More women than men are enrolling in college

Sep. 3--In a parking lot west of the Arkansas River, Randall Ziegler, a high-school dropout, defended the importance of a college education as he helped carry groceries to a customer's pickup.

Ziegler, slender with bushy brown hair and a navy polo shirt embroidered with "Warehouse Market," and the customer, Dave Robbins, speed-walked out of the store and talked as they loaded the truck.

Robbins, who also works for a grocery, said he knew both college graduates who cannot get jobs and people without degrees who make more money than those who have them.

"I don't think it's necessary anymore, honestly," Robbins said of college education.

Ziegler, 17, piped up, "The way we're progressing, you're going to need it pretty soon."

College officials and analysts across the country have been fretting this year that fewer men than women are going to college. No one has definitively explained the gender gap.

In Tulsa, westside men are even less likely to attend or plan to attend college than other demographics, Tulsa Community College found in a 2003 survey.

When students enrolled for the fall semester, TCC advertised to men, focusing on those in west Tulsa. The ads emphasized the careers and salaries that could result from a college education -- even a "career education" without a degree attached.

The campaign, which consists of billboards, print ads and the Web site www.fastforwardtcc.com, will intensify during future enrollment periods, said Lauren Brookey, TCC's vice president for external affairs.

Like many young men, Ziegler immediately entered the work force. He wanted an education but had to worry more about getting shot or stabbed than learning history when he was in school, he said.

He plans to join Job Corps, the federal training program for people ages 16 to 24.

He would like to think college lies in his future, too, but that depends on whether he has enough money.

The groceries loaded, Robbins sped off, and Ziegler pushed shopping carts toward the store.

Inside, half a dozen young men -- perhaps college-age -- crowded into one aisle to stock shelves. A small sign taped to the manager's office wall read, "Westside is the best side."

About five miles away, in the waiting room of TCC's West Campus' counseling office, blue strips of paper above computers read, "Be your best at West!"

Tyson Wilkerson, a TCC West Campus freshman who graduated last spring from nearby Berryhill High School, said the west side is traditionally blue-collar. In his opinion, young men show respect for their fathers by joining the family businesses.

His grandfather is a carpenter and his father is a welder. He grew up doing both trades and enjoying them. But his father always told him to go to college so he could make more money and provide a better life for his future family.

"If I can get a job in the music business, I can sit in the recording studio all day in the air conditioning," he said.

Wilkerson sees TCC as a first step, to be followed by a bachelor's degree and a job he wants. He knows he cannot count on a baseball career, as he already is sitting out this season to let his knee heal from a torn ligament.

A parade of college representatives visited Berryhill last year, but Wilkerson estimates that they got through to the young women better than they did the young men. At TCC, he sees many more of his female former classmates than male.

A TCC counselor, Terri Alonso, said she thought that male high-school graduates go to work first and then realize that they do not want to spend the rest of their careers performing manual labor.

In contrast, said Sybil Ogden, an administrative assistant in TCC West Campus' counseling office, more women enroll right out of high school for obvious reasons such as getting into higher-paying careers, and also to prepare for possible divorce, when they will need better jobs to support their children.

An analysis on www.educationsector.org said the nationwide enrollment disparity between men and women is not because men are dismissing college but because women are enrolling at a faster rate. Enrollment of both sexes is increasing, the report said.

More women are going to college, in part, because more boys drop out of high school, it said.

Data from the State Regents for Higher Education say that 57 percent of the students in Oklahoma public colleges two years ago were women and 43 percent were men. TCC reported that 63 percent of its students last fall were women and 37 percent were men.

The gaps are not because of population differences -- national and statewide populations of men and women are about equal.

Academic programs can skew male enrollment. Oklahoma State University-Okmulgee has more men, especially in its automotive programs. Tulsa Technology Center also has more men. OSU-Stillwater and the University of Oklahoma do not have gender differences, officials said.

Brookey, the TCC executive, theorized that TCC has more women because of its support system, including child care and a support group for widows.

In high school, the boys "were told they weren't college material" or developed that opinion on their own, often when they struggled through math classes, she said.

Patrick Braithwaite, an OSU-Okmulgee vice president, said many students there are the first in their families to work toward degrees. Their upbringing showed men taking the "breadwinner" role, he said.

"It's taking that leap of faith to spend a couple more years in school to get a higher reward," he said.

In between ringing up sales at a west-side Piggly Wiggly, April King said most of the women who graduated with her in 2004 from Webster High School are in college, but she knows of only a few men who took that path. Among the guys, mostly athletes and the valedictorian heeded college recruiters, she said.

King wants to go to college, and she also thinks that her husband, who just graduated from high school, should attend, she said.

"He doesn't think he's smart enough," she said. "He is."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Tulsa World, Okla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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