Pictured Above: On the St. Petersburg campus, there is an 11.3 percent gap between the six-year graduation rates of male and female students.
Darnell Henderson | The Crow’s Nest
By Sophie Ojdanic
The six-year graduation rate for male students at USF is nearly 10 percent lower than the rate for female students.
The gap is an ongoing issue that concerns administrators, who told the Board of Trustees committee last month that they continue to take steps to address it.
Male and female students are almost identical in their first-year retention rates, according to Cecil Howard, the associate vice president for diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity. But there’s a significant difference once it comes time for graduation.
Data from all three USF campuses show that the six-year graduation gap between male and female students who started in 2014 was 9.9 percent. On the St. Petersburg campus, the gap was 11.3 percent.
The gap was even wider – 18.7 percent – in the four-year graduation rate for students who entered in 2015.
“Gender is the largest equity gap we have,” said William Cummings, USF’s associate vice president of student success and chair of a status of men committee that was formed five years ago during the administration of then-President Judy Genshaft. “Any way we arrange the data, we see the same gap.
“Most people don’t even know about it,” Cummings said. “We talk to a lot of different groups, and they have no idea about this gap. It’s a national and even international problem.”
Why the gap?
Administrators have a few theories on why there is such a disparity.
“It could be a variety of reasons,” Howard said. “Males tend to go into the workforce earlier, or they take over a family business and think they may not need a degree.”
Howard also cited social issues as a possible factor.
“In college, students come to grips with their identity,” Howard said. “There may be too much pressure, or students may not feel accepted. Men don’t speak up as much as women. Women will seek out help.”
As for solutions, Howard proposed more engagement.
“The more we can engage these young men, the better,” Howard said. “They just need a forum.”
Howard and Haywood Brown, USF’s vice president of institutional equity, are informal mentors to some students.
“(The university) should engage more in not only informal, but formal, mentoring,” Howard said.
A lot of the work of the status of men committee has been identifying trends in data, according to Cummings.
“We noticed a pattern in the data that men who go to campus recreation a lot tend to have higher graduation rates,” Cummings said. “And this isn’t causation, but correlation. So we’re trying to look more into that.”
Data also showed that “our male students are more likely than our female students to repeat courses,” according to Cummings. “Female students are more willing to see if something isn’t working for them and seek a different major. We want to help men see other career trajectories and ways to be successful.”
The college career of Jeffrey Hallgren, a mass communications senior in St. Petersburg, follows the pattern that administrators described. Hallgren returned to the university this year after a nine-year gap.
“I was struggling to keep up in school,” he said, so he left and “made work my priority.”
He left even though faculty and staff were available to support him, he said.
Ultimately, Hallgren’s motivator to return to the university was change.
“I chose to come back because I needed a change in my life, and figured a great start would be finishing my degree,” Hallgren said.
Raising awareness
In its work, the status of men committee at first focused on gathering data, then turned its attention to “raising awareness,” Cummings said.
During the 2019-2020 academic year, he said, the committee hosted national speakers on male success, conducted focus groups and forums, contributed to study-abroad grant proposals and made data on gender gaps “more widely accessible.”
Plans for the 2020-2021 academic year include launching a website, “building a library of best practices,” and creating more opportunities for “units and individuals across USF interested in partnering to advance male student success,” according to the committee’s report to President Steve Currall.
It also mentioned continuing previous programs and “(piloting) new marketing and communication campaigns aimed at male students.”
Cummings said the committee plans “to partner with groups to launch a whole series of pilot programs and initiatives to see what might work.
“It’s a problem with social and cultural roots. It’s not a problem with a silver bullet solution. It’ll take action from everybody at the university. Now, we’re trying to find areas where we can make a difference immediately.”
On the St. Petersburg campus, the report cited a goal of introducing campaigns for male success.
Dwayne Isaacs, St. Petersburg’s director of student life and engagement, has partnered with assistant housing director Byron Green to start a “My Brother’s Keeper” program to offer formal mentoring to male students.
“This will be a first for USF St. Pete,” Isaacs said. “It’ll be one of the few programs we have dedicated (to) men.”
Isaacs expressed interest in collaborating with programs offered by the city of St. Petersburg as well as with USF St. Petersburg’s emerging scholars program, which according to its website helps “identify and assist a diverse group of students who, without preparation and financial aid, could not consider an independent school education.”
“(Connecting to the city) creates a pipeline for male students to consider USF St. Pete,” Isaacs said.
But the weight of this issue doesn’t fall on administration alone.
“We think students have a huge role to play in closing this (gender) gap,” Cummings said. “Student leaders and organizations have a lot of opportunity to reach out to students.”
Demographics of retention
Although there is a big gender gap in the USF graduation rate, administrators said they are pleased by the first-year retention rate and its demographics.
The first-year retention rate across the three campuses in 2019 was 91.5 percent for male students and 92.2 percent for female students.
According to Howard, black students had the highest first-year retention rate, at 95.1 percent, and white students the lowest, at 89.3 percent.
“We don’t have an achievement gap between or amongst the major demographics – black, white, Hispanic, Asian,” Howard said.
From 2016 to 2019, USF St. Petersburg’s male first-year retention rate has fluctuated, starting at 77.7 percent in 2016 and ending at 81.6 percent in 2019. The female first-year retention rate has steadily risen since 2016, starting at 77.1 percent and ending at 85.4 percent.
“USF is unusual,” Cummings said. At other universities, graduation and retention rates are typically lowest among men of color, he said. “That’s not true at USF. Our lowest demographic is Hispanic males, then white males.”
