Sharp decline in male college enrollment paints new picture for future newsrooms

The gender education gap reached an all-time high at the end of the 2020-2021 school year, demonstrating the biggest drop in male enrollment in colleges and universities across the nation.

But a degree like journalism, something widely recognized as a male-dominated field, is proving to be largely impacted by this trend, which may carry through from the classroom to the news desk.

According to a study conducted by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, American colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago.

Male students made up 71% of that decline.

Research reveals the gender gap for college enrollment is actually widening in both directions for four-year institutions. The number of female students grew by 44 thousand, while male students dropped in numbers by 90,000 – more than double the increase for women.

As such a prevalent national trend, these numbers may cause a shift in the industry standards for journalism in Phoenix, and throughout the country, moving forward.

Professor Dennis Russell of the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University said that one way to examine this gender disparity is to look at enrollment at the journalism college.

“In the last 10 years, the number of male students in my classes has been rapidly declining,” Russell said, who has taught at the Walter Cronkite school for 30 years. “Early in my teaching career, there was usually an equal number of men and women in my classes. Today, if I have a class of 20 students, there’s often no more than three male students registered.”

Russell attributes part of the decline to a nationwide anti-higher education attitude that has been perpetuated in the U.S., turning male students away.

“The mistaken prevailing attitude is, ‘I don’t need a university degree to get a job, and why bother getting so far into student debt,’” Russell said. “Unfortunately, far too many young males have been targeted for this message,” he said.

The same sentiments are shared by professor Bill Goodykoontz, who has taught at Cronkite since 2004 and spends his time outside of teaching as a media critic for the USA TODAY network.

“It has shifted… My recollection is that classes were divided pretty equally between men and women (in 2004). In the last few years, I’ve had classes with only one or two men, the rest women,” Goodykoontz said when asked about the gender ratio.

Another phenomenon suggests women are still playing “catch-up” in the labor force, which may account for the consistent uptick of female students pursuing higher education for their preferred career fields – they have “barnstormed into colleges.”

This is significant to the journalism industry because of how uncommon it has traditionally been for women to outnumber men in newsrooms.

Goodykoontz shared his experience of the newsroom demographic throughout his career.

“There have typically been more men than women in the newsrooms where I’ve worked, but women have played an important role in all of them,” he said. “At one time at the Arizona Republic, my boss was a woman, her boss was a woman, her boss was a woman, and her boss–the publisher–was a woman. That isn’t the case now, but that was unusual.”

Russell also touched on his own experience with gender diversity in his previous jobs, explaining that “prized, hard-news beats” were handled by male reporters, leaving women with primarily lifestyle and feature writing, the lesser-paying assignments.

For years, it has been documented that women, especially in male-heavy positions, have been paid unfairly. This pattern is intersectional and impacts various minority groups in journalism.

Back in April, investigations found that the Gannett media company, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, showed some of the largest disparities in wages by race and gender. Most notably, women who worked at the Arizona Republic earned only 67% of men’s median pay, and journalists of color earned 63 percent of white workers’ median pay.

Aside from traditional journalism, the answer may lie in the Cronkite school’s degree program in sports journalism. Traditionally, the concentration of men in the classroom is higher for sports courses, and lower in others.

Andrew Lwowski is a senior sports journalism major at Cronkite who recognizes this in his own class make-up.

“I’m taking editing, sports reporting and sports photojournalism in-person this semester. Editing is majority female, while my two sports courses are predominantly male with no surprise,” Lwowski said.

Still, the higher volume of normal journalism classes offered at Cronkite offsets this. Lwowski said his sports classes have lower enrollment because “It’s just not a popular major,” meaning the head count operates on a much smaller sample size.

These patterns are indicative of how newsrooms in Arizona and across the nation may be more balanced by gender in the near future, creating a new dynamic for the next generation of journalists.

Contact the reporter at screvelt@asu.edu.