More women, few men on campus

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. -- The male students at Missouri Western State College say they don't mind at all that female students outnumber them 2-to-1.

But some female students say they wish more men attended the school not only for the social scene, but also to give them a male perspective in the classrooms.

Jason Buss freely admits that the boy-to-girl ratio is one of the reasons he chose to come to Missouri Western State College from his home in Hastings, Neb.

"There are better odds, it's noticeable," Buss said.

Women make up 56 percent of the student body at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville. Even in traditionally male-dominated fields such as business, the imbalance is obvious.

"Usually when you're in a group project, its like three or four girls and two guys," said Stacie McLaughlin, a senior business major at Northwest.

Women have outnumbered men on college campuses across the country since 1987, and the margin has slowly widened each year.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, women now comprise 57 percent of all college students nationwide. Some experts say if the trend continues, men could become a distinct minority on college campuses within the next few decades.

Continuing on trajectory

College women don't like that thought. They say the dating scene is competitive enough.

"It's something everyone jokes around about how there's not enough guys to choose from," says McLaughlin, who also is Northwest's student body president.

Men won't disappear from campus, says Thomas Mortenson, a national expert on college trends and a senior scholar at the Center for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.

"But I can tell you that we're going to continue on that trajectory for the foreseeable future because of the ways boys are not graduating from high school, not going to college, not completing college."

The downward spiral began somewhere in the late 1960s, probably hastened by the void the Vietnam War created in the male collegiate population.

At Northwest, the male-to-female ratio plays a role in how the university appeals to prospective students, according to Ken White, public relations director for the university.

"You try to market to the female population, and then you hope the men will follow," he said.

On the other hand, Benedictine College has no problem attracting men to its Atchison, Kan., campus.

The most recent figures show undergraduates nearly evenly split: 405 men to 390 women.