Colleges have been reporting an annual increase in female enrollment since the early eighties and numbers are still expected to rise.

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Web site, by year 2012, over 10 million women — compared to 7.5 million men — will be enrolled in degree-earning institutions nationwide.

The 2002 freshman profile for Marquette reported that 55.7 percent of the freshmen class were female, said Carlos M. Garces, senior assistant dean for the Admissions Department.

Alexander Kaleta, assistant registrar, said in 2002 approximately 57 percent of the students to graduate from the undergraduate program were female. According to Kaleta, this is contradictory with the freshman admissions for the same graduating class, which only placed women at a 2.8 percent population majority over men in 1998.

Many students are surprised by these findings.

“I’m enrolled in mostly health care classes at Marquette,” junior Diane Smith said. “I notice the majority of students in my classes are female, but I didn’t know women made up the majority of the students in most colleges nationally.”

Lately, more women are also starting to enter job fields traditionally dominated by men at a slower but increasing rate. According to a recent study from Virginia Tech, the percentage of women earning bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering in the United States reached 46 percent in 1995, up from 38 percent in the mid-1980s.

The study also revealed that only 16 percent of all engineering master’s degrees were awarded to women nationally in 1995. This problem may be caused by what the study coined a “stereotype threat,” which places more pressure to be successful on women in a male dominated educational field in which women are not considered to belong. These male- dominated fields are typically thought to be engineering, mathematics and business.

Although the study may explain why women are still not able to break the masculine stereotypes associated with educational fields, this study does not explain why more women are filling up the majority of other fields of study at colleges nationwide.

“Just recently people have been starting to pay attention to this trend, but not too many people seem to have any definite answers as to why this trend is occurring,” said David Buckhold, former dean of the sociology department.

Buckhold attributed the rise in the national percentage of women entering college to the growth of Hispanic and black students.

“In these particular groups, the college-going rate for females has been much higher than the males for quite some time,” Buckhold said. “The larger these populations get, the more disparity we will see in regard to the numbers of females in college.”

Diane Long Hoeveler, English professor and coordinator of women’s studies programs, explained that “as the economy improves, men generally are able to find viable employment right after high school, and therefore are not going on to a university education as quickly as they did in the past.”

“Young women understand in increasing numbers that their future financial support will be in their own hands and not in the hands of the man they marry,” Hoeveler said. “All women know that fifty percent of all marriages in this country fail and to enter marriage thinking that one has a viable means of lifetime support is sheer folly.”