WOMEN university students now outnumber men across all subject areas, from engineering to medicine and law to physical sciences.

New figures from Universities UK showing that 57 per cent of all students are women demonstrate the remarkable progress that girls and women have made in the education system since campaigners against female entry to universities in the late 19th century argued that the “overeducation” of women could lead to sterility, brain damage and nervous collapse.

The figures raise serious concerns that many boys and young men are being left behind by an education system that plays to the strengths of girls and undervalues the achievements of boys.

Geoffrey Crossick, chairman of Universities UK, the umbrella body for universities, said he was concerned about the emergence of a rump of young men who felt locked out of the higher eduction world.

“My concern is the subset of young men who are not going to university. These are mainly low-income white males as well as young men from different ethnic groups, who are getting harder to reach.

“There are people just as capable of going to universities as others, but who are not getting the chance to benefit from going. The universities are trying to reach out to them by sending graduates with the same background into schools to talk to them, but there is only so much that we can do. This is a wider social issue.

“What is bad for society is having some subsets of the population who don’t think that higher eduction is for them,” he said.

Professor Crossick said that the dominance of women students was gradually changing the university environment, probably for the better. “It has toned down the macho culture in some subjects,” he said.

Alan Smithers, Director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, said the rise of women in British universities could be attributed in part to changes in the examinations systems in schools.

Girls outperformed boys marginally under the old O-Level system, but the divide began to widen after the introduction of GCSEs in 1988.

This summer 25.3 per cent of girls got an A Grade at A Level, compared with 22.7 per cent of boys.

The move towards pass-as-you-go modular courses has favoured girls, who also benefit from grading of coursework because they are more diligent than boys, who tend to rely more on inspiration and last-minute cramming.

The effect of this on university admissions is clear. Numbers of British women undergraduates has grown by 44 per cent in the past decade to just under a million, while the number of men has grown by 12 per cent to 653,365. Overall, there has been a 33 per cent increase in student numbers.

There have been profound changes in the subjects studied. In the past ten years there have been large increases in numbers studying humanities, philosophy, music, drama, languages and media studies, the report says.

Subjects with a significant decrease include accountancy, business and management, physical sciences and engineering.

Despite the gender differences noted in the report, Professor Smithers pointed out that 12.2 per cent of men gained first-class degrees, compared with just 11.1 per cent of women.

And Jenny Watson, chairwoman of the Equal Opportunities Commission, noted that, once they had left university, women graduates still lagged behind men in the the pay stakes.

“We must remember that, while girls are forging ahead at school, they are still falling behind in the workplace and continue to suffer a 17 per cent pay gap,” she said.

A big increase in postgraduate research students has been driven almost entirely by a 96 per cent increase in students coming from abroad in the past decade. China is by far the most significant provider of students to Britain, with 24,000 undergraduates and 27,000 postgraduates last year.

Professor Crossick said this was a great British export success story. “It benefits the UK to have links with fast-growing economies such as China and India because when these students go back, they will retain cultural and business links with the UK.”

The report also recorded a big increase in the numbers of students living at home with their parents, from 12 to 20 per cent in the past ten years.

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