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Further, the stronger academic performance of the female students holds within
almost every major, as can be seen in Table IIC-4. Because of the small numbers in
some of the categories, we collapsed the first-year and sophomore students into one
“lower division” category; and the juniors and seniors into “upper division.” Among
lower division students, the gender difference in engineering GPA is found in every
major, with females having better engineering GPAs than the male students. Among
upper division students in three of the majors (civil/environmental, electrical/computer,
and mechanical), however the gender gap – albeit small - is reversed. However, few of
these gender differences are statistically significant.
The conclusion is that once year in school and major are controlled, gender
differences in academic performance are insignificant. This supports findings by Cerro
and Duncan (2002), Felder, et. al. (1993) and Seymour & Hewitt (1997), and some of the
results presented by Adelman (1998). Unlike Adelman’s findings, women in
electrical/computing engineering at Rowan do not perform less well academically than do
men; on the contrary, among lower division students, this is one of the few statistically
significant differences with women having higher GPA’s than men.
IIC-102