<p>IMO, it’s incredibly shortsighted to ignore the racial and socio-economic dimension of the college gender gap. I find the ACE data compelling: there is no significant gender gap in college participation rates among middle- and upper-income whites and Asians of “traditional” college age (24 & under). I repeat: there is no gender gap among middle- and upper-income whites and Asians. </p>
<p>There is an enormous gender gap among lower-income blacks, lower-income Latinos, and lower-income whites, as well as among “non=traditional” students, those 25 and older weho make up fully 40% of college students. Any “explanation” that fails to account for this extreme racial and socio-economic divergence is not an explanation; it is self-deception.</p>
<p>I do conditionally agree that in the
subsection of lowish income/less education background students- I see more girls excelling and more boys looking for success in areas that are not academic.
These students are often " ethnically diverse" & even with students whose families put a high priority on education, the boys have a harder time.</p>
<p>There are programs run by the community and the schools to address the challenges that low income minority students face, but few if any to my knowledge are set up to address the pressures boys face- a shame because the programs seem dominated by girls- which may make it less likely for boys to participate.</p>
<p>When you think about it, a guy doesn’t need a college degree to get by in life. He can make good money in construction, doing things that involve heavy lifting always pay well. Many would rather probably go to the trade schools and learn carpentry. A lot of these jobs are unionized and have benefits. A girl needs an education to get a decent job, and that’s that.</p>
<p>Maybe they would rather concentrate on sports, also.</p>
<p>Maybe if you want to encourage them to get an education, tell them they’ll meet lots of girls in college! : )</p>
<p>This sounds like a statement out of the 1950s; bad advice for a young male in 2011. First, there are a lot of girls competing for those apprenticeships, places in trade schools, and unionized jobs with benefits these days. Second, learning a trade and getting a good union job with benefits still works for a few people, but not nearly as many as it once did. The unions continue to shrink as a percentage of the workforce, especially in the private sector, and unionized workers face stiff competition from lower-wage, non-unionized firms. Unemployment rates tend to be high in many trades in many areas, and workers with seniority want to hang onto the few jobs that are available, making it difficult for young people to break in. In many places benefits have eroded even for unionized workers. </p>
<p>As for jobs that involve heavy lifting (which is generally not the skilled trades), there’s a reason employers pay a wage premium for that kind of work: injury rates are high, and even for those who don’t end up on disability with a bad back, bodies tend to wear out over time, so careers may be short.</p>
<p>This is seldom acknowledged but very true. Even jobs such as driving wear out the body much faster than desk jobs. I’ve known a couple of men say that the only reason they went back to college because they realized they couldn’t do manual labor for 30 more years. They didn’t realize this until they tried it for a while.</p>
<p>Personally I wonder what this will do to the societal (and perhaps even biological) imperative for women to “marry up”. I once had a fellow student tell me that she would never go out for a master’s as it would cut down on the number of men she could marry (!)</p>
<p>^
That’s changing fast. I know more and more younger couples in which the wife is the main breadwinner and the husband either works part-time or is a full time stay at home dad.</p>
<p>I don’t know if someone has mentioned this, but an excellent answer to the question is the book “The War Against Boys” by Christina Hoff Sommers. It speaks about how learning styles in school are geared more towards girls and how girls are groomed more for colllege now than boys. It’s an enlightening but disturbing book on what is happening today.</p>
<p>IMHO, combination of racial disparities, increase in emphasis on “good citizenship”(being quiet/compliant in class, neat handwriting, etc), and reduction in academic expectations all around…especially for the boys. </p>
<p>I mentioned good citizenship as some of the very qualities which marked me as a “disruptive influence” in high school such as openly dissenting with an instructor’s points/ideas in some classes were, with some modification, actually served me in good stead during my undergraduate career and in the workplace. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, many high school kids with “good citizenship skills” IME tend to be very passive and a bit too quiet in undergrad classes. Some are also shocked when “good citizenship skills” were no longer counted as heavily or at all once they started college. This was certainly something which frustrated several college instructors I’ve known…including those in the Ivies/peer schools. </p>
<p>As for reduction in academic expectations, I have noticed that many families expect girls to mature faster so they have higher academic and behavioral expectations while they allow the boys to slack off in those areas. Several older teachers, Profs, and adults who were early boomers/tweeners had said such slacking allowed for boys in the last ten to twenty years would have never happened when they grew up in the 1940’s-1950’s, especially among the working and middle class families…whether immigrant or not.</p>
<p>Yes, I was surprised that nobody mentioned “The War Against Boys” by Christina Hoff Sommers.</p>
<p>The original post asked whether girls are more driven, or boys are less driven. But this book makes the argument that boys are being driven out.</p>
<p>^ I haven’t read Sommers’ book, but the most telling critique of her argument that I’ve seen is that she completely ignores the fact that among middle- and upper-class whites and Asians, there is no gender gap in higher education participation or achievement rates. None. Zero, zip, nada. The disparity is entirely at lower income levels and among blacks and Hispanics. Which of course raises huge red flags about her central thesis that it’s overzealous feminism that accounts for the disparity, because the last time I looked low-income, black, and Hispanic communities were not exactly hotbeds of radical feminism. </p>
