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WASHINGTON, Jul 10, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Statistics released by the U.S. Department of Education suggest that men are less likely than women to earn bachelor's degrees.
The department also said male students, who account for 42 percent of the nation's college population, also tend to get lower grades than female counterparts, The New York Times reported Monday.
"The boys are about where they were 30 years ago, but the girls are just on a tear, doing much, much better," Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington, told the Times.
However, a report by the American Council on Education has said the gender differences vary among races and social classes. Men in the highest income brackets tend to attend college in the same or greater percentages as women in the same category.
"Over all, the differences between blacks and whites, rich and poor, dwarf the differences between men and women within any particular group," said report author Jacqueline King, a researcher for the American Council on Education's Center for Policy Analysis.
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2006 by United Press International
