A reader (thanks!) sent me a link to the CNS News article on fewer men graduating from college than women:
In an op-ed published Saturday in Newsweek, President Barack Obama marked the 40th anniversary of the enactment of Title IX–which bars gender discrimination in education—and noted that more women in the United States are now graduating from college than men, which he characterized as “a great accomplishment” for the nation.
“In fact, more women as a whole now graduate from college than men,” Obama wrote. “This is a great accomplishment—not just for one sport or one college or even just for women but for America. And this is what Title IX is all about.”
According to the Census Bureau, 685,000 men and 916,000 women graduated from college in 2009 (the latest year for which statistics have been published). That means 25 percent fewer men received college degrees than women.
The article notes that in 1975 before Title IX was implemented, there were 17% fewer women graduating from college than men. Commenter Mark Simmons points out the obvious:
So if a 17% deficit was a catastrophe requiring federal intervention, what are we to conclude when that same federal intervention has created a 25% level of inequality?
Now, Obama says it’s an accomplishment that men don’t go to college now that he and his ilk have made it an inhospitable place for men. Men are bailing out of college and going elsewhere. But the hostility towards men (what’s left of them) still exists. We must fight to change this.
My scurrilous comment of the day–except it’s not.
“Young white men of the South. Who speaks for you. The Democrats? They would prefer you were girls. Liberals? They think it was you, personally, who was at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, even though it was decades before you were born. The Media? You are the only group it is safe in this country to stereotype. Universities? You’re nothing to them unless you give up manhood. The GOP? They’ll take your votes and then decide that the Hispanic voting block is the one they must please. If that means you can’t get a job, tough.
The answer is no one speaks for you, so you will have to speak for yourselves.”
“Men of the Midwest—men of Ohio, of Indiana, of Iowa, descendents of those that proved the common man *can* make a good society out of the nothing of a a wilderness, with just their own two hands; descendents of the men who saved the Union at Shiloh and Missionary Ridge and Peachtree Creek; descendents who still understand the value of hard work and the need to actually be able to do *practical* things in the real world instead of just talking frothy theories—men, the same question applies. Who speaks for you, as men?”
Perhaps men are simply ahead of the curve on this one, realizing what a malinvestment it has become to pay into the US higher education system. The bubble is already bursting (or hissing at least).
Yes, that’s a real possibility. The tech schools and programs are going strong and men are increasing salaries there. Perhaps it’s the women being taken for a 50,000 dollar a year ride.
After stewing for awhile in the MGTOW-sphere, I would bet that they’d argue that spending all of that money is a validation in and of itself for women, the whole concept of “I’m worth it!”, especially if it turns out to be little more than yet another expensive bauble.
Judging by my last trip to a shopping mall, I have to say that I find it hard to disagree. I may be a loser alone, but at least I get to spend what’s left of a 6-figure salary after taxes on myself and to help those I care about.
It should be noted many going to those technical schools aren’t American males. An acquaintance, whose son recently graduated in Materials Science (an engineering discipline), remarked on the numbers of graduates with Arab and Muslim names. I’d guess most of them are foreigners.
But this isn’t anything new. Egypt’s new Islamist President (Morsi) in fact got his Ph.D. in Engineering in the US. When I was in grad school in the 1970s, a significant proportion of those in the graduate engineering school at U of M were Arabs and Iranians – paid for by the dramatic rise in oil revenues those countries were enjoying. (That was money drawn out of the US economy, a major contributor to the economic troubles of that decade.)
A few years ago, in a thread on her site, Wendy McElroy and I discussed this point. A lot of those women are being fobbed off with “XYZ Studies” degrees that qualify them for nothing other then becoming professors of XYZ Studies. Worse, they’re being mal-educated; they come out of college actually knowing less, in terms of what is factually true, then when they went in. And college indoctrinates them in the victim/princesshood mentality that makes them less valuable as workers, mates, and friends. The bomb is ticking, and anyone with any sense will stay well clear.
I’ve been thinking the same thing. If you look at the fields that men focus on, they’re still the ones that lead to re-paying your loans and earning a higher income. And as DH points out, men are flocking to the technical schools, and into areas formerly dominated by women (nursing, medical technicians, etc.) and they’re actually advancing faster in those fields than women do.
Unfortunately, all that’s likely to happen is that men will wind up having even more wealth confiscated to help women “repay” their loans in one way or another. Either the liberals will decide that women’s loans should be reduced because they’re women, with the re-payment made up of tax dollars, or they’ll jack up taxes on the programs men are taking in order to funnel the money to women/minorities…
That’s already happening. It’s been reported that universities are raising the cost of STEM credits to subsidize the humanities. This wealth transfer could be another rung in the sexual segregation of this country unless women forgo their fantasies and pretensions to focus on the very real problem of how they’ll continue to consume if the traditional producers, men, are driven out of the workforce.
The current administration is not to blame (well, he is but not just him) – this has been a generational effort
Men are not needed in the new mindset.
