<p>I’m not certain if I read about this on a CC thread or in a magazine but it’s been an issue I’ve been mulling over for a week now: the dropping percentages of boys applying to colleges; how colleges are concerned about this; how much more focused and dynamic girls seem to be these days; and the growing percentages of high school drop-outs. This crisis was expressed as a generation of lost boys and that measures must be undertaken to help the boys now in much the same way the woman’s movement helped liberate and motivate young girls over the last three decades. </p>
<p>I work with some of these young men when I do my weekly volunteer work at the HS – and many ARE lost, disinterested, lacking in curiosity, in vision, or are just plain lazy. And it makes me very sad. </p>
<p>So I began some ‘mulling’ (you know, the kind of thinking you do when you do the dishes or take out the garbage or walk to the mailbox - the kind of thinking that hovers below the surface all day and just won’t quit…)</p>
<p>The QUESTION: What has happened to our boys in the last twenty or so years (which is when the downward trends began…)?</p>
<p>Because it’s reaching epidemic proportions and touches all racial and socio-economic levels, the one thing I came up with is that boys tend to spend far more time than girls on electronics – specifically video games, computer games, and game boys. I’ve even heard of college boys who spent so much time “gaming” that they got kicked out of college for poor grades. </p>
<p>Perhaps boys are hard-wired to technology games more than girls – I now my D rarely plays them but I have to carefully and constantly monitor my sons or they will get “stuck” for hours like zombies…</p>
<p>You’ve asked a question that many of us who work in higher education are asking (I’m a counseling center director). Our university’s enrollment was once about 52/48 F/M, about the population average. We’re now pushing closer to 60/40, according to official figures. Public, more or less open admissons universities that don’t purposefully select their enrollees have been affected most by this trend. The Chronicle of Higher Education, our house organ, so to speak, has printed stories on the phenomenon. Here is an excerpt from a 2003 story:</p>
<p>"…Women now earn far more college degrees than men, and a new report says the gap will continue to widen unless colleges take action.</p>
<p>The report, by researchers at Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies, analyzed data from the U.S. Education Department and other sources. Women have outnumbered men at colleges since 1993, and in 2000 there were 128 female undergraduates for every 100 male. The ratio is expected to grow to 138 women for every 100 men by 2010."</p>
<p>The next decade should be interesting. We know what is happening but don’t have a sure fire “why.” The Chronicle notes that states with large community college networks have a closer ratio; those with mostly liberal arts and professional schools have the larger gaps.</p>
<p>I’ll leave it some of the sociologists around to offer predictions.</p>
<p>crash, I will be attending my son’s (2) academic banquet and awards ceremony tonight and I will tell you that they will be in the minority (male). Probably only 10-20% of the recipients will be male. My oldest son is graduating this month & is only one of two young men that are graduating as top 20 students out of 300 (I believe they are both in the top 5%). I am not sure what is going on, but it is a big problem. As far as the computer thing, my niece is on the computer way more than either of my boys. It is an issue with my sister ALL the time. So not sure about that theory. Not sure I want to mention my theory because I have thin skin and don’t want any criticism:)</p>
<p>In my daughter’s graduating class two years ago, there was only one boy who received a major academic award, and only 2 boys in the top 10% (small class, about 100). It should be noted that the school is very rigourous, and the top 25% (where the boys are equally represented) go to Ivies or equally selective colleges every year–so it’s not as if the boys are exactly falling by the wayside. My own theory, such as it is, is that the earlier maturity of girls allows the most studious of them to have really stellar years in 9th grade, whereas their male counterparts tend to blow that year by comparison (obviously there are exceptions). Ceding that year makes it very tough for the boys to catch up (in a GPA sense) by graduation. However, I realize that my response is more appropriate to Mominsearch’s post than to Crash’s OP.</p>
<p>I don’t think the gaming is an issue, because the girls in our school seem to be very into it as well, and many of the really top male students are as much into Shakespeare and Physics as they are into “Warcraft.” Those games are very addictive, though, and we have to constantly badger our 10th grade son to get off the computer and get to work. He gets great grades, though, which he waves in our faces as he heads back for more gaming. So, I don’t know.</p>
<p>We go to Catholic school. Several years ago, they started allowing girl altar servers. For several reasons- one, the boys weren’t always showing up and weren’t willing to do it, and it wasn’t fair that girls were excluded.</p>
<p>Now, there are more girl altar servers than boys in many parishes. They tend (on average) to show up and be on time and don’t mind doing it.</p>
