The NY times has an interesting series on”the new gender divide”, citing Department of Education statistics that show women as more likely to graduate college with high honors:”men whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor’s degrees : and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.”
I am wondering if there are parallel statistics for law school honor grads.
–Orly Lobel
Cross-posted at Prawfsblawg.
Orly,
In these articles: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=694721 and http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=560023
(which due to sketchy Internet access I can’t open right now, so I can’t provide the pinpoints unfortunately) I point to some evidence that women outperform men not only in college but also in every single graduate school environment EXCEPT at elite law schools, where men outperform women. Yes, there is data suggesting that even in medical schools and business schools, despite our inferior female brains, women obtain higher grades than men, so you really have to wonder what the deal is with elite law schools. NB: in fairness, I need to note that there isn’t a whole lot of data about grades by gender in any context. Schools seem very reluctant to collect and/or release it.