Civil Rights Commission Probes Possible Gender Bias at Colleges: PHILADELPHIA - A federal civil rights agency investigating possible gender discrimination in college admissions will subpoena data from more than a dozen mid-Atlantic universities, officials said Thursday.
The probe by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is focusing on whether some colleges favor men by admitting them at higher rates than women or by offering them more generous aid packages.
Commission members voted Wednesday to authorize subpoenas for 19 universities within a 100-mile radius of where the commission meets in Washington - the geographical extent of their subpoena authority.
The schools represent a mixture of sizes and include public, private, religious, secular, historically Black and moderately selective to highly selective institutions. There are six in Maryland, five in Pennsylvania, three in Washington, two each in Virginia and Delaware and one in West Virginia.
Women outnumber men nearly 60 to 40 percent in higher education nationally. The probe grew out of anecdotal stories that admissions officials are discriminating against women to promote a more even gender mix, said commission spokeswoman Lenore Ostrowsky.
