<p>It is clear that there are some individual colleges, particularly LAC’s, that have a high F to M ratio, I wonder, however, what the overall numbers look like if racial groups are disaggregated? From what I have seen, the number of minority females in college far surpass that of minority men (is this true?). Given that greater numbers of minorities are attending college, and at some colleges, a greater percentage, the difference in overall M/F ratio may be more influenced by the greater difference in minority M/F ratio than by curriculum that favors girls. If this is the case, this points to other societal concerns.</p>
<p>^ Good point, idad.</p>
<p>According to a major 2006 study by the American Council on Education, there are sharp differences by race, age, and income level, as follows:</p>
<p>1) The gender gap is widest among African-Americans, 60% F/40% M, although this gap actually narrowed a little from 1995-96 when it was 63-37.</p>
<p>2) Among Hispanics the gap is 57% F/43% M, and that gap actually widened (from 45% M) in the earlier period due to a drop in the percentage of low-income Hispanic males among college attendees.</p>
<p>3) Asian-American males are at parity with females, a decline from the earlier period when a majority of Asian-American college students were males.</p>
<p>4) Among non-Hispanic whites of traditional college age (24 & younger), the male share dropped from 49% in 1995-96 to 46% in 2003-04, due to a decline in the share of low-income white students who are male from 48% to 44%.</p>
<p>5) Among the 40% (!!!) of college students who are of a “non-traditional age” (25 & up), women outnumber men 60%-40%.</p>
<p>I conclude from all this that our educational system is failing low-income males, especially low-income African-American and Hispanic males, but also low-income white males to a substantial degree. Fewer of them make it to college at a traditional age, and fewer of them take advantage of a second chance later in life—perhaps because by that time they’re in trades, in the military, incarcerated, or dead.</p>
<p>But for all you parents obsessing about your middle-class predominantly white schools being gender-biased in favor of girls, there’s just not much evidence this is affecting college participation rates: it appears middle-class and affluent white and Asian-American kids of traditional college age are the most gender-balanced groups, with little or no difference in college attendance rates between boys and girls.</p>
<p>^ Sorry, I meant to post a link to the American Council on Education data. For further details you’ll need to purchase the study or find it at a library.</p>
<p>[ACE</a> | College Enrollment Gender Gap Widens for White and Hispanic Students, but Race and Income Disparities Still Most Significant New ACE Report Finds](<a href=“http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=HENA&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=17251]ACE”>http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=HENA&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=17251)</p>
<p>Because kids don’t go to college the education system is failing? </p>
<p>IMO I think it’s because guys tend to be more goal oriented, not just going to some school for four years in hopes of just falling into the right career and having “options.” It’s probably hard to convince guys to go to a four year school when they already know what they want to do because it’s not as great of an idea as one would think. As a guy I don’t even know for sure what exactly I want to do and I’m definitely not sold on college. </p>
<p>Plus more often than not guys are the bread winners in families and sometimes it can be more feasible for girls to attend school while the guys work.</p>
<p>Might as well add that I’m Latino.</p>
<p>Well this does lend itself to strategies in admission. My son will probably have a slight edge in some of the LACs with a high female/male ratio. Will have to see how this plays out by the time my daughter is ready for college in two years</p>
<p>^ BeKindRewind,</p>
<p>I don’t doubt that what you’re saying is true in individual cases, but I find it somewhat improbable that the MOST goal-oriented in our society would be low-income African-American, low-income Latino, and low-income white males. </p>
<p>I do agree, however, that there’s probably more pressure on low-income males to start earning a living right away, rather than incurring the costs (including opportunity costs) of a college education that may or may not lead to a better-paying career.</p>
<p>And yes, when college attendance is sharply skewed by race, gender, and income, I do think that represents a failure of our educational system, because in the aggregate (though not in every individual case) the lifetime earnings of those who do not attend college will fall far short of those who complete a college education, producing a self-perpetuating inequality skewed by race, gender, and socioeconomic background.</p>
<p>Gary Becker and Richard Posner have some pretty interesting theories to help explain the gender gap posted on their blog. It meshes well with a lot of the explanations posted here, paying particular interest to the sea change in expectations for women in the last forty years or so. Scroll down to the bottom of the page (the March 2nd entries) to take a look:</p>
<p>[The</a> Becker-Posner Blog: March 2008](<a href=“http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2008/03/]The”>http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2008/03/)</p>
<p>I think obviously the reasons are multicausal.
Men have more opportunities to earn a decent living right out of high school.
When I was in high school, the vocational opportunities in junior high were emphasized for both sexes.
I had a coed cooking class , every one was forced to take keyboarding & I also had a sewing class.
I also took wood shop, which I really enjoyed.
