Dartmouth University Becomes The First US-Based University Where First Time Graduating Females Have Outnumbered Males?

Dartmouth College in June announced that it had more women graduates from its engineering course this year in comparison to male graduates. The university claimed this accomplishment has never been achieved before by any other US-based research university.

Though the number of women enrolling in engineering courses over the past decade has shot up considerably, this is the first time graduating females have outnumbered males anywhere in the United States - hinting the imminent end of male dominance of the field, ScienceAlert reported.

One-fourth of all STEM jobs are taken by women and merely about 20% of university cohorts in engineering fields comprise of female students.

However, the engineering school at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire is breaking the trend as 37% of students who represented the 2015 class were women. This year, an impressive 54% of the engineering class were women, as a result of which, Dartmouth has emerged as the only national research university that boast more female engineers as compared to male.

Engineering as well as other STEM fields have witnessed a considerable hike in female students; and in quite a few fields such as environmental and biomedical sciences, both men and women have about same number of enrollment, MasterStudies reported.

No doubt, this is exciting news; however there are a couple of things that need to be noted here.

First of all, the report takes Dartmouth's word as far as the whole "first research college in the United States" thing is concerned. The claim hasn't been independently verified yet.

Besides, it cannot be ignored that men still surpass women in STEM fields and one of the major cause of this could be the lack of women professors in STEM subjects. A couple of years back, merely 15.7% of engineering faculty were females.

According to Dartmouth officials, the accomplishment stems from the university's commitment towards STEM education; coupled with its unceasing efforts to mentor students with the hike in women enrollment in engineering.

The University has toiled to create distinct role models for students, besides offering entry-level classes in engineering so that keen students can delve into career opportunities.

The University also gives priority to the real-world utilization of an engineering degree. Students are encouraged to address engineering challenges with creativity, and to blend their other interests with their engineering studies.

In addition, students at Dartmouth are also captivated by the University's study abroad program.