Boys left behind as gender gap at university grows

They will be ‘disadvantaged group’

‘Women enjoy studying more’

The number of young men applying to go into higher education is reaching crisis point, the head of the university applications service has warned.

a huge gender-gap is opening as young women choose to continue their education at university after leaving school while their male peers start work instead.

The number of girls applying to study for a degree this year is more than a third larger than that of boys.

if the trend continues, the gulf between male and female students will soon overtake the difference between rich and poor students, the Universities and Colleges admissions Service said.

according to its figures, in england, over 62,000 more women than men have applied for places this year – a rise of five per cent in just 12 months.

This is despite a one per cent fall in the 18- year- old population.

UK- wide figures are even worse, with a 76,680 gulf representing a 5.8 per cent increase.

Young people from the most disadvantaged areas are now twice as likely to apply as they were in 2004.

if both groups continue in the same direction, men will become the group most in need of intervention to increase numbers in the early 2020s.

UCaS chief executive Mary Curnock Cook said: ‘ There remains a stubborn gap between male and female applicants.

‘Young men are becoming a disadvantaged group in terms of going to university and this under- performance needs urgent focus across the education sector.’

Professor alan Smithers, of the Centre for education and employment Research at the University of Buckingham, said more young women aim to go into higher education because they enjoy studying more, do better in exams and don’t feel the same need to ‘assert’ themselves by getting a paid job immediately after school.

in a reference to so- called ‘social engineering’ which has seen universities encouraged to accept lower grades from teenagers with deprived backgrounds, the Commons adviser added: ‘i wonder if, in support of widening access, we ought to consider young men with lower a-level grades than women.’

last summer data from UCaS set alarm bells ringing about white schoolchildren, who are now less inclined to apply to university than any other ethnic group.

Just 29 per cent of white school leavers registered an interest to take a degree, compared with 34 per cent of black teenagers, 41 per cent from asian families and 57 per cent from Chinese backgrounds.

a total of 408,300 english residents applied to universities by the January 15 deadline, the second consecutive annual rise.

it means the 424,800 record set in 2011 could be broken next year.