<p>Now some members in the church (Rome) are comlpaining about girl altar servers, saying it is their fault boys don’t serve and that there is a shortage in the priesthood because less boys are serving.</p>
<p>I won’t get into allllll the other possible reasons, but it is interesting that girls are being blaimed because the boys lack interest. </p>
<p>I know that is not being said here, but I find it interesting none the same.</p>
<p>Could it be a latent effect of all of the effort to get girls to go to college and pursue a career that started 20 or so years ago? The “Take your Daughters to Work Day” could easily have had a psychological impact on the boys as they saw the girls getting all of the attention. Even though some employers gradually loosened the rules to allow boys, it was still referred to as something for daughters - hence there was a stigma attached to it for a boy to ask to get out of school to attend.</p>
<p>That’s the problem with these special programs for a subset of the population; those who are excluded may grow resentful and/or feel ignored, with the consequences for some of “dropping out”.</p>
<p>The part I’m still puzzling over is the fact that boys are well represented at the vast majority of highly competitive schools, with the exceptions of the ones that just recently went co-ed. It seems that there’s not a lack of boys who are top students, but simply a wide gap between the super achievers and the underachievers. That gap doesn’t seem to be as wide when it comes to girls, for the most part.</p>
<p>Once my son got out of high school, his academic achievement was amazing. He went from a 3.2 high school GPA (weighted) to a 3.9 college GPA at a four-year college. We are in shock. I believe that the deemphasis in encouraging boys to go to college is a huge factor here.</p>
<p>I certainly agree with the OP and have wondered what the causes are myself. Video games and excessive tv viewing, I’ve heard, lead to passivity (not violent behavior, like some used to think). It’s also coming at an age where the brain isn’t fully mature. I am in no way qualified on these matters (except what anyone who reads and thinks is qualified to say) but I have read recently that actions have an affect on the physical growth of the brain. Pathways that get used more get ingrained more. I can’t even adequately explain what I’ve noticed, but I often tell friends I think it’s easier to be a girl nowadays. If you look at students, girls are more likely to achieve and excell and I wholeheartedly agree we seem to have too many ‘lost’ boys out there. They can’t always find a niche - maybe they don’t want to be labeled ‘nerds’ if they do well academically; athletic success seems acceptable but usually not in conjunction with academic success (it’s either - or in many schools). It’s like smelling smoke - you know there’s a fire behind it, but not knowing what kind, you’re not sure how to fight it. Maybe it has to get worse before we get a handle on the solution.</p>
Larry Summers, president of Harvard, recently got himself in hot water for citing a study that suggested something very similar. I happen to agree.</p>
<p>I don’t think take your D to work day had anything to do with it. It allowed girls to get some attention, which they weren’t given before. I almost find that theory sexist. Boys were given all the perks. So suddenly they weren’t the center of the universe.</p>
<p>I think studies showing that teachers tended to call on boys more often, etc came out and gee, lets remember to pay some attention to the rest of the class. </p>
<p>Girls were excluded for many many many years. As well, now it has been more acceptable for girls to be seen as smart, ambitious, and driven.<br>
Perhaps the bar has been raised somewhat.</p>
<p>They did a study regarding musicians and orchestras. Decades ago the vast majority of muscians in symphonies etc were men. Even with tryouts, mostly men were picked. So, they decided to put up a screen and hide the sex of the auditioner. ALmost immediately, the results changed. 50% of those accepted were women. When the audition committee couldn’t see the gender of the musician, the tryouts were suddenly fair and currently females are at 50% of symphonies and orchestras. Is it because the men are worse players…no, its just that the women were finally recognized for their skills.</p>
<p>Going back to Driver’s comment on the earlier maturity of girls – our middle S who’s gifted in math had a wonderful time not doing homework from 6 th grade through early 8th grade. His report cards were a rainbow of grades - from A to E to C to E. We learned that alot of boys at this age perform like this and not to worry – but we were worried because we knew if his grades kept slipping, then he’d be placed in lower and lower classes and have a harder time with Hons and ASP courses later. Basically, we were at our wits end and did everything we could (with his teachers) to get him to be more accountable and concientious. Northing worked until we took him along on a college campus tour with his older sibling. We visited several traditional looking campuses – you know, the kind you see in movies – Haverford, Dickinson, Swarthmore, UPenn – all stone buildings, ivy, students lounging under trees talking or tossing frisbees around. We ate at the cafeterias, took tours, went into the bookstores, talked with random students, and had a blast.