Well, good luck with the men coming in, mostly Muslims
Enjoy your your current time in the sun, ladies. And the veils you will wear when you have castrated the last decent man
Yes, you’ve nailed this one: Through their constant undermining of Western Civilization and its elements (traditional values, nuclear families, male-led households, male-dominated industry, etc.) feminists are consigning their daughters and grand-daughters to burqas. The irony is palpable.
40 some years ago, my trade school educated daddy scrimped and saved so his daughter could go to college.
Now, his college educated daughter is scrimping and saving…..in hopes that her son and daughter go to trade school. If they go to university like dear ol’ Mom & Dad, the college loans they would likely have to take out would crush them financially. (And that’s for a state school at in state tuition…..don’t want to think about the debt load for a private one. Call me selfish, but I would like them to be able to move out of the house by the time they are 35.)
Thanks for the hope & change!
Dr. Smith, your esteemed husband has pointed out many times that the trappings of middle class life are markers, not causes, of success. An extension of that point applies here: if men stop going to college, that will be a problem for colleges more than it is for men. Men are abandoning traditional colleges just at the time that a new model for higher education, through massively online open courses, becomes available. These men, in other words, have somewhere to go.
Going to college has been valued because, traditionally, hard-working, ambitious young men went there, obtained knowledge by a means considered more efficient than available alternatives and then did well in life. But the college degree was a marker: the holder had selected the most efficient means available to obtain what they needed. In other words, the knowledge and the college degree are separate things. They have been closely associated. They are now being separated by technology. That separation allows colleges to offer degrees in all sorts of silly topics that have no use out in the world. It also allows men to get the knowledge they need without college. Who will this separation work out better for?
Men are not abandoning colleges because the colleges are being taken over by lefties. Colleges are being taken over by lefties because men are abandoning them. We are not victims. We are hunters.
As online learning becomes the new norm, objectively great “super professors” conveying actual, hard-to-learn, valuable knowledge will draw classes of thousands and become the new norm. Meanwhile resident courses, the primary attribute of which is getting a chance to parrot back the professor’s stilted version of the subject, will fade away.
This will be a good thing for men because (1) On the internet, nobody knows you’re a man – so the hostility of school administrators to men won’t come into play; and, (2) men, at least the kind who will prosper in the future, aren’t going to need wet nursing and handholding to get along. Men will show up, do the work, collaborate in online forums, get the knowledge and move on. The Duke Lacrosse scandal/setup job doesn’t ever occur in the online environment… but learning does.
“On the internet, nobody knows you’re a man – so the hostility of school administrators to men won’t come into play;”
Wrong, Joe. Voice links are normal for any online learning I’ve attended in the past 5 years, so they will definitely know you’re a man. And your non-use of Ebonics or Spanglish will lead them to assume you’re a man of pallor… and the trend towards webcams will allow confirmation.
Anecdote != data. Most online learning does not include voice.
Pitch shifters are cheap these days… just sayin’.
Hyperpotamus, I like the cut of your jib!
Political correctness is the single most dangerous ideology America has ever faced. It is a race and gender-based construct at the heart of the Dem Party.
The Dem Party has no fundamental principles it evenly applies. The Dem Party stops and checks your gender and race before thinking of right and wrong. There is nothing remotely American about the Dem Party. They are destroying America.
Diversity and multiculturalism is the analogue to this story. The Dem Party wants a smaller percentage of whites in America. They don’t even try to hide the fact. No group in America is a real group unless it has non-whites. That’s why Dems routinely refer to the GOP as old white men in the pejorative. Title 9 has met it’s goals, and now it will go on forever, like a bull in a china shop, long after it’s an anachronism, just like the once worthy NAACP.
White men are seen by liberals as the bottom of any ladder in modern society, the source of the greatest number of injustices and ills. While decrying racism, liberals think skin and gender and even gender-preference does matter and that it has innate qualities. Were this not true, simply having non-white faces would be neither here nor there when it comes to diversity. If people are so equal, why do they have to be shoe-horned into paradigms of success – or out?
American white men in America are seen in a similar manner by liberals as Nazis saw Jews in Europe – the fewer of them there are, the better. White Americans were 88.6% of the populace in 1960, now it is 72%. But like Title 9, the informal goal of more people of color won’t stop. In 2050 whites in America will be half of the population and in that same year it is projected white Englishmen will be the largest minority group in the UK.
PC targets whites through affirmative action. The irony is that the single greatest source of American exceptionalism has been those white men. It is why South America and the rest of the world flocks to North America, even while those who come deny the idea. One only needs a history book and a map to see where success comes from. It’s not even a close call.
