Men and Women Graduate Students: Who Succeeds and Why?.
Our educational system, even today, resembles a pyramid. There is a very wide base that narrows rapidly as one moves toward higher levels. Only three-fourths of all young people complete high school, three-fifths of high school graduates go to college, and only about half of those who enter get a bachelor's degree.2 Finally, about two-thirds of these graduates enroll for an advanced academic or professional degree.3 Presumably these are, for the most part, people with the best qualifications and prospects for success. It has been a matter of considerable concern that only a limited proportion of this highly select group stay the course, and particular attention has been focused on the fact that the proportion of those who do so is considerably lower for women than for men.4 Much interesting work has been done on this subject, but some of the complexities have generally been overlooked. First, it is by no means easy to determine what constitutes success, for the goals of various students are not identical. Nor is it clear how