A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I've read the whole thread and still am not sure what the WSJ article says is the cause of this? "I just feel lost" in what way?

[Anonymous]

I just went through a major renovation/expansion, involving just about every skilled construction occupation, and every single person who worked on my house was male, bar one. The female exception was the flooring crew lead. I'm pretty sure most didn't have college degrees.

If men are disappearing from colleges, they sure aren't disappearing from skilled workforces or professional jobs or businesses. Do we have a growing class of floundering men existing on welfare and doing nothing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, I've read the whole thread and still am not sure what the WSJ article says is the cause of this? "I just feel lost" in what way?

The article cited lack of support, anti-intellectionalism, and a growing belief that a college education does not pay off. The issue raised was not decisions to forego college to work in a trade, but foregoing college with no plan. As to obstacles while in college:

Female students in the U.S. benefit from a support system established decades ago, spanning a period when women struggled to gain a foothold on college campuses. There are more than 500 women’s centers at schools nationwide. Most centers host clubs and organizations that work to help female students succeed.

Young women appear eager to take leadership roles, making up 59% of student body presidents in the 2019-20 academic year and 74% of student body vice presidents, according to W.H. “Butch” Oxendine, Jr., executive director of the American Student Government Association.

“Across all types of institutions, particularly two-year institutions, but also extending into public and private four-year institutions, women dominate student government executive boards,” Mr. Oxendine said.

Many young men are hobbled by a lack of guidance, a strain of anti-intellectualism and a growing belief that college degrees don’t pay off, said Ed Grocholski, a senior vice president at Junior Achievement USA, which works with about five million students every year to teach about career paths, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

“What I see is there is a kind of hope deficit,” Mr. Grocholski said.

Young men get little help, in part, because schools are focused on encouraging historically underrepresented students. Jerlando Jackson, department chair, Education Leadership and Policy Analysis, at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, said few campuses have been willing to spend limited funds on male underachievement that would also benefit white men, risking criticism for assisting those who have historically held the biggest educational advantages.

“As a country, we don’t have the tools yet to help white men who find themselves needing help,” Dr. Jackson said. “To be in a time when there are groups of white men that are falling through the cracks, it’s hard.”

Keith E. Smith, a mental-health counselor and men’s outreach coordinator at the University of Vermont, said that when he started working at the school in 2006 he found that men were much more likely to face consequences for the trouble they caused under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

In 2008, Mr. Smith proposed a men’s center to help male students succeed. The proposal drew criticism from women who asked, “Why would you give more resources to the most privileged group on campus,” he said.

Funding wasn’t appropriated, he said, and the center was never built.

The University of Oregon has one of the few college men’s centers, which offers help for mental and physical health. “Men don’t need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” said Kerry Frazee, director of prevention services, who works with the center. “No one can do it all by themselves.”

[Anonymous]

This whole thread perfectly illustrates the fundamental flaw of identity politics. Assigning people to groups and seeking to treat them first and foremost as a representative of "their" group is unjust.


Many members of Group X are performing poorly.

DCUM: "Who cares? Totally different members of that group are doing fine, and in the years before the current members were born benefited from XYZ."


As long as you reduce people to representatives of their group and score everything as groups you will never be able to achieve an actual fair and just society.


This is especially true when our racial categories are ridiculously broad. "Asian" captures fully 60% of the world's population. "Hispanic" captures peoples from across North America, South America, the Caribbean, and of course Europe.

White meanwhile is anyone of principally European, Russian, Middle Eastern, etc, ancestry. What exactly does a Kurd have to do with a Swede?

[Anonymous]

Meh. The pendulum swings. Let them explore their anti-intellectualism and check back in a generation.

[Anonymous]

The white men in my family made the smart decision not to waste time and money extending their adolescence by attending college.

Is this K - 16 now? College isn't for everyone.

We need universal basic income for all the women who work low paying jobs at these colleges and universities.

Women need to stop buying into the college multilevel marketing pyramid scheme. Women who dominate HR fields need to stop requiring a ridiculously over-priced college degree for entry level jobs.

We need people who are HVAC workers, welders, plumbers, electricians, home healthcare aides. Competency-based and skill-based training are better than a college degree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great! (Sarcastically) now there will be even more underpaid, in/underemployed men who feel emasculated and threatened by women and anyone who is non-white. Then they can take their realized fear of falling behind and being powerless and lash out at others and prop up people like Trump who feed their desire to feel strong and in control.

Word. Weak, weak pathetic men. How we are raising white men to expect their privilege and lash out at others when they don’t get it - rather than earn their place- is horrifying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just went through a major renovation/expansion, involving just about every skilled construction occupation, and every single person who worked on my house was male, bar one. The female exception was the flooring crew lead. I'm pretty sure most didn't have college degrees.

