Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Huge Gender Gap Persists in College Degrees, Do We Need White House Council on Boys and Men?

From a BLS report released earlier this month, "America's Young Adults at Age 24":

"At age 24, a clear gender gap in educational attainment persists. While nearly 28 percent of women had received a bachelor’s degree by the October when they were age 24, only 19 percent of men had done so (see chart). Additionally, nearly the same percentage of men and women (12 and 13 percent, respectively) were enrolled in college at age 24, so it is unlikely the gap in educational attainment will close."
  
In other words, for young adults at age 24 there are 148 women who have earned a bachelor's degree (or more) for every 100 men.  At age 23, there are 164 women holding a college degree for every 100 men, and at age 22 the F:M ratio for college degrees is 187:100.

Despite the incredible success of women in higher education compared to men, which could have major implications for subsequent success in the job market, President Obama signed an executive order in March 2009 to create the White House Council on Women and Girls, and stated that the purpose of the Council is "to ensure that each of the agencies in which they're charged takes into account the needs of women and girls in the policies they draft, the programs they create, the legislation they support." 

In 2010, a multi-partisan group of thirty-four scholars made a proposal that President Obama create a White House Council on Boys and Men, as a parallel program to the White House Council on Women and Girls.  Warren Farrell, the leader of the effort, identified five different areas in which boys are in crisis—education; jobs; emotional health; physical health; and fatherlessness.  In an interview with Forbes, Farrell said that "The White House Council would signal to the world that boys and men are facing problems, alert schools and parents as to the nature of these problems, and alert all the nation’s institutions to explore how attending to these problems might help our sons, daughters, families and nation."  One educational issue to be addressed by the Council would be the huge gender gaps in educational attainment for young adults illustrated by the BLS report.
  
As you might expect, Obama has not responded to the request to create a Council on Boys and Men.  Reason? In a 2009 article in the National Journal, Stuart Taylor summarized well the standard, politically-correct "selective concern on sex imbalances" that typically ignores any cases of male under-representation, like college degrees, which helps us understand why there will be no White House Council for Boys and Men:

"It is an article of faith in the Obama administration, Congress, and much of the academic establishment that there are no innate differences between females and males in interests or cognitive capacities. From this dubious premise, they conclude that only pervasive, ongoing sexism and stereotypes can explain the huge gender disparities in academic fields -- hard sciences, engineering, and mathematics -- that are still male-dominated.

But advocates of this disparity-proves-discrimination dogma apply it quite selectively. They have shown virtually no concern about the small and shrinking percentages of males in colleges generally and in most academic fields."

22 Comments:

At 2/29/2012 10:41 AM, Blogger juandos said...

We need a White House council on anything like Custer needed another indian...

 
At 2/29/2012 11:58 AM, Blogger Benjamin Cole said...

Perry raises a good point.

 
At 2/29/2012 12:45 PM, Blogger Milton Recht said...

The decline in men obtaining college degrees also relates to the decline in the US in engineers. The engineering field, despite efforts at gender neutrality, attracts and retains many more men than women. Declining male college graduates means starting with a smaller base of potential engineering graduates who go on to work as engineers.

 
At 2/29/2012 12:50 PM, Blogger Methinks said...

Knuckle-dragging morons.

As a woman in college, the only thing I noticed I needed was the same thing the male students did - an education and to bloody well grow up and figure out how to adjust to life as an adult.

It's exceedingly immature and profoundly childish to constantly demand that the world revolve around one's preferences instead of adjusting oneself to the realities of life. Those of you who have children are quite familiar with this behaviour.

Moreover, I hate how this nonsense is performed in the name of my entire gender and then I'm forced into it as if I asked for this. I never found these pro-female campaigns beneficial - not while I was in school and not in my career.

 
At 2/29/2012 12:53 PM, Blogger Methinks said...

IMO, Milton, too many people are getting college degrees. And how many of those degrees obtained by women are in utterly useless subjects like "women's studies" and "social thought"?

 
At 2/29/2012 1:07 PM, Blogger morganovich said...

methinks-

you just reminded me of a favorite quote:

"reasonable people adapt to the world around them. unreasonable people try to adapt the world to themselves. therefore, all progress is dependent on unreasonable people."

i take it to be about people who created disruptive new technology etc as opposed to those who rent seek and seek to slant the field, but as i think about it, they are really 2 sides of the same sword.

this would seem to lead to a pivotal question: how can we focus our unreasonable people on the productive and steer them away from rent seeking?

the phrase "take power away from government" comes to mind.

 
At 2/29/2012 1:13 PM, Blogger morganovich said...

also:

i'm not sure how you would determine what "too many" degrees are. perhaps getting a degree in french lit or art history makes someone better rounded and a happier individual better able to appreciate life. (or perhaps not)

i think a better formulation of the issue would be that too many people expect such degrees to have economic benefit. being top of your class in lesbian Buddhist poetry about cats does not provide much in terms of marketable skills.

my mother was literally one of the first women to work in computers. you should here her go off on these people who expect their thesis on the teleological semantics of dandelion metaphors in Etruscan literature to matter to anyone in terms of hiring.

 
At 2/29/2012 1:17 PM, Blogger JZ said...

Another huge gender gap can be found at your local elementary school. I've walked through the one in my neighborhood and I haven't seen any male role models for boys. I also haven't heard any discussions supporting affirmative action for male elementary school teachers.

 
At 2/29/2012 2:25 PM, Blogger kmg said...

Methinks,

Moreover, I hate how this nonsense is performed in the name of my entire gender and then I'm forced into it as if I asked for this.

That is because there are too few women pushing back against this.

