men’s and women’s wages, it gives women a fighting chance to improve their financial prospects. 

The proliferation of women in college signals an increased level of gender equality, which in turn contributes to a stable economy and economic diversification, benefitting the United States as a whole. However, these positive outcomes belie an ironic paradox: as more women apply to college, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to get in. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in the case of Brown University, which received 31,650 female applicants and 19,666 male applicants during its 2023-24 application cycle. Despite seeing women apply at such a disproportionately high rate, Brown admitted a gender-balanced class, accepting 1,350 men and 1,336 women. Thus, the acceptance rate for women was just 4.2%, as compared to 6.9% for men. The phenomenon held true for all eight Ivy League schools, which received more female than male applicants in the most recent admissions cycle, though the unintentional discrimination against female applicants is not confined to just the prestigious group of eight institutions. Facing the continuing trend of high numbers of female applicants, “there’s not a lot you can do other than discriminate”, remarked Charles Deacon, Dean of Admissions for Georgetown University. In an era where elite schools such as Yale state that “a large majority of the students who apply for admission to Yale are qualified to do the work”, the data on female applicants indicates that they are held to a higher standard. 

Colleges and universities have shrouded their admissions processes in secrecy, leaving students feeling crushed by rejection that hardly reflects their actual qualifications. Improving the college admissions process is an uphill battle, but there are changes that can lessen the pain of the exercise. One possibility is amending Title IX to account for modern trends regarding women in higher education. Passed in 1972, Title IX prohibits discrimination in admissions at federally funded universities on the basis of gender. However, the law provides an exemption for private undergraduate institutions, allowing such universities to determine their own policies on gender and admission. With 19 of the top 25 universities falling under the purview of private ownership, Title IX provides only limited protection to women seeking admission to elite universities. Thus, one solution to remedy the challenges faced by women in the college admissions process is to remove the private school exemption from Title IX and begin a policy of sex-blind admissions. 

Critics of gender-blind admissions point to worries of men becoming underrepresented or discriminated against in the university setting. However, colleges ought to represent their applicant class in admissions, so accepting more women would not discriminate against men, but simply reflect the realities of applicants. Such a change has already been implemented at some public universities, such as the University of Georgia. After beginning a policy of sex-blind admissions, Georgia saw its class become 57% women, hardly making it a single-sex or overtly female dominated school. The argument that higher education might become unduly female-dominated is further disputed with a simple study of science and technology majors. Even as women out-enroll men in college overall, men continue to outnumber women in STEM fields. Finally, the prestige of elite universities isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and the draw of such an exclusive club is unlikely to drive away male applicants in search of higher education. Consider, for instance, recent data on post-college earnings potential ranking selective colleges such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, and Stanford Universities, and Dartmouth College in the top ten for early and mid-career earnings. The allure of elite institutions is one that captures the minds of college seekers of all stripes, and merit should be the main consideration; women should not be locked out of such benefits on the basis of sex.

Women have made huge strides in the past half-century in the realm of higher education. However, issues of discrimination persist and shift with each change, the shape of inequality emerging today in the form of higher admissions standards for the sake of gender-balanced classes. After the centuries-long struggle for equal education, women should not be forced to work harder, yet again, to grasp one of the limited number of spots available to them at elite institutions. Rather, colleges should consider creating a more even admissions playing field by matching the gender demographics of their incoming class to the applicant pool, helped along by the amendment of Title IX to eliminate the exemption for private universities. Amending Title IX would hold private universities accountable when it comes to gender equality, subjecting them to the supervision of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Introducing federal oversight to the issue of sex-based discrimination at private universities forces such institutions to take a look at their own processes and standards while holding their feet to the federal fire, a step in the right direction for women in higher education. Ultimately, colleges ought to aim to admit the most academically qualified class possible. Gender should not matter, as the question is qualification, not sex.