Here are the gender ratios: More girls than guys at UCPH

For the second year running, women make up 56 percent of the students in higher education, according to statistics from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science. The University of Copenhagen (UCPH), however, has 4,600 (61 percent) new female students, and only 3,000 (39 percent) male.

At Aarhus University, who have nearly as many new students starting this year, it is approximately fifty-fifty with 3,700 women and 3,500 men, according to the data.

‘Female-friendly’ subjects

According to Anni Søborg, vice director for education at UCPH, the difference is due to the different academic profiles offered by the two universities.

Aarhus University offers traditionally ‘male’ courses: Engineering, in particular, attracts male applicants. This is also evident at the Technical University of Denmark DTU, which has 1,427 men and just 550 women starting this year.

Conversely, the Faculty of Social Sciences at UCPH is home to a large amount of the student body of the University of Copenhagen, where women make up two thirds of its 2,400 new students. The student body at Health and Medicine Sciences is mainly female too – 900 out of its 1,300 new students.

Trend doesn’t continue at higher levels

The numbers from the Ministry of Higher Education and Science appear to show that the skewed gender ratio at institutions of higher education is getting less skewed.

In 2006, a whopping 62 per cent of all the accepted applicants were female.

See data on most and least female study programmes at UCPH in the fact box top right of this article.

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

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