Read The Misandry Bubble for more.

In fact, a gynocentric college campus is not even among the top 10 ways in which feminism is harming America.

At or near the top is the fact that 41% of children are born out of wedlock because of feminist subsidies for such behavior, as well as of the remaining 59% a good chunk of them will see their father expelled from the home (again, due to the feminist police state).

 
At 2/29/2012 2:53 PM, Blogger Methinks said...

Morganovich,

I like that quote. I don't think we can convince the unreasonable to be reasonable because if they could be reasoned with, they wouldn't be unreasonable in the first place.

I'll settle for denying them rent. Not surprised we came to the same conclusion :)

I don't know how to determine "too many", really. I'll settle for not subsidizing college education. Whatever number that yields will probably be pretty close to correct.

I'm not keen on subsidizing that moron starving for attention right now while majoring in "social thought" at UVA.

KMG.

That is because there are too few women pushing back against this.

Reasoning with the unreasonable is usually fruitless and nobody is going to waste time doing it - man or woan. There are more productive activities - like getting on with your life.

As it happens, there are plenty of men rocking this BS. Remember Zach?

And, of course, you never fail to come up with equally moronic idiocy from the other perspective.

I would love to see you and your conspiracy brothers throw down with a bunch of vegan feminists. I could get rich selling tickets to that show.

 
At 2/29/2012 4:34 PM, Blogger kmg said...

And, of course, you never fail to come up with equally moronic idiocy from the other perspective.

Translation : You like feminism's state-funded goodies, but don't want to face the backlash, and are attempting to distance yourself from it in a purely self-interested way.

Conspiracy? That article has hard facts and official data.

I know the article I linked was way above your head, but you would do well to grasp the facts within.

 
At 2/29/2012 4:46 PM, Blogger morganovich said...

kmg-

you couldn't throw the ball over methink's head if you used a ladder.

 
At 2/29/2012 9:01 PM, Blogger sykes.1 said...

"Despite the incredible success of women in higher education ..."

Women are ghettoized into useless BA degrees like Women's Studies, Social Work,etc. This is not success. This is grotesque failure. Women are attending girl's finishing schools and are made fit for nothing other than a life of dependency.

Men, on the other hand, are studying hard sciences and engineering, the only profitable degrees offered by colleges and universities. The declining numbers of men at college merely reflects the fact that they have abandoned the useless degrees. The real degrees are harder, so fewer men can pursue them. The dropouts, and wisely so, do something useful and profitable with their lives--like plumbing.

 
At 2/29/2012 9:31 PM, Blogger juandos said...

Actually I think Christina Hoff Summers has a better explanation and college enrollments difference just reflect today's reality: No Country for Burly Men
How feminist groups skewed the Obama stimulus plan towards women's jobs

A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men....

Apparently Obama couldn't take to much heat from the obvious male ovulator and supposed economist Randy Albelda: The macho stimulus plan

Apparently 'green jobs' aren't the only expensive jobs out there...

 
At 3/01/2012 2:01 AM, Blogger Methinks said...

From the article: "We don't want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men."

That sentence had me at "We don't want this stimulus package...". As long as there was going to be a porkulus package, the rest is unsurprising. Special interest groups were going to fight over the rents - unions and feminists among them.

In the case of stimulus, feminists are not the problem any more than earmarks are the problem with pork spending. The existence of the stimulus itself is the problem. If government creates rents, they will be sought. Like every special interest group, feminist groups just want to get their grubby mitts on the goodies.

 
At 3/01/2012 1:56 PM, Blogger juandos said...

"The existence of the stimulus itself is the problem. If government creates rents, they will be sought. Like every special interest group, feminist groups just want to get their grubby mitts on the goodies"...

That's right!

Again methinks cuts to the chase here...

Right now on the radio there is a commerical (Ag Dept. paid for?) basically asking people if they 'think' they need food assistance to call a toll free number...

Unreal!

 
At 3/01/2012 3:51 PM, Blogger Ron H. said...

juandos: "Right now on the radio there is a commerical (Ag Dept. paid for?) basically asking people if they 'think' they need food assistance to call a toll free number."

Well I need food assistance - based on my BMI I need help turning it away.

"Just say no to food."

 
At 3/02/2012 11:18 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

@Mark Perry, excellent post and timely issue. See my take on this: http://bit.ly/wyRqix I would appreciate your participation in the discussion.

 
At 3/04/2012 10:03 AM, Blogger juandos said...

"Well I need food assistance - based on my BMI I need help turning it away"...

Ahhh ron h take comfort in the thought that the whole BMI thingie is a SCAM...

Its yet another government grab for more control via a series of entitlement programs...

 
At 3/04/2012 12:35 PM, Blogger Ron H. said...

juandos: "Ahhh ron h take comfort in the thought that the whole BMI thingie is a SCAM..."

Yeah, I know. A poor choice of terms on my part. Perhaps I should have written that "based on my LWS* I need help turning it away". :)


*Large Waist Size

 
At 3/04/2012 1:30 PM, Blogger juandos said...

"Yeah, I know. A poor choice of terms on my part. Perhaps I should have written that "based on my LWS* I need help turning it away". :)"...

The secret is twinkies ...:-)

 
At 3/04/2012 5:05 PM, Blogger Ron H. said...

juandos: "The secret is twinkies ...:-)"

Those darn scientific types! Always over-analyzing things.

My test of Twinkies, as with most other things purported to be food, consists of taking a bite, and waiting to hear myself say "yum" or "yuck".

Twinkies have always been on the "yum" list, as are most other things intended to be taken by mouth, except for a tiny number of things I can count on one hand, hence my problem with LWS.

 

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