Study finds women learn less than men do at universities

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Women learn only two-thirds of what men learn during college, according to a study by a University of Florida professor and colleagues at the universities of Missouri and Iowa.

That finding was based on results of an achievement test given just once to 19,000 college students at 56 four-year colleges and universities in 13 states. The study appears in the current issue of The Journal of Higher Education, a peer-reviewed journal at Ohio State University.

But one expert questioned drawing a conclusion from a single test, noting that "men may have learned more because they knew less."

And the researchers themselves cautioned against taking the results at face value. For instance, they noted the study did not take into account the courses students had taken, or their backgrounds.

The study initially set out to examine the effect of college on learning, when what emerged were striking gender differences, said Lamont Flowers, an assistant professor of education at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "Taken as a whole, it was found that women on average tended to gain 67 percent of what men gained from freshman to senior year."

Flowers' co-authors in the study were Steven J. Osterlind, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Missouri; Ernest Pascarella, who holds the Mary Louise Petersen Chair in Higher Education at the University of Iowa, and Christopher Pierson, a doctoral student at the University of Iowa.

"We were somewhat disconcerted about the results," Pascarella said. "We don't know why that is the case."

Flowers said the study should prompt institutions to look at whether women are learning less than men, and if so, why.