The New York Times gives us an article with the alarmist title, At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust. The situation isn’t nearly as dire as it sounds, naturally.
Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor’s degrees — and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.
And in two national studies, college men reported that they studied less and socialized more than their female classmates.
Small wonder, then, that at elite institutions like Harvard, small liberal arts colleges like Dickinson, huge public universities like the University of Wisconsin and U.C.L.A. and smaller ones like Florida Atlantic University, women are walking off with a disproportionate share of the honors degrees.
It is not that men are in a downward spiral: they are going to college in greater numbers and are more likely to graduate than two decades ago.
Still, men now make up only 42 percent of the nation’s college students. And with sex discrimination fading and their job opportunities widening, women are coming on much stronger, often leapfrogging the men to the academic finish.
“The boys are about where they were 30 years ago, but the girls are just on a tear, doing much, much better,” said Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington.
So everyone’s doing better. But because girls are doing even better than the boys, it’s panic time.
Of course, no one is bothering to write massive articles in the New York Times about the racial gap in education — that’s not as sexy as the idea that selfish women are taking away what young men rightfully deserve — but at least they’ll get a paragraph or two:
The gender differences are not uniform. In the highest-income families, men 24 and under attend college as much as, or slightly more than, their sisters, according to the American Council on Education, whose report on these issues is scheduled for release this week.
Young men from low-income families, which are disproportionately black and Hispanic, are the most underrepresented on campus, though in middle-income families too, more daughters than sons attend college. In recent years the gender gap has been widening, especially among low-income whites and Hispanics.
When it comes to earning bachelor’s degrees, the gender gap is smaller than the gap between whites and blacks or Hispanics, federal data shows.
All of this has helped set off intense debate over whether these trends show a worrisome achievement gap between men and women or whether the concern should instead be directed toward the educational difficulties of poor boys, black, white or Hispanic.
“Over all, the differences between blacks and whites, rich and poor, dwarf the differences between men and women within any particular group,” says Jacqueline King, a researcher for the American Council on Education’s Center for Policy Analysis and the author of the forthcoming report.
There you have it: The racial and socioeconomic differences dwarf the gender differences. And yet all I’ve been reading about since this report came out are the gender differences and the “boy crisis.”
“The idea that girls could be ahead is so shocking that they think it must be a crisis for boys,” Ms. Mead said. “I’m troubled by this tone of crisis. Even if you control for the field they’re in, boys right out of college make more money than girls, so at the end of the day, is it grades and honors that matter, or something else the boys may be doing?”
Of course, the gender difference in college enrollment rates between low-income and higher-income families has fairly obvious roots. If you’re wealthy, the kind of job that you’re expected to have, and that you see as within the range of your abilities (and indeed, the kind of job that you believe you deserve) probably requires a college degree, regardless of your gender. But if you’re poor, the landscape changes. Low-skilled jobs which are traditionally male, on the whole, pay much better than low-skilled jobs which are traditionally female. Working construction, or as a sanitation employee, or a fisherman, or even as a janitor, often pays more than working in elder care or as a nurse’s assistant or a childcare provider. Low-income women know that if they want to make money, they have to get that degree. Young men often have other options presented to them.
“I hate to be cynical, but when it was a problem of black or poor kids, nobody cared, but now that it’s a problem of white sons of college-educated parents, it’s moving very rapidly to the forefront,” Dr. Kleinfeld said. “At most colleges, there is a sense that a lot of boys are missing in action.”
It’s still a problem of black and poor kids, and still, no one cares. You aren’t cynical, you’re realistic.
On each campus, the young women interviewed talked mostly about their drive to do well.
“Most college women want a high-powered career that they are passionate about,” Ms. Smyers said. “But they also want a family, and that probably means taking time off, and making dinner. I’m rushing through here, taking the most credits you can take without paying extra, because I want to do some amazing things, and establish myself as a career woman, before I settle down.”
Her male classmates, she said, feel less pressure.