I don’t believe in Bell Curves and racial IQ and all that other nonsense, nevertheless I have eyes. If one stops with all the excuses and blame about racism, imperialism and colonialism, the world is what it is. When a culture turns racism on its head and decides to exaggerate the success of people of color and mitigate the success of people of another color with endless theories and explanations, that’s just the flip side of white supremacy, but with no pedigree such as a few tens of thousands of Englishmen taking over a sub-continent of millions, a continent of millions, others another continent of millions. Indians have been in England for 200 years and have yet to make a specific or lasting impression though the competition is no harder than the East India Company had it. The clear implication is the difference between copying a thing, and creativity. Stop the contact on one side and the creativity stops – stop it on the other and it goes on as before. Americans are 5% of the worlds population but 21% of its productivity. Asia, minus Japan, is 60% of the world’s population but 30% of the productivity. Liberals will look at that and go blah, blah, blah colonialism, blah, blah, imperialism. Conservatives will look, blink, and accept.
Like Forrest Gump says – stupid is as stupid does, and smart is as smart does, and good stuff is where you find it. When you start looking for or denying the places good stuff exists based on race and gender PC-style, that’s worse than what history did, because history is based on the fact water is wet and PC based on a faith in something that does not exist in the real world minus a distorted application of the Bill of Rights. If it does, show it to me.
I’m all for fairness and an even playing field, but liberal PC has gone far beyond that to basically hand over the keys to the fractal geometry creating car to peasants from the Third World based on a faith that amounts to a religion because the god cannot be seen, touched or felt. It lives behind the stars, where our equals sore across cable wire over valleys because they can’t even build bridges which racist, lucky white men did in the middle of the 19th century.
I think that the main point was that it is a positive that the college student demographic is more closely matched to the population demographic. A good thing to have opportunities open to the entire population.
Demand for technical workers still high. I agree that a generational shift has the younger folks more interested in fields that do not require a college education. Still a high demand for technical folks, not as many takers. Also younger generation less tolerant of traditional teaching methods.
So, why is a shift away from college a huge fail anyway? Curious if other countries seeing a periodic shift from liberal arts to engineering to trades, etc.
Demand for technical workers still high.
Salaries for tech workers have been falling for a generation and continue to fall, demand cannot be said to be “high”, what it is is demand for those who will do the job cheaper than ever, is “high”. But the real problem is that demand for non-tech workers is zero, or negative. Compared to that, anything seems “high”.
I’m afraid that’s the whole story on why men or anyone are leaving college – no demand, period. Nothing wrong with college, although it has gotten absurdly expensive. What’s wrong is outside the college.
As for the gender balance, the actual topic of the thread – all I can say is, wish it had been that way back when I was there.
“I think that the main point was that it is a positive that the college student demographic is more closely matched to the population demographic”
Except that is not at all what has happened. The college student demographic is now even more skewed toward women than previously it was toward men. So how is that a positive?
One cannot “graduate college”. One graduates from college. And while we are at it, high schools offer diplomas, and colleges offer degrees.
I’d certainly like to see the breakdown of the subject areas of the college degrees awarded.
I tend to ignore anything with “studies” in it, and focus more on subject areas with “science” in there somewhere.
Many in this generation of women will be saddled with significant student loan debt, for degrees with no particular real world value.
As with anything, there are exceptions. For example, Middle East Studies can be a very useful degree for someone interested in a military career, while Political Science is an oxymoron. The same can be said for most of the social sciences.
The rule of thumb is that any field with “science” in its title, isn’t.
Yes, just like you could always identify if a country was communist by their use of the word “people” or “democratic” in their name. There are few exceptions.
Liars, damn liars, and statisticians. The problem with the numbers, as several has alluded to, do not address the types of degrees. I attended the college graduation of my niece back in May. More women graduated from the “social sciences” arena (which the male department head said with pride). I wonder how many of the women who graduated have degrees that will qualify them to work as a barista in Starbucks. How many “gender studies” or “black studies” graduates were there who are going to have a hard time finding a job?
We definitely need something done about the inequality. As long as it isn’t affirmative action. AA is practicing sexism, or racism and calling it the opposite. It doesn’t solve the problem, it create problems. Worst of all, it creates yet another “victim class” who must come to their political masters and obey their will to get their “perks” from the government.
The educational system must be reformed and quickly to remedy the situation. That means more boy friendly environment in school and the end of the teacher’s union.
There is an even more sinister thing — the “Behavioral Intervention Teams that have been created at almost every college since the Virginia Tech shootings — they are going after any assertive male – for anything.
Disagree with a professor about foreign policy — you are dangerous. Complain about an unsafe construction practice — you are dangerous. Etc.
I am really surprised that there are ANY men in college at this point…
Even a root vegetable can get a degree in women’s studies.
Does this mean I now have the option of finding a “sugar momma” to pay my way thru school? (I knew I was born 50 years too early)
Good article. I would say Title IX, is simply a tool used by feminists to limit men’s participation in sports and that America’s whole education system is designed to limit men’s learning and advancement.
http://antifeministsite.blogspot.com/2012/02/title-ix-and-feminism-in-sports.html
What more can we expect from a coalition that defines 18-26 year-olds as children, that wants “Julia” to live a life dependent on government handouts, and thinks of unemployment insurance as a jobs program?
Vote Republican in November.