Despite the educational emphasis of the LDS Church, differential graduation rates from BYU-Provo suggest that there is a gender-based component affecting women’s level of education among members of the church. The following table of enrollment versus graduation rates for female versus male students at BYU illustrates the issue:

            Table 1 shows that, while the graduating class has about equal representation from both genders, the initial freshman classes show disproportionality towards females, implying a level of educational attrition. There appears to be something causing females at BYU to drop out of college at a higher rate than men. While theoretically the LDS Church’s culture of maternal child-rearing could be identified as the causal mechanism, no studies that I am aware of have provided explicit evidence that connects the two. This is perhaps a fruitful area for future research.

            As part of a larger study assisted by the Brigham Young University Department of Church History and Doctrine, I administered an anonymous survey to several large general education religion classes and received 379 responses. As these surveys come from required classes, they provide a representative cross-section of the BYU student body. The survey contained questions that, among other things, measured educational ambition. Each survey contained questions that had several measures of religiosity and educational ambition, as well as background questions (gender, year-in-school, etc.).

            I utilize three different measures for ambition: GPA, expected future salary, and the decision to attend graduate school. The GPA measure operates under the assumption that ambitious students work harder in school and therefore do better in school ceteris paribus. On this measure, in order to assure a GPA more representative of their entire scholastic career, the question was not asked of those who had only attended one or less complete semesters of school. The decision to attend graduate school measures an educational level of ambition, while the expected future salary measures financial ambition. Actual question wordings are included in the appendix. 

           These results demonstrate that there exists a real difference between the graduate school plans of females and those of males within the LDS context. Specifically, expected future salary and plans to attend graduate school seem to be robustly correlated with gender, with males significantly more likely to plan to attend graduate school and to expect a higher salary. Interestingly, there does not seem to be a correlation between GPA and gender, thus implying that even though women are not as ambitious in terms of expectations of future formal education, women do not lack in ambition during their undergraduate education compared to men. The R-squared values caution us against reading too much into these results, as gender accounts for only about 3% of the variation on salary and 9% of the variation on the decision to attend graduate school or not.

           Overall, these regressions support the plausible conclusion drawn from the graduation rates figures: something within the LDS community disincentivizes female educational ambition. Despite the fact that women's GPAs do not differ significantly from men's, there is still a noticeable attrition among female students at BYU when we compare female graduate rates to female enrollment. Furthermore, female BYU students are significantly less likely than their male counterparts to plan to attend graduate school, and they also expect to be paid a lower salary after school. While the exact causal mechanisms remained unexamined, this is a fruitful area for future research.

Appendix: Survey Questions Related to Educational Ambition

Approximately how much do you see yourself personally making in 30 years?

What type of graduate or professional school do you plan on attending? Check all that apply. (Options: None, Law school, other, medical/dental school, Masters degree, PhD, Business school).

NOTES:

[1] Brigham Young University Y Facts. Graduates by gender. http://yfacts.byu.edu/viewarticle.aspx?id=218. Brigham Young University Y Facts. Freshman enrollment by gender past eight years. http://yfacts.byu.edu/viewarticle.aspx?id=83. [Back to manuscript]

Full Citation for This Article: Cranney, Stephen. (2010) "Do Female BYU Students Have Lower Educational Ambition Than Their Male Counterparts? Results from a Recent Survey," SquareTwo, Vol. 3 No. 3 (Fall), http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleCranneyEducation.html, accessed [give access date].

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COMMENTS: 2 Comments

1) Robert Couch, Salem Oregon, 9 March 2011

Thank you for an interesting article.

Do you have any sense if this is a BYU-specific tendency, or does it simply reflect a broader cultural tendency?  

Liang Zhang has shown with older data from 1997 that women were in general less likely to enroll in graduate school (“Advance to Graduate Education: The Effect of College Quality and Undergraduate Majors,” in The Review of Higher Education, v. 28 no. 3, 2005, pp. 313-338). It would be very interesting to know if this result still holds in samples after 1997, since this would help in establishing some sense as to the extent this result is a BYU-specific or Mormon specific effect.

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2) Stephen Cranney responds to Robert Couch, 9 March 2011:

Given BYU's cultural iconic status within the LDS community, it would seem reasonable to generalize these tendencies to the LDS culture in general. However, the risk of confounding factors is too great to take a firm stance on this, and a degree of uncertainty must be admitted. For example, family goals undoubtedly play a large role in the decision to come to BYU for many of its students; this could risk a selection bias as BYU attracts more people for whom family goals play a more exclusive of their future plans. Consequently, the data could just be showing that BYU attracts a disproportionate number of young women who see pursuing a career and family as mutually exclusive. Without further, more specific data, we are prevented from drawing any sure conclusions on the matter. 

Whatever the case, the data do strongly indicate that something Mormon-specific is going on here; as the Population Reference Bureau now records a growing higher-education gap between female enrollment (at the high end) and male enrollment, (https://www.prb.org/Articles/2007/CrossoverinFemaleMaleCollegeEnrollmentRates.aspx). As this survey was not a time-series, we cannot see how or if Mormon women are following this trend. What is established, however, is that in terms of educational intention they are still lagging behind males which, if enrollment is taken as a mirror indicator of intention, is opposite the trend found in the US in general.

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3) Roy Zwahlen

Great article on a fascinating subject.

I am curious about your reference to the Population Reference Bureau study in the comment section. Are there any numbers on the enrollement and/or graduation rate comparison nationally? I know the study references percentage of the total population enrolled in college by female/male (which is difficult to compare to your enrollment/graduation rate comparison). I think your numbers say something about the difference between men and women at BYU but I am not sure what it says about what effect the "Mormon" factor has since we have no national numbers to compare it to. While your conclusions may likely be true, it is hard to have certainty without that comparison.

Another "Mormon" cultural factor which may make LDS/NonLDS comparison difficult may be the LDS emphasis on education and the male providing for the family (which arguably is stronger in LDS culture when compared to NonLDS American culture generally). Returned missionaries at BYU may be more motivated to graduate from college than their nonLDS counterparts, have a better GPA, have more ambition for graduate school, and possibly even greater amibition for a higher salary (although I think there is a broad assumption across the spectrum that if you go to graduate school you will command a higher salary which means that these two factors may be dependant or exactly the same when and individual selects both). It seems all of your measurements may be affected by this factor.

In my mind, I think data that would reinforce (or possibly change) your conclusions would be the comparison of enrollment/graduation rates between LDS women at BYU and NonLDS women in America. This would help (I suspect) affirm your conclusions.