<p>To get at what’s really going on, then, someone would have to write a book titled “The War on Low-Income, Black, and Hispanic Boys.” But of course that book doesn’t fit Sommers’ conservative ideological predilections, so it’s not likely she’ll be the one to write it.</p>
<p>^ I haven’t read Sommer’s book either, but I don’t feel as comfortable as you do in forming an opinion about it. Given that this is a politically charged area, I wouldn’t be willing to simply accept the critiques at face value. Too many times I’ve seen critiques that miss the point entirely, or even flat out misstate the arguments due to bias. So I’d prefer to reserve judgment until reading the book.</p>
<p>Based on my own long ago college experience, I do believe that there could be some truth to the notion that the feminization of the university could be pushing males away, at least at the margin. Although I pursued a science/technology curriculum, I did have a few interesting experiences in my Humanities courses (Psychology and History in particular). In one class, my perception was that I needed to accept guilt for being a white male in order to do well. There was another situation in a Psych class that I found very distasteful - completely unacceptable, in fact. I won’t even mention the disgusting details, except that I found it necessary to hold my nose and play along in order to achieve a fair grade. I’ve wondered whether these experiences would have been multiplied if I had majored in the social sciences. So the idea of a marginal effect due to males not feeling comfortable seems plausible to me.</p>
<p>Except that there isn’t a disparity by gender in college completion rates among middle- and upper-income white and Asian students who actually enter college. Nor is there a disparity in the percentages of boys and girls who enter college among these groups. The biggest disparity by far is that among low-income, black, and Hispanic students, far fewer boys than girls complete high school and far fewer boys than girls enter college in the first place. I’m dubious that feminism in the college classrooms could somehow be reaching back and deterring low-income, black, and Hispanic boys from completing high school, or from applying to and deciding to attend college in the first place. Especially since the data strongly suggest that it does not have that effect on middle- and upper-income white and Asian boys, who complete high school and attend and complete college at rates virtually identical to middle- and upper-income white and Asian girls.</p>
<p>The problem I have with Sommers’ thesis—and with your speculation about a possible “marginal effect due to males not feeling comfortable” in college classrooms—is that they seem to be trying to explain a phenomenon that doesn’t exist. If the explanation can’t explain why the gender disparity is ENTIRELY among low-income, black, and Hispanic students, then it’s no explanation at all. Now having not read Sommers’ book, maybe I’m being hasty; maybe she does address and explain the income and racial dimensions of the problem, and her critics are simply mistaken when they say she doesn’t. But if she doesn’t address those dimensions, then I feel fairly confident in saying her argument has to be wide of the mark, because she’s misdiagnosed the problem as a simple male v. female phenomenon and tried to explain that, when in fact the problem is entirely one of low college participation and completion rates among low-income, black, and Hispanic males, as opposed to everyone else.</p>
<p>I’m not sure it is boys being “driven out” by “feminization” of the universities so much as boys have been giving far more slack regarding academics and behavior in the last 20 years judging by what I’ve heard from those who grew up in the 1940’s and 1950’s. This was reflected throughout my own schooling experience, classmates, and even an older cousin’s family where the sisters were academic superstars while he nearly flunked out multiple times due to prioritization of partying over academics…and they attended college in the early to mid-80’s. And yet, that son was still his parents’ favorite! :(</p>
<p>This does beg the question whether books like Sommers is really another book in a long line of recent pop-psych books meant to pin the blame for their boys/kids’ problems on everyone else except <em>shudder</em> the kid him/herself or worse…<em>gasp</em> the parents.</p>
<p>Once again, I wanted to be clear that I haven’t read Sommers book, and her arguments aren’t my arguments. But I did see a little bit of that in operation, so it was definitely floating around. The stories that the undergrad women told about their women’s studies classes were amazing. But it was easy to laugh it off, and we did (including the women - sometimes). At the end of the day, I felt no need to defend my mere existence. </p>
<p>For me, in a sci/tech program, I was happy to have an occasional content-free blow-off class. Of course, now that I’m revisiting this whole area as a parent, those memories strengthen my motivation to be a smart consumer. College pricing has gotten too crazy to accept more than a few junk-food classes.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that what constituted a “content-free blow-off” class/field in your college experience may not necessarily apply at other institutions. </p>
<p>Many engineering/STEM centered schools like MIT and CMU have been notorious for having gut humanities and social science courses geared for STEM majors who are not interested in a well-rounded liberal arts education. </p>
<p>This was a reason why several Harvard undergrads I knew took several humanities/social science courses on a cross-registration basis at MIT. </p>
<p>As for CMU, my high school GC, several high school classmates who are CMU alums, and a few CMU alum co-workers all said that the social science/humanities departments were CMU’s weakest link. Some who later took a few humanities/social science courses for personal enrichment or for a Masters program at more comprehensive universities such as Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia all said the humanities/social science courses were surprised at how much more work/rigor was expected compared with the ones they took at CMU. </p>
<p>In contrast, several classmates from my own LAC and graduates from other LACs or more comprehensive topflight universities felt the graduate workload was the same or sometimes even EASIER than undergrad at those same graduate institutions.</p>
</p>