For decades, women have enrolled in college in greater numbers than men, and, by many measures, have outperformed them in the classroom. But in recent years, as social scientists and student-affairs offices have focused on other differences between the genders, they have documented patterns that could explain how engagement influences student…

Since at least the early 1990s, Arab governments have made women's participation in higher education a priority. Across the region, young women fill the crowded lecture halls and bustling courtyards of universities. On many campuses, they outnumber men. But women's increased participation in higher education does not necessarily translate into…

Engineering and teaching are among the most lopsided disciplines in academe's gender split. In 2010, women received 80 percent of the undergraduate degrees awarded in education, the U.S. Education Department reports. And they earned 77 percent of the master's and 67 percent of the doctoral degrees in that field. In engineering, by contrast, women…

A recent report from the Modern Language Association, "Standing Still: The Associate Professor Survey," unfortunately passed over an important aspect of women's rise through the professorial ranks: how they move through the process of monograph publication, especially in comparison with male colleagues. As an acquiring editor in the scholarly and…

By academic standards, Rebecca R. Richards-Kortum has it made. She is a full professor of bioengineering at Rice University, runs a thriving cancer-research laboratory, and is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering. But with four children at home, she sometimes feels like an academic outcast. In fact, Ms. Richards-Kortum says…

A growing number of business schools, including those at Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, and Stanford Universities and the University of Texas at Austin, have instituted programs to catch promising students early. The result, they hope, will be a more diverse student body, with more women and members of minority groups, as well as talented and ambitious…

The underrepresentation of women in almost all science and engineering fields is a well-documented statistic. The National Academies have issued four significant reports since 2001 examining the status and challenges of women in academic science and engineering and offering recommendations to broaden the participation and advancement of women in…

Melissa P. Deputy, a 49-year-old mother of five and a community-college student, has long harbored desires to run for public office. Deputy decided to nurture her dreams of entering politics by attending a five-day program at Rutgers University earlier this month intended to encourage undergraduate women to run for elected office. Rutgers has held…

Even though Sarah Palin doesn't have the author's vote, she has her support. As a female assistant professor, the author appreciates the difficulty with which women wield authority in society. Political junkies dissect her every word as though she were the vanguard of conservatism, but the popular discourse about Palin is vulgar and crass. As the…

This article describes the hardships of rural life encountered and witnessed by the students at the Ahfad University for Women as they participate in the university's Rural Extension Program which is required of all fourth-year students. The program involves traveling in groups to impoverished communities across Sudan to share their knowledge,…

The recent release of "Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education", by the American Association of University Women, presents an opportunity to review the extraordinary success of women in education over the last four decades. The release also presents an opportunity to review the failure of the entire education system--from…

This article focuses on gender gap as a current trend in student population among schools. The author presents an honors course in statistics at Elon University--a class of 10 women and just one man--as an example. The imbalance is becoming more familiar at Elon and on many other campuses where women constitute a firm majority of undergraduates…

The recent announcement that Randolph-Macon Woman's College will admit male students has triggered yet another round in the continuing debate over women's colleges. At Randolph-Macon itself, the news was met with the usual mix of public displays: As students and alumnae protested with signs reading "Coed is a four-letter word," administrators and…

When the League for Innovation in the Community College held its annual technology conference here last week it drew about 2,350 participants, live and in person. People came from 374 colleges around the country and overseas, and listened to faculty members and technology officials discuss new teaching techniques using gadgets like cell phones.…

This article describes the results of a report released last week by the Council of Graduate Schools. The report, "Ph.D. Completion and Attrition: Analysis of Baseline Demographic Data From the Ph.D. Completion Project," is based on data from 24 universities in the United States and Canada. According to this report, women and members of…