I’m not going to worry here about college admissions policies but I am going to think about the more general problem of why males might be struggling. I think the evidence is that they are struggling.
People, like the author of the male flight article, tend to look for a single cause, but few if any of the problems in the world, including the struggle of males, have a single, simple cause.
With respect to male employment and attitudes, global economic trends (globalization and information technology) have deemphasized traditionally high-paying typically male jobs (in the US, though some of them have moved elsewhere). Going forward however, as AI gobbles up white collar jobs, more hands-on jobs that AI can’t do (electricians and plumbers, nurses and probably surgeons, etc.) will be favored over typical white collar jobs.
Over the years, the pendulum of attitudes swings. The unconscionable mistreatment of blacks in the US (slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, underfunding of education, segregation, etc.) led to, among other things, affirmative action to partially respond to our country’s extraordinary treatment of blacks. Later, responding to significant discrimination against women, affirmative action expanded to include women.
While discrimination persists in the US (part of the election results for both Hilary and Kamala reflect voter discomfort with a female or a black female as president) and Europe, it is somewhat counterbalanced by changes in legislation, regulation, attitudes and bureaucracy.
Over time, the US saw a shift from affirmative action to a much broader version of DEI. Two or three notable aspects to the shift. First, we expanded government protected classes from blacks and women to Hispanics, Pacific Islanders and other groups. Second, the E of equity largely shifted from equality of opportunity to mean equality of outcome. Third, our bureaucracies shifted to an intersectional view of the world in which the world was divided between oppressors and oppressed.
In this version of DEI, men and especially white men were implicitly and explicitly vilified not just for their sins (on the hiking trail and beyond) but for the sins of the past. In this phase, male voices were automatically suspect/disqualified. I have told this story before but when ShawSon did orientation week at college, there was one or maybe two days devoted to DEI education, which mostly focused on female consent as it was in precursor to the MeToo era. ShawWife and I both told him to say nothing because as a white male anything he said could and would stain his reputation on campus. Indeed, a very muscular, handsome black man whose actual name was Adonis expressed disbelief. ShawSon tried without success to get him to be quiet. Adonis asked if they really meant that when a woman climbs into his bed uninvited (apparently a not uncommon occurrence in his case), he really needed to ask her consent. He kept talking and apparently this affected his reputation on campus for his four years there. At that time, even legitimate questions about the school’s policies (e.g., why if both participants are drunk and by definition can’t give consent, why the male and not the female would be considered to have committed sexual assault if they have drunken sex) would have been deemed to be politically incorrect. In last year’s DEI world, a white male and especially a white Jewish male could feel that he was implicitly assumed to be evil until proven otherwise. (I recently attended an event that included a session on Redefining Masculinity. It was perhaps telling that all of the panelists were women).
In this context, my perception is that masculinity of every kind has been devalued/denigrated. I think it would have been easy for a boy in school to feel like the world was against him, even when there was/is significant implicit discrimination that advantages males.
The defenestration of Claudine Gay may represent the apogee of the pendulum swing. Companies have been quickly dismantling their DEI apparatuses. Universities will respond but more slowly. As an example, I noticed that Harvard’s current president gave a talk in which he mentioned Diversity and Inclusion but pointedly not Equity. But, the schools have large entrenched DEI bureaucracies with strong support from professors and students. Public schools may not respond very slowly if at all as the entrenched DEI bureaucracy has civil servant status.
The return swing of the pendulum will leave boys feeling less denigrated. That should help. (As a side note, I hope we throw out the bathwater – some of the intersectional elements of DEI and the translation of equity into equality of outcome – without throwing out the baby – protecting against discrimination against blacks, women, native Americans and others as well as developing ways to identify talented but underprepared candidates.) Moreover, the relative advantage of higher end tech jobs and the trades (both typically more male) conferred by the advance of AI may also arrest the decline. But, I fear that the hollowing out of white collar jobs more generally will be very bad for the politics of the country.