“The men don’t seem to hustle as much,” Ms. Smyers said. “I think it’s a male entitlement thing. They think they can sit back and relax and when they graduate, they’ll still get a good job. They seem to think that if they have a firm handshake and speak properly, they’ll be fine.”
I wonder how much the family issue plays into it. Perhaps it does, and I’m just naive. But I’ve never felt motivated to do well because I want to establish myself as a career woman before I have a family. I’ve been motivated to do well because there are a lot of things that I want to accomplish in my life. It has nothing to do with getting things out of the way. But perhaps I’m an anomaly here.
The male entitlement idea is interesting, though. She’s right — college-boudn men grow up with the understanding that they will get a job, and that their abilities and talents won’t be questioned. This is one of the first generations in the United States where it’s completely normative, and even expected, for girls to go to college. I think whether it’s conscious or not, young women feel the fire under our collective asses. We see that there aren’t a whole lot of female CEOs or university presidents or law firm partners; we know that we just won’t fit into the boys’ club as easily, and that our achievements have to speak for themselves, because personality and connections aren’t going to cut it.
There is also an economic rationale for men to take education less seriously. In the early years of a career, Laura Perna of the University of Pennsylvania has found, college increases women’s earnings far more than men’s.
“That’s the trap,” Dr. Kleinfeld said. “In the early years, young men don’t see the wage benefit. They can sell their strength and make money.”
Yup. College admissions officers try and balance the gender disparities by admitting men who are academically less successful than women who are also applying — and then they laughably deny that it’s affirmative action.
In his effort to attract men, Mr. Massa made sure that the admissions materials included plenty of pictures of young men and athletics. Dickinson began highlighting its new physics, computer science and math building, and started a program in international business. Most fundamental, Dickinson began accepting a larger proportion of its male applicants.
“The secret of getting some gender balance is that once men apply, you’ve got to admit them,” Mr. Massa said. “So did we bend a little bit? Yeah, at the margin, we did, but not to the point that we would admit guys who couldn’t do the work.”
…
“Is this affirmative action?” Mr. Massa said. “Not in the legal sense.” He says that admissions to a liberal arts college is more art than science, a matter of crafting a class with diverse strengths.
Admissions officers taking characteristics other than academic success into account in the admissions process in order to have higher numbers of previously under-represented groups — since when is that not affirmative action?
But, the boys say, don’t worry too much about them — they’ll still end up on top.
Still, men in the work force have always done better in pay and promotions, in part because they tend to work longer hours, and have fewer career interruptions than women, who bear the children and most of the responsibility for raising them.
Whether the male advantage will persist even as women’s academic achievement soars is an open question. But many young men believe that, once in the work world, they will prevail.
“I think men do better out in the world because they care more about the power, the status, the C.E.O. job,” Mr. Kohn said. “And maybe society holds men a little higher.”
And as if that wasn’t enough, the Times follows up with the heartwarming story of educational institutions spending all kinds of money to tempt boys to come to their campuses. How, you ask? Through better academic programs? A new science center? Recruiting well-regarded professors?
No, by throwing a whole bunch of money at football.
Now, I support college sports. And clearly these schools are meeting an existing demand for football teams. But it’s quotes like this that bother me:
“I could have started a spiffy new major of study, spent a lot of money on lab equipment and hired a few new high-powered professors,” Dr. Boyle said. “I might have gotten 25 more students for that. And I couldn’t have counted on that major still being popular in 15 years.
So much for education — we’ve got a business to run here.
I will give colleges credit for including more blue-collar sports teams, though.
“Hockey, lacrosse and tennis players, they all have money and 1,500 SAT scores,” said Mr. Kemp, who brings about 70 players a year to Utica. “Those kids are going to college somewhere. But I come across high school football players from blue-collar backgrounds, and as seniors in high school, they’re not sure what they’re going to do. They’re considering a college here or there. But if you give them a chance to keep playing football, then they get motivated to come.”
And once they come, he said, “we kind of trick them into seeing that getting an education is the real benefit.”