In high school however, girls were steered to " homemaking courses" if they were taking any vocational classes & boys had metal shop, wood shop, auto body & auto mechanics. At that time, before computers, you could make a good living using basic auto repair skills- try living on your income from home ec :rolleyes:.</p>
<p>In our district, there are programs to hire high school students for construction of new projects that pay $18.00hr, With possibilities like that, it isn’t unusual for both parents and students to be thinking short term.</p>
<p>Women can be great at physical labor, but they are not going to have the same brute strenght as a man, if that what is needed. Also, because some jobs work with toxic materials, employers may discriminate because the women might become pregnant.
So what are they gonna do?
Get more education.
I can’t speak for the system to be " attuned to female learning style", although I would say that women in general, are more attuned to expectations of others.
Even though I have two daughters, I would say that while some teachers have been way better than others, the system isn’t attuned to * anyones* needs, other than to operate as an employer of adults.</p>
<p>My younger daughter has had about half male/female teachers. although senior year they mostly were female.
She had the best rapport with the male teachers, they were able to explain things in a way that worked for her.</p>
<p>I can’t help but think that the answer is simply that a much higher percentage of females are going to college now than in the past. I’m sure that the percentage of males that attend college versus going into the trades or military is probably up somewhat now than it was 20 years ago, but I’ll bet that the percentage of females going to college now than in the past has increased dramatically.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the reason is simply that many more occupations are open to females and society has a greater expectation that females will obtain degrees and go into the professions.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But even in this case I’d have to disagree. Low income people usually are more goal oriented because they tend to not have the opportunity to go to some institution for years on end to think about what they want to do, they know they need to move out and get a job, with the goal being to move up class wise. </p>
<p>Even drug dealers and gangbangers are goal oriented, just maybe not the goals that you’re thinking of. Now that I think of it though, even going to college for four years to think about what you want to do can be a goal, but that wasn’t the type of “goal” I had in mind either.</p>
<p>^ OK, I’ll concede that for some college is (or starts out as) a kind of extension of adolescence, a time to put off formulating clear life goals. For others it’s just the opposite: you need very clear goals to absorb the opportunity costs, immediate pain, and deferred gratification of pursuing an engineering degree or a pre-med major, for example. But frankly I don’t see a big gender split on that question. </p>
<p>I think maybe the biggest difference is willingness to tolerate deferred gratification: going out and getting a job and enjoying cash rewards now, versus deferring financial rewards until later in the expectation that they’ll be sufficiently larger to recoup the opportunity cost. And that’s where there’s an income skew: lower-income males, white, black, and Latino, perhaps do tend more toward short-term rather than deferred gratification. Now you may be right that lower-income males think “they need to move out and get a job, with the goal being to move up class wise”; but the great irony, of course, is that by not going to college it makes it statistically much less likely that they WILL “move up class wise.”</p>
<p>Also, given high rates of unemployment (or non-participation in the labor force, not quite the same thing) among low-income black and Latino males, I wonder how much of this is a conscious choice to forego college in favor of a job, and how much of it is simply our educational system literally failing them by not equipping them with the skills to get into college or to succeed there if admitted. I don’t have the stats in front of me, but my recollection is that high school graduation rates are significantly lower for lower-income black and Latino males than for black and Latino females. So it may be that a large share of the gender skew is the product of a secondary education system that simply produces significantly fewer college-eligible black and Latino male HS graduates.</p>
<p>Dr. Judith Kleinfeld has done work on this. Here is an article:</p>
<p>[Judith</a> Kleinfeld on Boys & Education on National Review Online](<a href=“http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTRlMzBiMDg4MGNiYmUwNTcwMmY2ODVjY2FhNTA0MzM=]Judith”>http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTRlMzBiMDg4MGNiYmUwNTcwMmY2ODVjY2FhNTA0MzM=)</p>
<p>She is very intriguing to listen to, and gives a great lecture on how “Boys are not defective girls.” 
