MONTREAL — More women than men have college degrees, but their male counterparts are more likely to be earning doctorates and graduating in a science field, a report by the Quebec Institute for Statistics (ISQ) showed on Wednesday.

The institute’s document, based on the 2021 census, shows that among 25-34 year olds, 29.3% of men and 42% of women had a college degree.

Among those aged 25-64, women accounted for 56.1% of those with a college degree in 2021. In Quebec, too, this proportion increased by 0.8 percentage points from 2016 to 2021.

Despite this majority of female academics, “men among the doctoral students remained in the majority,” according to the ISQ. Among college graduates aged 25-64 in Quebec in 2021, 53.6% of men had a PhD, compared to 46.4% of women. However, the majority of people with a bachelor’s or master’s degree are women.

The traditional division into so-called male and female professions is still noticeable. More than two-thirds of graduates with the highest academic degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics were men. In the areas of education (78.3%) and health (77.5%), women are still in the clear majority.

Male students are strongly represented in engineering courses (79.2%). They make up 70% of the groups in mathematics, computer science and information science majors. However, just over half of the students (52.3%) are women in science and technology courses.

In general, the proportion of Quebec’s population with a university degree is increasing. In 2021, the number of graduates aged 25 to 64 has increased by 17.1% since 2016.

50% of immigrant or non-permanent doctoral students

In Quebec, immigrants and non-permanent residents make up 50% of people with a PhD. They are also generally more likely to have a university degree: 27.3% of them have a university degree, while they make up 18.3% of the population aged 25-64 in the province.

“Immigrants are better educated than the nonimmigrant population, both in Quebec and Ontario and in Canada as a whole,” states the ISQ. Immigrants admitted to Quebec between 2016 and 2021 account for 40.2% of the graduate population increase over that period.

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