Gender
By Olga Mosiychuk
The University of Portland is filled with a vast array of individuals from varying locations, ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds. A majority of these students are, however, female. According to University of Portland Institutional Research only 39 percent of students attending UP are males.
Dean of Admissions Jason McDonald explains that this gender disparity is not uncommon.
"In private sector schools, you see high 50's to low 70's in terms of percentage of women on college campuses," he said.
Some students are, however, feeling the disparity. Sophomore education student Katie Kroger has noticed this trend throughout her time in college.
"All of my classes seem to have more women in them," she said. "It would be expected that my major classes would have more women, but even the core classes have that huge gender gap."
McDonald attributes this to the fact that we have so many programs in predominantly female fields.
"We have a nursing program that is about 95 percent female and it is now our biggest professional school, followed by engineering and education," he said. "And even engineering is about 25 percent female."
Economics Professor Mary Allender points out the fact that men traditionally outnumber women in more quantitative fields such as math, business and computer science but job outsourcing has decreased the availability of job-openings for these individuals, domestically. This could potentially contribute to lessened male enrollment at UP.
"Men tend to succeed in these fields but we don't have enough home-grown individuals working in the quantitative sector," she said.
Freshman business major Michael Wagner has not sensed the discrepancy in his academic UP experience, however.
"My business classes are full of guys, not girls, so I don't really notice the difference in classes," he said.
Conversely, weekends are different for UP students. Parties are littered with partnerless girls and men can be seen dancing with multiple women at a time. Wagner does not seem to have a problem with this.
"I do feel overpowered by the amount of girls here, at times. We as men are the minority so we have to work hard and keep our numbers up," he said. "But there can never be too many girls at one school."
Kroger sees this as a problem for the 61 percent of females, citing the fact that they do not have as many options as males when it comes to finding a partner.
"I have a boyfriend, but I know it's hard for my friends because it's difficult to get dates with cute boys since they're usually taken," said Kroger.
Wagner, however, hopes that the trend will continue with the next freshman class and give way to the admission of more female students.