Go Judith!</p>
<p>Here is her boys project website:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.boysproject.net%5DHome%5B/url”>http://www.boysproject.net]Home[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Lots of good thoughts here, and I agree with much of what has been stated. Let me toss one more thing out there.</p>
<p>I graduated high school in 1979. In the Southwest. Back then, it was clear that if you were a guy, your worth was judged by how much you earned and how well you could support your family. Your wife wouldn’t be working. It was all on you, and there were a lot of mouths to feed. </p>
<p>Fortunately, a large percentage of society (racial minorities and women) were excluded from the highest-paid professions. The path of white males was cleared of all of that bothersome competition from the overwhelming majority of adults based on race and gender. So if you were a male, you knew you had better get a good job and that path was artificially open to you.</p>
<p>Today is different. Men don’t feel they exist to bring home a big paycheck. They know their wives will help support the family in most instances, and their families will be smaller. If they want to be a high-priced doctor or lawyer, they now have to compete with women and racial minorities and might not even win the race. So why kill yourself going to medical school? Do something else. Open a business, join the military. Or have your lady support you. Or live in your mom’s basement. </p>
<p>Cindy – who doesn’t know any young women living in their parents’ basements into their 40s but who does know guys who do this</p>
<p>Men have been bred for centuries to be hunters, soldiers, farmers and builders, where size, strength, and other aggressive traits are valuable.</p>
<p>Just because we’ve progressed into a service society that values college education doesn’t mean that thousands of years of selective breeding will suddenly reverse to make men creative, collaborative, and studious.</p>
<p>Some of the sweeping statements about female teachers and their treatments of boys from above really set my teeth on edge. </p>
<p>Regardless of what the nuns were like in the sixties – many teachers today are actually the mothers of sons themselves, the sisters to brothers, etc. etc.
And there are many, many little girls who don’t do well in school at all. I know – I see them.</p>
<p>Cindy, I don’t know any females living in their parents’ basement in their 40’s either, but know a woman who lived in the same bedroom at her parents’ home till she was almost 50, and then the parents moved to another state, and guess what? She moved with them! She never married, had any children, or moved out even for a camp for a few weeks let alone to a place where she’d pay rent. If it works for that family (and I’m not sure how the parents feel, but the woman didn’t seem to mind living with her parents and said she helped take care of them and was contributing monetarily as she did have a job), that’s fine. For many families, this wouldn’t be seen as ideal (my family included).</p>
<p>Thanks for the link, CTD!</p>
<p>While there is some interesting speculation there, which is consistent with what various posters say here, the most important thing is Posner’s conclusion:</p>
<p>“But, to repeat, these suggested answer (sic) to the puzzle of the gender education gap are highly speculative–a stimulus (I hope) to further thought, not the end of the inquiry.”</p>
<p>So my bottom line remains the same: I really hope someone does some systematic research on this question soon.</p>
<p>Hmm…how much of this is due to the incredible frequency of unwed or single motherhood and its accretive affect over decades? Girls often see their mothers get it together, balancing a job and parenting and the like. Boys all too often don’t see their absent fathers - what do they aspire to? I recognize with all due respect that this scenario does not apply to vast majority of parents posting on this board, which is a veritable treasure trove of doting parents (and I mean that in a nice way and believe I fit that description myself). The lack of strong men and fathers in the family is the single greatest social problem we have, and yet is rarely talked about openly. It has to be a significant cause of the growing academic gender gap. And more to the point, I think there has been a feminization of the schools, but to look at this as the cause of the gap might be misleading. Part of doing well in anything, school included, is adopting strategies that work with all kinds of people. Without fathers or strong men around, often boys have no idea how to implement those strategies, especially with female teachers.</p>
<p>interesting</p>
<p>
[Education</a> Sector: Research and Reports: Evidence Suggests Otherwise](<a href=“http://www.educationsector.org/research/research_list.htm?attrib_id=14394]Education”>บาคาร่า หากใครต้องการรับสิ่งใหม่ๆ ในการเล่นเกมต้องมาที่นี่เท่านั้น )</p>
<p>The lack of men and fathers in the family is the single greatest social problem we have</p>
<p>Really?</p>
<p>U.S. Census Bureau: 50 Million Children Lived with Married Parents in 2007</p>
<p>“The number of people without health insurance coverage increased from 44.8 million in 2005 to 47 million in 2006,” David S. Johnson, chief of the bureau’s Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, </p>
<p>$32,649
The median annual earnings of women 16 or older who worked year-round, full time, in 2006. Women earned 77 cents for every $1 earned by men.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>*Adam Liptak had a terrific column on the burgeoning US prison population in Wednesday’s NY Times. The comparison of the US statistics with the rest of the world was staggering:</p>
<p>The United States has less than 5 percent of the worlds population. But it has almost a quarter of the worlds prisoners.</p>
<p>Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes from writing bad checks to using drugs that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.*</p>
<p>More than half of all industrial and municipal facilities across the country dumped more sewage and other pollutants into the nation’s waterways than allowed under the Clean Water Act, according to a report released Thursday by an environmental group.
California was among the 10 states with the highest percentage of facilities leaking more pollutants into waterways than their Clean Water Act permits allow, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency obtained by the environmental group, U.S. PIRG.
California also had the dubious distinction of having the most large-scale violations - or “exceedances” - of Clean Water Act permits of any state. The large-scale violations are those that exceed the permitted level by at least 500 percent.
Environmentalists said the figures show that industrial plants and municipal wastewater facilities continue to flout the law because of insufficient policing by federal regulators.</p>