Gender Gap Within College Tiers and Parental Income

We examined the mean parental incomes of both male and female students within each college tier and compared them to trends that we hypothesized. Before making the graph, we hypothesized that students at higher-tiered colleges would have a greater mean parental income than students at lower-tiered schools for both genders. In addition, we expected to see females with a greater mean parental income than males because there were generally more females enrolled in colleges than males in recent decades.

In the graph, the blue bars represents the average female parental income and the orange bars represent the average male parental income for each college tier. The data was right skewed and from this, we were able to observe one major trend that followed our original predictions. The students at ivy plus schools had the highest mean parental incomes for both genders, with the average female mean parental income at $412,212 and the average male parental income at $450,376. The mean parental incomes declined as you moved down the college tiers. Students at two-year (public and private not-for-profit), four-year for-profit, and two-year for-profit had the lowest mean parental incomes for both genders, with females having a mean parental income of $58,156 and males $70,848 at two-year for-profit schools.

One thing that we did find surprising was that across the board, males had a greater average parental income than female students within every college tier. This was something that we did not expect to see because there are a number of surveys and data released by universities about their male to female ratio on campus, where there are typically more female students enrolled than male students. As a result, we anticipated that the mean parental income for female students would be greater than males because there were generally a greater proportion of female students at colleges. This was not the case. The mean parental incomes of male students exceeded those of female students, with the greatest difference seen in ivy plus students.

There are many factors that contribute to these results. Some being the difference between public and private universities and the persistent gender pay gap and family structure at these schools. Students who come from single parent households will have a lower mean parental income than students who come from two-parent households where both parents are contributing to the mean parental income. In addition, students raised by with single-mothers or have absentee fathers may have a lower mean parental income due to factors, such as a gender pay gap or a decrease in college enrollment, particularly among males. There are many factors that contribute to these findings, and therefore, we cannot point to one particular reason for as the basis of our conclusions. However, we explore some of these issues further within our topic. We also decided to peak inside the major stratification between these two genders. During the career and college search process, whether as a parent or student, there perhaps may be a strongly considered perspective with scope. Payscale actually performed an analysis on gender and major selection. The conclusion determined that women chose majors that led them to a lower salary than the national median average. According to that same Payscale post, "The percentage of men and women who chose Engineering and Education as their major in response to the American Association of University Women’s (AAUW) study of the gender pay gap. They found Engineering (median pay of $75,000/year) to be male dominated, while Education (median pay of $42,000/year) is dominated by female majors. Therefore, differences in major choice can greatly affect the national pay gap. In an updated research project, we determined 15 common majors for men, 15 common majors for women and 15 common majors with roughly equal numbers of men and women graduates. Similar to AAUW, we find women tend to major in various Design/Art majors, Education, Nursing, and Public Relations, while men tend to major in Engineering, Finance, Computer Science, and Economics. Majors common to both include Accounting, Journalism, Biology, History, English and Mathematics."   [caption id="attachment_474" align="alignnone" width="300"] Commonly picked majors by women[/caption] [caption id="attachment_475" align="alignnone" width="300"] Commonly picked majors by men[/caption]