A couple of months latter, we noticed that our S’s grades were suddenly getting better and when we asked "Why? he replied that he needed good grades to get into college. Ah ha! We had inadvertently kicked in a demonstration factor. Now, college was no longer some abstract venue that he was being forced to consider but a real place full of kids doing neat things away from their parents. He’s gotten great grades ever since…and we’ve recommended the “college tour when the school is in session” strategy to several other friends with remarkable results…
One of the volunteer projects I am doing at our local HS is to work with disadvantaged kids who do not have adults around willing to provide “the demonstration factor” and and stay on top of them to do their best…</p>
<p>If you want an instant reading list, Google (leave off the quotes) " more girls than boys go to college " Remember to leave the quotes off, you don’t want to search on the exact phrase. You’ll get the thoughts of everybody from John Silber to Laura Bush on the subject.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider, this group of kids going into college are the second generation of boomers. We boomers were the first real generation of women to go to college and stay there. </p>
<p>Here is a question regarding the stats:</p>
<p>Is it that less males are actually going to college than before, or that more girls are?</p>
<p>If you had 100 males, and 50 females ten years ago, and now you have 100 males and 100 females enrollment</p>
<p>If you’re not familiar with Google’s academic sibling, <a href=“http://scholar.google.com%5B/url%5D”>http://scholar.google.com</a> , you might try it. I used the search term(s) more girls than boys go to college to get the above hit.</p>
<p>In some cases you’ll need to order the full article through a library but the advantage to scholar.google.com is that most citations are from peer reviewed sources. That’s not a guarantee of credibility but at least most of the rants on a topic don’t make it into the search results.</p>
<p>The findings are interesting - middle school grades and disciplinary history are good predictors of college attendance and the acknowledgement that two places lots of boys end up - enlisted military ranks and prison - do not predict well for future college attendance.</p>
<p>Speaking of the military, the trend towards a preponderance of college degrees being earned by women may have some striking implications, not in the enlisted ranks, but in the officer corps of every service where most (not quite 100% but close to it) officers have college degrees.</p>
<p>Do you have a subscription to the Atlantic so you could copy the article “The Gender Gap” in here? </p>
<p>By the way, my ninth grade S just said that girls have to work harder to get anywhere in U.S. society and boys don’t which is why they are more laxidaisical!</p>
<p>I don’t but will see if our library does. I edited my post to put a couple of juried articles up and mention scholar.google.com as a search engine. The juried articles often provide the data underlying the articles in publications like Newsweek and Atlantic.</p>
<p>With regards to our family’s experience, the top 10% of students in my D’s graduating class (13 people) consist of 12 young women and 1 young man.</p>
<p>Sometimes I wonder if the only reasons my gender exists are, of course, a procreative role, and once upon a time, to use our superior upper body strength, particularly longer arms which provide a mechanical advantage in throwing things, and greater eye height to see above the savannah grass and efficiently (read as: with a good chance of surviving the encouter) large, unpleasant predators with lots of teeth and claws, with apologies to Jean Auel. .</p>
.</p>