News
WU has most women doing science degrees
At Wageningen University, 58 per cent of the new students doing science degrees are female. Maastricht and Utrecht also have more women than men starting science degrees, at 56 and 54 per cent respectively. Men are still very much in the majority in the intake at Eindhoven, Twente and Delft, with women accounting for 28, 28 and 31 per cent respectively.
Nationally, men make up 57 per cent of the intake and women 43 per cent, according to the Techniekpact monitor for 2023 (intake numbers for September 2022). At the bottom of the article, a list of which Wageningen degree programmes count as science degrees for the monitor, is included.
Rector Arthur Mol is pleased more and more women are opting for science degrees. He has no worries about the intake of male students. ‘If the ratio got really extreme, we could start thinking about how to encourage more men to choose a science degree, but I don’t see any need for that at the moment.’
Female bastion?
Other Wageningen degrees too show a difference in preferences between men and women. For example, last September 116 women started the Food Technology Master’s compared with 58 men; that means two out of every three students are female. The difference is even bigger in the Animal Sciences Bachelor’s, with 108 women versus 35 men. Another degree with a big difference is Nutrition & Health, with 101 women and 27 men. But more men than women started Bachelor’s degrees in Forest & Nature Conservation (59 versus 39) and Agrotechnology (25 versus 7).
All these figures are for last academic year. It’s difficult to say anything much yet about this year’s intake. A slight increase overall was expected based on preliminary registrations, but the AID registrations suggest stable numbers or even a slight fall is more likely. The definitive intake numbers will be available in October.