Higher Education

While women have made enormous strides in higher education, progress has been uneven. Women now receive a majority of undergraduate degrees but disparities remain, particularly at graduate, doctoral and post-doctoral levels. Colleges and universities still reflect inequities based on race, ability, geography and income. And more efforts must focus on advancing women and women of color into tenured and leadership positions with institutions of higher learning. There is growing concern about the rising cost of higher education and how to improve quality and access. The financial crisis of 2008-09 has shrunk many endowment funds and reduced the number of scholarships available as well as making state and community colleges more competitive and less accessible. The effects of corporatization on college campuses are also a source of concern for the quality and independence of scholarship, including for women’s studies and other inter-disciplinary programs.

NCRW Fact Sheet: Increasing Student Aid—Making Higher Education Accessible to Women and Low-Income Students

Submitted by Kyla Bender-Baird on Mon, 01/03/2011 - 6:49pm

As wages continue to stagnate and tuition costs rise, college education has become out of reach for many women and low-income families. Increasing student aid to fill the gap between rising college costs and decreasing median family income is critical to ensuring that higher education is affordable to low-income students.

Attachment:

Increasing Financial Aid.pdf

Expert Profile

Location:

United States

42° 21' 30.3516" N, 71° 3' 35.1828" W

See map: Google Maps

Dr. Mariko Chang is the author of the new book, Shortchanged: Why Women Have Less Wealth and What Can Be Done About It, and the main author of the March 2010 report “Lifting as We Climb Women of Color, Wealth, and America’s Future.” Dr. Chang has a PhD in Sociology from Stanford University and was an Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard University from 1998 to 2007 where she published work on occupational sex segregation across countries, the use of social networks for gathering financial information and began her work on the gender wealth gap. To help raise awareness of the wealth gap, she maintains a website that provides data and other information on wealth, assets, and debt for public policy makers, the media, researchers, and organizations that address economic security.

Location

Boston, MA

United States

42° 21' 30.3516" N, 71° 3' 35.1828" W

See map: Google Maps

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Mapping faculty social networks helps female faculty move ahead at NJIT

Teaser:

New Jersey Institute of Technology: A new project funded by the National Science Foundation used social network mapping to expose collaborations between colleagues and how or whether this led to career advancement. Researchers concluded that women faculty in STEM careers are often excluded from the information flow, and that male faculty with male mentors tended to advance more quickly.

Editorial:

"Long before Facebook introduced its hot new Social Graph app, researchers in the ADVANCE project at NJIT were pioneering the use of social network mapping to help women scientists and engineers supercharge their career.

Beginning in 2006 with an NSF "proof of concept" Institutional Transformation grant, the project mined the Internet for information about who at NJIT collaborates with whom, constructing an interactive database containing over 7,200 publications produced between 2000 and 2008 by NJIT faculty. Statistical modeling and visual mapping of this data established a strong correlation between collaboration and career advancement. It also revealed hidden gender patterns, some of them predictable, others surprising. Predictably, male faculty tended to collaborate with other male faculty far more than with female faculty. Surprisingly, for women faculty, network structure --in particular, being connected to well-connected colleagues -- was a more reliable predictor of career success than number of publications.

'A new NSF-funded study shows that the ability of groups to come up with innovative solutions to problems increases with the proportion of women in the group. The purpose of the NSF ADVANCE program is to bring about institutional change so that women scientists and engineers will be in the room when the crucial decisions are made," she said. "The new network mapping tools we are developing at NJIT make an important contribution to that process, allowing researchers across the country to actually see institutional transformation as it occurs.'"

Source:

New Jersey Institute of Technology

URL:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-12/njio-mfs121610.php

Date:

December 16, 2010

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Indiana colleges adapt their engineering programs to attract more women into the field

Teaser:

Republic: A dual degree program between the University of Notre Dame and St. Mary's College has increased the percentage of women in the College of Engineering from 22 percent to 30 percent. In addition to more targeted recruitment, the program is helping to increase the national average of women in engineering which currently hovers around 18 percent.

Editorial:

"After Title IX was passed in 1972, women made monumental strides in higher-level education and now account for 50 percent or more of students in every field of study — as long as engineering is not included on that list.

The national average of women majoring in engineering is a meager 18 percent, said Cathy Pieronek, the assistant dean of academic affairs in engineering at the University of Notre Dame. When Pieronek and other officials at Notre Dame's College of Engineering realized the extent of the gender gap in 2002, they took steps to improve the situation.

In the past eight years, Notre Dame increased the percentage of women in the College of Engineering from 22 percent to 30 percent in this year's freshman class. Pieronek said this number is especially impressive when compared to the national average and percentages at other universities.

