A very fine article in the Sunday LA Times yesterday: A Growing Gender Gap Tests College Admissions. It deals with an increasingly familiar story: the growing imbalance between male and female students on college and university campuses across the country. At a great many schools, women are now approaching (or exceeding) 60% of the student body; some schools (as detailed in the Times piece) are now apparently lowering standards for male applicants in hopes of achieving greater balance.
…many of the finest liberal arts colleges and top national universities like Georgetown, Boston University, Emory, Brown, Tulane, Vanderbilt and Northwestern enroll more women than men.
The same is true for all UC campuses, except Irvine, and Cal State campuses except for the two polytechnics and the California Maritime Academy. The stronger credentials of the female applicant pool are apparent at California public universities, which are all barred by law from considering sex or race in admissions. Even at the highly sought UC Berkeley, 26% of female freshman applicants were admitted in 2003, compared with 22% of males.
William and Mary, where a couple of my cousins went to school, is among the few that openly admit giving some preference to male applicants in order to achieve near-perfect gender balance:
Henry Broaddus, William and Mary’s director of admissions, said just as the 5,700-student Williamsburg, Va., school seeks "musicians, artists, athletes as well as a racially diverse group of students…. We are concerned that we have roughly equal numbers of men and women."
But an applicant’s sex is "one of many factors we take into account in the interest of bringing in a diverse class," Broaddus said. For this year’s freshmen class, 30% of male applicants were admitted, compared with 22% of female applicants.
Interesting stuff. Do scroll down through the article to the "info box" below, which provides interesting national statistics about grades, enrollment, SAT scores and other information about gender and college succcess. (By the way, Pasadena City College is 57% female). Who’d of thunk we’d end up with affirmative action for males — most of them white to boot? Perhaps already, at places like William and Mary girls are whispering about boys in their classes: "Oh, you know he just got in because the standards are lower for guys!"
On another level, I wonder how this gender gap contributes to the "hook-up culture" on college campuses. On the one hand, young women may feel increasingly sexually emboldened, and young men increasingly comfortable seeing women in positions of power. On the other hand, young men know that the high numbers of young women around gives them less incentive to date anyone exclusively. Why be faithful to one gal when the "odds" are so good? Of course, I’m assuming that the "hook-up culture" is more beneficial to young men than to young women — a premise that some of my feminist readers have rejected in the past.
I suppose I am trying to decide whether I think this growing "gender gap" constitutes a "problem" or not. On the one hand, when I read that women are earning the majority of degrees in this country (and now outnumber men in law and medical school), I am overjoyed at the progress this marks. It is evidence of how far women have come in recent generations. Women’s accomplishments, individually and collectively, are cause for feminist celebration.
On the other hand, one wonders about the men. Where are they? In the military? In prison? In blue-collar jobs that do not require college educations? At private technical and vocational schools? Is it just that the number of women going to college is increasing, or is it also true that the number of men interested in college is declining? I suspect all of these factors are at play, and some of them trouble me.
Having worked with my youth group for five years now, I’ve watched two classes of kids pass from high school frosh into college students. And I’ve noticed that a high number of otherwise bright and capable boys start to "slack off" in their critical sophomore and junior years. I was talking to one of the smartest of my high school junior boys yesterday after church; he is talented (an actor and a singer), hysterically funny, and terribly quick-witted. He also admitted he is failing two of his classes. I asked him what was going on, and he shrugged, saying "I don’t know. I just have no motivation." He was charmingly self-deprecating, and a little embarrassed — but he also admitted that he was spending his time on the Internet and watching TV rather than studying. He’s a brilliant boy — and he is fully aware that he is hurting his chances of getting into a "good" college. But something inside of him just isn’t willing to do the work.
I see this much, much more often with boys than with girls. Indeed, my girls seem to have the opposite problem! Several of my high school girls are "super-women" in training: they play on sports teams (soccer, swimming, softball); they volunteer in the community; they take AP classes and study long hours; they sing in the church choir and serve as acolytes on Sundays; they come to youth group. A few also have part-time jobs. Sometimes, they look utterly exhausted. But by God, they are successful! And very, very few of the boys I know work quite so hard.
As a pro-feminist man, I was trained to support the women around me. As a gender studies teacher, I’ve spent years encouraging women to push themselves, to escape the confines of culture, tradition, and even biology itself. Up until recently, I just assumed the "boys would take care of themselves." Of course, I was also wary of working with young men, largely because I was far more afraid of what other males thought of me than what younger women thought of me. (I’ve copped to this ugly truth before, and I know damn well I’m not alone in this one).
I still see encouraging young high school and college-age women as one of my primary jobs. But I am also making an active effort to reach out to male students and youth groupers. I’ve learned, over the years, not to put off by either male passivity or affected indifference; I’ve learned not to be intimidated by what appears as swaggering confidence. But as much as I love working with the fellas, it is still a great challenge to me. Working with young women is still so much easier. I know I’m not alone in this — and I wonder if I — and my fellow educators at all levels — have failed our boys.
