In December of last year, I wrote a paper titled, “Exercise physiology degrees in the United States: an update on secular trends.” The paper, which is an update of my previous analysis from 2020, was published in the journal Advances in Physiology Education. Advances in Physiology Education is the education journal associated with American Physiological Society.
The reason I examined the number of degrees earned in exercise science is because such information is not monitored by professional exercise science organizations in the U.S. Consequently, whether the exercise science field is growing, stagnating, or retracting remains unclear.
For the research, I acquired data on degrees earned from spreadsheets published annually by the National Center for Education Statistics. The spreadsheets contain data on degrees earned for all academic majors. Two of the majors listed in the spreadsheets are “exercise physiology” and “kinesiology and exercise science.” Little difference exists between these two majors, so I summed them to represent the field of exercise science or exercise physiology. I examined the data by student sex and by academic school year. Relevant data were available from the 2002 to 2021 academic school years.
The data show that the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in exercise science plateaued starting in 2017 before increasing again in 2020. In the 2021-22 school year, over 31,000 bachelor’s degrees were awarded in exercise science, representing the highest yearly total on record. In 2021, exercise science degrees amounted to 1.5% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in the U.S.
The data also show that the increase in the number of degrees awarded in exercise science has been driven by increased numbers of female graduates. In the 2021-22 school year, women were 59% of bachelor’s degree earners in exercise science. The number of male graduates plateaued starting in 2016.
For master’s degrees, the number of degrees awarded in exercise science has increased fairly linearly over the past 20 years. Record highs in numbers of master’s degrees earned in the field were established in 2020 and 2021. In the 2021-22 school year, women made up 51.6% of master’s degree earners in the U.S.
For doctorate degrees, the number of degrees awarded started to plateau in 2013. The annual numbers of doctorate degrees earned in exercise science since 2013 has ranged between 245 to 300. In the 2021-22 school year, women made up 52% of doctorate degrees earners in exercise science in the U.S.
The results of greater percentages of female than male degree earners in exercise science are roughly consistent with sex differences in degrees earned across all academic fields combined. In the U.S., across all academic majors combined, women make up a greater proportion of degree earners at all levels. In the 2021-22 school year, women earned 59% of all bachelor’s degrees, 63% of all master’s degrees, and 57% of all doctorate degrees.
Men’s education
In the original version of the paper that I submitted to the journal, I provided minimal interpretation of the reasons whysubstantially fewer men than women are now earning university degrees, including in exercise science. In my minimal interpretation, I wrote one sentence about men potentially distancing themselves from higher education because university staff sometimes depict men in inaccurate and demeaning ways, such as when they teach or publish on topics such as “male privilege” or “toxic masculinity.”
One of the peer reviewers of my paper found my interpretation interesting, stating that they believed such factors might be “fairly important.” However, the reviewer felt that my comment “came out of nowhere.” They wanted more information.
So, in the revised and final version of my paper, I expanded on this point. I mentioned that concepts like “male privilege” and “toxic masculinity” are largely inaccurate and do not reflect the lives that most men live. I also explained that the field of exercise science is not immune to these misguided ideas. For example, followers of The Nuzzo Letter might recall that last year, we challenged a group of academics in Australia who claimed that “men’s socially determined privilege” is a cause of violence against women and that exercise science students should be taught about this supposed “gender-based violence” in their courses. In our letter exchange with the Australian authors, we summarized results from numerous studies on violence in intimate partner relationships and in sporting environments. We showed that not only was the Australian authors’ story full of holes, it was missing an entire half of the abuse and violence pie. In sports environments, for example, results across 12 studies have shown that men and women are roughly equally likely to be victims of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. What man would want to sit through an exercise science course where his professor lies about such realities and attempts to indoctrinate him into the idea of the original sin of being born male?
Thus, the point that I made in the discussion of my paper was that some men are likely rejecting the zeitgeist of the contemporary Woke, therapeutic, and feminised university system.
Nevertheless, this is not the only reason why fewer men than women are now entering higher education and completing university degrees. In my paper, I listed some of the other potential reasons that might help to explain this societal trend:
1. Males have lower high school grade point averages than do females, and this will negatively impact the ability of males to get admitted into a university
2. Males have higher high school dropout rates than do females, and this will negatively impact the ability of males to get admitted into a university
3. Males have poorer readings skills than females
4. Males have poorer writing abilities than females
5. Fewer initiatives exist for increasing male university enrolment. For example, “women in STEM” initiatives are common, but initiatives for “men in psychology,” “men in nursing,” “men in occupational therapy,” and “men in early childhood education” are practically non-existent
6. Less financial aid and sex-specific scholarships are offered to men than women
7. Men might believe that they are better off financially by entering the workforce directly after high school rather than spending money on a postsecondary education
To summarize, the primary aim of my research was to update information on degrees earned in exercise science in the U.S. over the past few years. Embarrassingly, professional exercise science organizations in the U.S. do not monitor degrees earned in the field nor do they generate large-scale graduate destination reports. There is also currently little understanding of whether the thousands of exercise science students churned out by universities each year aligns with market demand for the services they can provide with their knowledge and skills. My hope is that my research in this area will motivate professional exercise science organizations to monitor and report such information in the future.
Along the way of describing the number of degrees earned in the field, I also discovered that men are putting the brakes on exercise science degrees while women pushing the accelerator. These findings in exercise science are broadly similar to those observed across higher education, whereby women now constitute a substantially larger percentage of degree earners. Remarkably, university officials and policymakers continue to express little concern about the trend of men’s relative disengagement from the universities.
Many factors likely contribute to fewer male than female degree earners in the U.S. If one of these factors is that young men are choosing not to participate in the university system because they would rather invest their time and money where their lives are better understood and appreciated, then good on those men. Their self-esteem will be better for it.
In closing, I would like to inform everyone that I had finished writing this post several weeks ago. However, I did not publish the post, because as I was completing the final edits, I received an email from the editor of Advances in Physiology Education. The editor informed that a group of researchers – some of whom are big names in the study of sex differences in human physiology – submitted a letter to the journal challenging the comments that I had made about men’s education in my paper. The details of their comments, and my response to them, will be the subject a future post at The Nuzzo Letter.
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