ResearchEducation & Skills
Men in higher education: A national data tool
Summary
We have created a data tool for studying geographic, school-level trends for men in higher education, from admissions to completion. This tool includes information on variables like male enrollment shares, graduation rates, as well as later salaries. All the data is open and downloadable. We hope this resource proves useful for higher education practitioners in studying their own school’s trends, as well as for the general audience in viewing school-specific patterns.
Resources
Learn more about the Higher Education Male Achievement Collaborative (HEMAC), a program of AIBM which aims to study and improve the condition and outcomes of men in higher education.
As male college enrollment has stagnated, and the female enrollment share has continued to rise, more higher education practitioners have started to pay attention to these trends.
At AIBM, we have extensively covered the state of men in higher education:
- Degrees of difference: where we cover overall trends in the higher education pipeline, from immediate enrollment to graduation.
- HBCUs: highlighting the declining enrollment share of Black men at HBCUs.
- Stagnation in doctoral programs: showing the relative stagnation in male enrollment in doctoral programs in a host of subjects, like medical and law schools.
- Major changes: demonstrating a general stability in male college major selection over the past fifty years
While these aggregate trends clearly indicate a number of recent male-specific patterns in higher education, national analyses can hide the school-specific characteristics across the country. In order to better demonstrate these school-specific male patterns, we provide the following data tool for studying male trends at postsecondary institutions across the country.
Snapshot of higher ed: A data tool for studying male trends
The data tool provided below is a visualization of postsecondary institutions across the country, and their respective characteristics on a number of relevant variables by gender.
Disclaimer: this tool is meant to be viewed on desktop.
How to use
This map includes the following characteristics by gender:
- Male acceptance rate: the share of men who applied to an institution that were ultimately admitted.
- Male enrollment share: the total male share of the enrolled student population. This variable is available at the undergraduate and graduate level.
- Male graduation rate: the share of male students who graduate “on time.” Here, “on time” refers to graduating within 150% of expected graduation time, meaning graduating within six years at four-year institutions and three years at two-year institutions.
- Male median earnings: the median earnings of male students who are working and not enrolled, six years after initial enrollment. This measure was taken in 2020 and 2021, and has been inflation-adjusted to 2025 dollars.
To change the variable being visualized, simply update the tab in the top right.
While visualization and coloring is dependent on male outcomes, the hover labels for each school includes information on female outcomes and the comparison between male and female outcomes. Labels also include data from past years as well.
To find a specific school, use the search bar in the top right then zoom in on the highlighted marker. Clear the search bar to return all schools.
To zoom in and out of the map, use the top right zoom icons. You can also zoom in with your mouse/touchpad.
To view the map in a separate browser tab, please use this link.
To query and download any data shown in the map, see the data table and explanation below.
Data noteData used for this tool come from the following sources:
- NCES IPEDS: The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) annually produces higher education-related surveys on a host of subjects, from finances and admissions to graduation and degree fields. We use data from surveys on admissions, enrollment and graduation to construct our visualization.
- College Scorecard: The College Scorecard created by the U.S. Department of Education provides much of the same information produced by IPEDS, including other variables as well. Here, we use school-level data on median salaries, and then adjust measures for inflation using the PCE chain-type price index (PCEPI) via the BLS FRED.
If you’d like to work with the IPEDS data shown here without having to clean and format it yourself, the author provides the following Python package, genpeds, that requests and cleans IPEDS data from the past forty years. For further information on genpeds, please visit the PyPi page and/or the GitHub repository.
Get the data
To download any of the data shown in the main data tool, please use the following data table. Tabs correspond to the shown variables in the visualization. Columns can be sorted in ascending and descending order, and schools can be queried by using the search bar with a school’s name or its location. To download results for a school or set of schools, simply query each school via the search bar, then download the results using the buttons in the top left.
Higher ed practitioners: We’d like to hear from you
AIBM is partnering with colleges and universities across the United States to deepen our understanding of the trends in male student achievement in higher education. Through the Higher Education Male Achievement Collaborative (HEMAC) we are fostering a community committed to sharing evidence-based strategies, conducting collaborative research and supporting promising innovations aimed at improving outcomes for men in higher education.
If your institution is interested in exploring male student engagement, persistence and success, we invite you to get involved by completing the contact form.
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