Here's A Shock for Women

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What is especially distressing is that the trend is even stronger in younger cohorts. In the CEGEPs (the community colleges that are compulsory for university entry), 57.5 per cent of the 64,000 newly enrolled students are female. The gap is especially wide in the programs that lead to university; there, women form a 60-per-cent majority. Even in the three-year technical programs with direct links to the job market, the student body is 56 per cent female.

And women are much more successful. Three out of four female students receive their college diploma, while almost 40 per cent of the male students drop out or fail the exams.

More than half of 17-year-old females -- but only a third of male teenagers -- enroll in a CEGEP. One reason is that boys drop out of high school. The phenomenon is not new, but it's getting more serious.

"So these 16-year-old boys leave school, find a small job and make enough money to buy a car," says Denis Marceau, academic vice-president at the Universite de Sherbrooke. "For a while, they think life is great. It's only later that they realize that you can't do much without a degree."