The 45 Colleges Where Women Earn More Than Men After Graduation

A look at the four-year colleges whose female graduates are beating the gender pay gap

The gender pay gap is alive and well today, with women earning 82 cents to every dollar a man earned in 2021. So why does the gender pay gap exist, and why is it so pervasive? There are a number of factors that lead to women as a group earning less than men.

Women tend to be underrepresented in high paying professions and relegated to lower paying jobs, often called occupational segregation. Women are also often the primary person responsible for unpaid labor in the home, including childcare, elder care, and other obligations, and may work fewer hours to accommodate for this.

However, gender discrimination exists in the workplace even when all of those factors are taken into account. Women still earn 98 cents to every dollar a man earns for the same job with the same qualifications, according to data from PayScale. These discrepancies in pay are even larger for most women of color, transgender women, disabled women, and other marginalized groups.

The wage gap may be smaller for women and men in specific areas due to state law, social and cultural changes, or variations in local labor markets. Changes to job requirements that qualify women in certain industries for more pay or a higher need for healthcare workers also may drive up median wages for women.

While most women who graduate college earn less than their male counterparts, there are 45 colleges where women earn more than men 10 years after enrollment. That number has increased from 36 schools with a reverse gender pay gap highlighted by a similar study published in 2016.

We took a deep dive into the data on colleges where women earn more than men to highlight trends and learn what characteristics they share. Earnings data were sourced from College Scorecard, a government data source on higher education and student outcomes.

These colleges are mostly smaller, private schools on the East Coast and specifically those in northeastern states like New York and Massachusetts. Many are popular with women majoring in health professions, business, education, or visual and performing arts.

Collectively, these schools graduate a high number of women in healthcare and significantly fewer men overall. Alumni of these schools tend to work in education, healthcare, and business. Interestingly enough, only 20 of these 45 colleges are majority-white, according to data from the Postsecondary Value Commission.

Median salaries for men and women at these schools ranged from $27,422 to $72,722. While these schools do have a reverse wage gap, it is dramatically smaller at these colleges than at most other schools, where women's salaries lag far behind those of male graduates.

Wheaton College is the school with the highest reverse wage gap. Female graduates at Wheaton earned a median of $63,079, while men earned $54,212 (nearly a $9,000 wage gap).

The school with the highest earnings for women is Hamilton College in New York. The small college has very strong salary outcomes for most majors with salary data, including math, computer and information sciences, economics, and East Asian literature and linguistics.

Trends and Insights

Location

Most of the schools where women earn more than men are located up and down the East Coast, with a concentration in northeastern states. These locations partially track with comparatively lower wage gaps in New York and Maryland, although a handful of schools are located in states like Massachusetts with significantly higher wage gaps.

Notably missing are West Coast and southwest colleges. This is particularly surprising given the high number of colleges in California, a state with one of the lowest gender pay gaps in the country. This may be due in part to the tech-dominated labor market on the West Coast, an industry which has gained attention for its pervasive wage gap.

Field of Study

Graduation data from IPEDS shows that, at least in recent years, many of the colleges where women earn more than men are highly popular with women in healthcare majors. Many graduates went onto work in nursing, an industry that is dominated by women with median starting salaries nearly $20,000 higher than the average across majors. This seems to be the driving factor for women's higher median salaries than male graduates at many of these schools.

Men at these colleges favored degrees in business, social sciences, and health professions, although there were far fewer male graduates than female graduates.

Employment data from Burning Glass Technologies, an analytics company that offers employment information on college graduates based on social media profiles, illuminates career pathways for these alumni.

For graduates who finished college at these schools from 2007 through 2012, Burning Glass data shows education and healthcare stand out as top industries. Common healthcare jobs include registered nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and doctors.

Degrees in business and psychology were also popular for women at these schools. Many alumni now work as business analysts, general managers, business owners, or CEOs. Other popular careers include researchers, teachers, professors, school administrators, software engineers, or lawyers, many of which are highly paid professions.

HBCUs

Previous studies found that HBCUs made up the majority of schools where women earn more than men, and attributed it to an increased gender disparity at HBCUs coupled with worse graduation rates and other outcomes for men.

Today, 15 out of the 45 colleges where women earn more than men are HBCUs. These 15 schools have some of the lowest median salaries for both genders of the schools on our list. However, it's important to note that HBCUs are primarily located in southern states, where the cost of living and salaries tend to be lower.

The exceptions are three HBCUs in Maryland and Florida A&M University, where the dominant degree pathways are in healthcare and business. Today, those Maryland HBCU alumni largely work in education or public administration. Top employers include public schools, universities and university medical systems, or government agencies.

Tracking Women Closing the Wage Gap

While statistics about the gender pay gap today may be discouraging for champions of equal pay, there are some positive notes. There are a record number of women in U.S. politics and STEM, and at least 10 states have enacted new legislation to help close the wage gap since 2018.

It is worth looking at the colleges where women earn more than men to track which institutions, degrees, industries, and organizations are best supporting progress toward wage equity.

So far, a growing number of small private East Coast schools, HBCUs, and those who graduate many women in healthcare and business majors have supported female graduates as they strive for equal pay. Hopefully more colleges will make this list in the future as women continue to enter fields they historically have been barred from.