The Gender Gap in Undergraduate Business Programs in the United States

In the last several years there has been much scholarship in the area of the reverse gender gap in colleges and universities, as there have been more women than men attending and graduating from colleges and universities since the early 1980s. Little if any scholarship exists about students and recent graduates from undergraduate business programs specifically, so the topic is explored here. Included are patterns among the majors and emphases in business programs, and a logit model with choice of business major as the dependent variable. Findings include the odds are greater a student will choose business as a major if the student is a man, has parents with lower levels of education, has higher family income, had a higher GPA in high school, and did not earn advanced placement credit in high school. The findings show there are differences in the behavior of female and male students regarding choice of business major.