Sophomore Anna Ragland’s Journalism 1 class at St. Edward’s University is relatively standard. Apple computers line the walls, the class is held for a total of two and a half hours every week, and there are 17 students in the class — five of them are males.

“In all my classes but one there are no more than four guys,” said Ragland, a communication major.

The undergraduate population at St. Edward’s is 38.9 percent male and 61.1 percent female. This ratio reflects a trend that has surfaced in colleges around the country: More women are attending college than ever before, and they now outnumber men.

There has long been a gender gap in colleges in the United States, but in the last 30 years, the trend of men outnumbering women in colleges has been reversed.

From 1960 to 2000, the percentage of bachelor’s degrees awarded to women increased from 37 percent to 57 percent.

Today, total undergraduate enrollments in the United States are at 60 percent women, according to the Digest of Education Statistics.

Some colleges have an equal number of male and female students, but small liberal arts colleges, like St. Edward’s, usually have a majority of female students.

“This [gender gap] is typical for a liberal arts college, especially one without a football team or an engineering program,” said Marisa Peterson, the assistant director of Admission at St. Edward’s.

Peterson said recruiters for St. Edward’s are trying to keep the 60-40 ratio so that women do not further outnumber men.

“We do a lot of work to keep equality,” she said.

Peterson said she hasn’t noticed a change in the gender ratio since she started working at St. Edward’s in 2004.

“The student population has always been about a 60-40 split,” said Peterson.

Danica Frampton, the coordinator of institutional research at St. Edward’s, remembers a different story when she was a St. Edward’s student in the fall of 1982.

“I remember one class, an economics class, and there was only me and one other girl,” Frampton said.

In 1982 the undergraduate population was 54 percent male and 46 percent female.

Business and science majors tend to be more popular with young men and communication-related majors more popular with women, but overall the gender ratio at St. Edward’s has drastically changed over the years.

When it opened in 1885, St. Edward’s was an all-male college until a women’s division, Maryhill College, was added in 1966. In 1966 the incoming freshman class was 25 percent female, 75 percent male.

In 1970, when Maryhill College was absorbed and St. Edward’s became co-ed, female students made up 25 percent of the undergraduate population, according to the archives from the Office of the Registrar.

Nationally, men were the majority in undergraduate programs until the mid-1980s.

Since then, more females than males have earned associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

What caused the change in majority in colleges such as St. Edward’s is not clear.

Obviously there have been great changes in equality for women over the years, but the reasons why there is not equal enrollment in colleges is still up for speculation.

Women’s grades in college are consistently better than men’s grades which has led to theories that the young men of today may not be as motivated as young women.

In a series of articles published in the New York Times in July 2006, reporters interviewed dozens of students on three campuses — Dickinson College, American University, and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

The article, “At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust,” said “male and female students alike agreed that the slackers in their midst were mostly male, and that the fireballs were mostly female. Almost all speculated that it had something to do with the women’s movement.”

“This is just speculation, but in some ways women tend to be more rule followers, which leads to better grades in high school and being more organized to get into college,” Peterson said.

Peterson also said that there can be pressures on young men to earn a living, especially in some cultures, so perhaps they are bypassing college and heading straight into the work force.

Professor Kay Burrough said that her female students tend to work harder and earn better grades in her classes than do her male students.

“I think women have struggled so hard to get to where we are that women have to work extra hard and feel that they need to be at least as good, if not better, than their male colleagues,” Burrough said.

Ragland said that biology is her only class with an equal number of men and women. This reflects the trend that more men than women pursue science degrees, which may explain the lack of men in Ragland’s communications classes.

“I think more women are here at St. Edward’s because it’s a liberal arts school that places more emphasis on community building rather than the competitive aspect,” sophomore Chloe Moore said. “I also believe more women are in college because they are still trying to break through stereotypes and barriers from the past.”