The U.S. Civil Rights Commission launched an investigation Oct. 30 into possible discrimination by private liberal arts universities against women in the admissions process.
Under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, public universities are not permitted to make admissions decisions based on an applicant’s sex, but private institutions are exempt from these provisions. Nationally, on average, more women are applying to college than men, while ratios on campus do not always reflect this trend.
Some universities are dominated by males, while many private liberal arts colleges enroll mostly females. These institutions favor male applicants in efforts to avoid the “tipping point” where the female population is so large that neither sex wants to apply to the college, said UT sociology professor Chandra Muller.
Muller said that for universities to maintain levels of applicants, the school’s gender ratio cannot become too imbalanced.
Muller said men are given an easier time during the admissions process at some private universities because they cannot compete with the number of achieved female applicants who probably make up a majority of the top 10 percent.
“I think that using gender in admissions and discrimination might be different things,” Muller said.
At UT, 15,117 men applied for fall 2009 and 6,366 were accepted. For women, 15,799 applied and 7,699 were accepted. Augustine Garza, deputy director of UT admissions, said this is because more women are in the top 10 percent than men, giving them automatic admission to UT.
Garza said UT follows the Title IX restrictions and does not discriminate.
“Women are now the breadwinners,” he said. “They’re wanting to take charge of their lives in these days and times, so they work harder.”
The UT population is approximately 51 percent female and 49 percent male, but within the individual colleges, things are not so evenly distributed. The college of education has a population of 1,263 women and 484 men, the school of social work has 383 women and 58 men and the college of engineering has 665 women and 2,750 men.
Some private liberal arts institutions also employ tactics to attract more male applicants, such as establishing football teams.
“It’s becoming a real challenge to recruit men,” said Michael Strysick, spokesman for Austin College.
Austin College is a private, liberal arts university in Sherman, Texas that has managed to keep its male population in step with the females. But, Strysick said that in recent years,
Austin College has had to be careful in making its recruitment efforts more compatible with the male population.
“We can’t seem like we’re trying too hard to recruit guys, but we’ve done things like be sensitive to color designs.” Strysick said. “One palette design a few years ago had too much lavender, so we changed it.”
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