But here the number of men pursuing higher education is much smaller than the number of women.
Two-thirds of those enrolled at Temple College for the fall 2007, spring 2008 and summer 2008 terms were female. The college has nearly 5,000 students.
At the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton this fall, 63 percent of those attending are women.
Nationally, men began losing ground to women on campus in 1979, and there have been more women in undergraduate college classes ever since, the Census Bureau says. Not until 1998 did the number of women exceed the number of men in graduate programs.
The new federal report shows that 17 million people enrolled in colleges in 2006, a big uptick over the previous decade, when numbers were flat.
Susan Howe, public information director for Temple College, said the school’s female population may be a bit lopsided because several popular academic programs tend to primarily attract women - such as those training surgical technicians and dental hygienists.
But, she said, student recruiters find it’s hard to get men to enroll.
Since 2006, Howe said, TC has been working on increases through a program called College Connection, which targets seniors in about two dozen area high schools as potential enrollees.
“We walk them through the whole process,” she said. “We encourage them to go to any college, but we do apply them to TC.”
