The Universities and Colleges Admission Service (UCAS) has released its latest admission statistics, and they aren’t pretty. Of the 580,000 people that applied for places at British institutions, 333,700 of them were women. Only 246,300 men applied, a difference of 87,000. The figures show that the gender gap is particularly wide among poorer households.
Perhaps this is some small victory for the women’s movement – after all, more women in tertiary education means more women with decent career prospects. But what about the men? If feminist ideology defends equal political, social and economic rights for women, then by that token, they should want equal political, social and economic rights for men. Equality can’t be lopsided.
So UCAS’s data looks pretty rum: somewhere along the line, boys are being deterred from going to university. But at which point are they being put off? When faced with a personal statement? Perhaps.
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