Pieronek said, however, the College of Engineering at Notre Dame is graduating more women thanks in large part to a dual program with neighboring Saint Mary's College. The program, which was formalized in 2005 but existed since the early 1970s, allows a Saint Mary's student to take pre-engineering classes starting her sophomore year at the college, while concurrently earning a degree in mathematics or one of the sciences. At the end of her four years, she graduates from Saint Mary's with a bachelor's degree in her selected major and then enrolls at Notre Dame for a fifth year in the College of Engineering."

Source:

The Republic

URL:

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/6eedbff45a7340f09870abc85836d1e8/IN--Exchange-Women_In_Engineering/

Date:

September 26, 2010

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Higher Education

It has been nearly two generations since the passage of the 1963 federal Equal Pay Act, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the passage of Title VII and IX of the Education Amendments in the early 1970s – all meant to address issues of discrimination. Yet colleges and universities today still reflect basic limitations and inequities – often based on racial, gender, and other types of discrimination deeply imbedded in our history and culture – that limit the full participation of considerable numbers of our population and deny our institutions, and our society as a whole, the benefit of their perspectives, scholarship, skills, leadership, and energies.

Many Campus Assault Victims Stay Quiet, or Fail to Get Help

Teaser:

ABC News: One in four college women--will be the victim or rape or attempted rape before they graduate. Victims often face additional injustice according to a report from The Center for Public Integrity which found "students found 'responsible' for alleged sexual assaults on campuses often face little or no punishment," and victims who do report these crimes run into "barriers" -- from counselors worried about privacy to universities concerned about their public image.

Editorial:

"A recent study from the Department of Justice estimated that 25 percent of college women will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year college period, and that women between the ages of 16 to 24 will experience rape at a rate that's four times higher than the assault rate of all women.

Such was seemingly the case of Megan Wright, a 19-year-old from New Jersey. Wright was wrapping up her freshman year in May 2006 at Dominican College, a small Catholic school in Orangeburg, N.Y., about an hour away from New York City, when she was allegedly gang raped on its campus. She committed suicide before the year ended. Her mother, Cindy McGrath, is suing Dominican, claiming that the college failed to conduct a proper investigation into her daughter's assault, and thereby violated Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which guarantees equal access to education."

Source:

ABC News

URL:

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/college-campus-assaults-constant-threat/story?id=11410988

Date:

September 6, 2010

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

The Power of Girls

Submitted by jzeilinger@ncrw.org on Tue, 07/27/2010 - 11:27am

*By Julie Zeilinger

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Syria Bans Face-Covering Veils in Universities

Teaser:

CBS: Authorities in Syria have banned the wearing of the niqab, a face covering veil worn by some Muslim women in public universities. The ban is an attempt by the government to discourage Islam and has forced over 1000 female teachers who wear the head to toe Muslim veil called the burqa out of their jobs.

Editorial:

"Fearing an ever-secular Syria might turn to radical Islam, authorities has quietly banned the niqab, a face-covering veil worn by some Muslim women, in public universities — a move welcomed by most Syrians. The Minister of Higher Education Ghyath Barakat has given his directives that women wearing niqab would not be allowed to enter the Syrian universities, and has " totally rejected this phenomena which contradicts with the academic values and traditional morals and ethics of the Syrian society" a source said.

The ban, which was not made public in state-run media, does not affect the hijab, or headscarf, which is favored by the vast majority of veiled Syrian women. The majority of Syrians, of all different age groups, expressed support for getting niqabs and burqas not only out of schools and universities but out of all public places as well. Others expressed that 'the ban is wrong as it touches personal freedom and certain way of expression.'"

Source:

CBS

URL:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20010869-503543.html

Date:

July 18, 2010

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

FAST FACT: Black Women's Health Care Access and Educational Attainment Rising

Submitted by Kyla Bender-Baird on Thu, 07/08/2010 - 5:25pm

By Josephina Ragon*

Last week, I waited eagerly on the steps of City Hall to get the latest facts on the status of black women and girls. The Law and Policy Group, Inc. released their 2010 Bi-Annual report to a crowd of fellow non-profits, media, and interested citizens. According to Executive Director and Founder Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, the report gives the public a picture of an “African-American female as a whole person—a snapshot of her life.” This particular study is the only ongoing national report on the current state of black females in the United States.

The research not only covers the challenges faced by black women today, but also their achievements thus far. For example,

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Girls Discovered: Global Maps of Adolescent Girls

Submitted by jzeilinger@ncrw.org on Wed, 06/30/2010 - 5:01pm

What do we know about girls?

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NCRW is a network of leading university and community based research, policy, and advocacy centers with a growing global reach dedicated to advancing rights and opportunities for women and girls. We also have a Corporate Circle comprised of senior diversity professionals from leading U.S. and global member companies and a Presidents Circle of college and university leaders who share our commitment. NCRW harnesses the collective power of its network to provide knowledge, analysis, and thought leadership on issues ranging from reducing women’s poverty to building a critical mass of women’s leadership across sectors.

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