Simulation of the leaky pipeline: Gender diversity in U.S. K-graduate education

ABSTRACT

What is the future trend of gender (dis)parity in the U.S. higher education and workforce populations? I take a systems approach to develop a dynamic simulation model of gender diversity in U.S. higher education. The model consists of an education pipeline for males and females and includes several mechanisms that reinforce interest in higher education or affect university admission or dropout rates. I simulated a model and examined its fidelity in replicating the historical data of U.S. higher education from 1970 to 2014. I then simulated the model to forecast future gender composition trends at different levels of education over the next two decades. The model forecasts that women will be the majority of university degree holders in the United States by 2035 (i.e., female to male ratio of 1.7 for advanced degrees) with lower dropout rates. Additionally, a discussion is provided on the study’s findings and subsequent implications.

KEYWORDS:

• System dynamics
• gender diversity
• higher education
• simulation

Acknowledgments

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported this work (Grant 2U01GM094141-05). I thank Dr. Navid Ghaffarzadegan for his useful comments and suggestions on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) [2U01GM094141-05].