Washington ? For the first time, more women than men in the United States received doctoral degrees last year, the culmination of decades of change in the status of women at colleges nationwide.

The number of women at every level of academia has been rising for decades. Women now hold a nearly 3-to-2 majority in undergraduate and graduate education. Doctoral study was the last holdout — the only remaining area of higher education that still had an enduring male majority.

Of the doctoral degrees awarded in the 2008-09 academic year, 28,962 went to women and 28,469 to men, according to an annual enrollment report from the Council of Graduate Schools, based in Washington.

Doctoral degrees, which require an average of seven years’ study, are typically the last to show the impact of long-term changes. “It is a trend that has been snaking its way through the educational pipeline,” said Nathan Bell, the report’s author and the director of research and policy analysis for the council. “It was bound to happen.”