Abbott pushes to close gender gap, retain more male students

The university is looking to keep the women and add a few more men, President James Abbott announced Sept. 26 at the annual State of the University Address.

This semester, Abbott said about 40 percent of students are male.

Liberal arts universities are characterized by higher rates of female enrollment than male, but Abbott said in the future USD will look to attract more male students by adding majors such as agriculture and engineering-based majors.

Additionally, the emergence of Division-I athletics, and victories, could draw males, Abbot said during the address.

“Male students are interested in the enthusiasm winning athletics bring,” he said.

Abbott said a committee will be appointed to look at majors that attract males. Recently, kinesiology and sport sciences have attracted more males.

In addition to attracting males, Abbott said he’s interested in keeping them. For male athletes who are attending the university on a scholarship, he said education should be a major part of the student’s experience.

“We do not want to bring students here that we do not graduate,” Abbott said. “I know that’s not going to happen, and that some kids only care about the sports they are playing, but they can’t play football if they are not in school.”

Although sophomore Alex Heglin is in the minority as a male, he said he does not feel any different being at USD compared to other universities, partially because he lives on an all-male floor.

“I think some of the discrepancy may come from more men going into things like engineering or other technical programs like that,” Heglin said. “So they might decide to go to a school more focused on those programs, such as Southeast Tech or School of Mines.”

To attract more males, Heglin said new majors could be added in order to compete with other state universities.

“Maybe USD could take a page out of their book and add some more technical programs,” Heglin said.

Abbott said he is still looking to attract females to the university, but would eventually prefer the percentage of each gender attending USD to be equal.