If men are disappearing from colleges, they sure aren't disappearing from skilled workforces or professional jobs or businesses. Do we have a growing class of floundering men existing on welfare and doing nothing?

So anyone who works a trade is on welfare? In this area trades make about 80-100k on year. In the USA only 42% of the population goes to college. Do you think 58% of the population is on welfare?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great! (Sarcastically) now there will be even more underpaid, in/underemployed men who feel emasculated and threatened by women and anyone who is non-white. Then they can take their realized fear of falling behind and being powerless and lash out at others and prop up people like Trump who feed their desire to feel strong and in control.

Word. Weak, weak pathetic men. How we are raising white men to expect their privilege and lash out at others when they don’t get it - rather than earn their place- is horrifying.

This will be bad for women. They will chase around the few “Mr bigs” who will have their pick of women. The ones not picked will be out of luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great! (Sarcastically) now there will be even more underpaid, in/underemployed men who feel emasculated and threatened by women and anyone who is non-white. Then they can take their realized fear of falling behind and being powerless and lash out at others and prop up people like Trump who feed their desire to feel strong and in control.

Word. Weak, weak pathetic men. How we are raising white men to expect their privilege and lash out at others when they don’t get it - rather than earn their place- is horrifying.

This will be bad for women. They will chase around the few “Mr bigs” who will have their pick of women. The ones not picked will be out of luck.

Hahahahha. This reminds me of the NASA plan to send all female astronaut crews on long space flights so that nobody would be having sex.

Newflash: Women don't need men for anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread perfectly illustrates the fundamental flaw of identity politics. Assigning people to groups and seeking to treat them first and foremost as a representative of "their" group is unjust.


Many members of Group X are performing poorly.

DCUM: "Who cares? Totally different members of that group are doing fine, and in the years before the current members were born benefited from XYZ."


As long as you reduce people to representatives of their group and score everything as groups you will never be able to achieve an actual fair and just society.


This is especially true when our racial categories are ridiculously broad. "Asian" captures fully 60% of the world's population. "Hispanic" captures peoples from across North America, South America, the Caribbean, and of course Europe.

White meanwhile is anyone of principally European, Russian, Middle Eastern, etc, ancestry. What exactly does a Kurd have to do with a Swede?

Right, it's not like there is an entire multi-generational institutional structure (including real estate laws, insurance company practices, voting restrictions, entrenched power structures hostile to minorities, racist policing, etc.) explicitly designed to protect the economic interests of white me. Oh, wait....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread perfectly illustrates the fundamental flaw of identity politics. Assigning people to groups and seeking to treat them first and foremost as a representative of "their" group is unjust.


Many members of Group X are performing poorly.

DCUM: "Who cares? Totally different members of that group are doing fine, and in the years before the current members were born benefited from XYZ."


As long as you reduce people to representatives of their group and score everything as groups you will never be able to achieve an actual fair and just society.


This is especially true when our racial categories are ridiculously broad. "Asian" captures fully 60% of the world's population. "Hispanic" captures peoples from across North America, South America, the Caribbean, and of course Europe.

White meanwhile is anyone of principally European, Russian, Middle Eastern, etc, ancestry. What exactly does a Kurd have to do with a Swede?

Right, it's not like there is an entire multi-generational institutional structure (including real estate laws, insurance company practices, voting restrictions, entrenched power structures hostile to minorities, racist policing, etc.) explicitly designed to protect the economic interests of white me. Oh, wait....

There is but a lot of this current generation of white men aren't benefitting from it. They believe they should be better off than they are but are putting no effort into improving themselves. They just sit around and complain but do nothing to get ahead. They just expect it should magically happen to them because it is their birthright. They don't realize they need to work to get ahead.

Whose fault is it? I do blame the men and their parents for not teaching them they need to work for success.But we as a society need to start programs (like the men's centers mentioned above) to help these men succeed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yeah, as opposed to all of those female baby factories that pop out kids like candy in order to collect welfare checks. Pure insanity.

The sheer quantity of misandry that gets spewed on DCUM is truly shocking. Women here talk about men like whites used to talk about minorities in 1880s. It is vile and disgusting hate speech. I wouldn't even doubt if the misandrists are teachers or professors; no wonder men have an aversion to the classroom when the women in the classroom in charge of teach and grading have a profound level of hate in their hearts for half the classroom simply because they are men. Hate against men and fat people are pretty much the only thing that's tolerated these days. It's amazing that the misandrists teaching on college campuses, in our local schools, or who are out in the business world are allowed to keep their jobs. Literally just swap out whatever they write for men, but replace it with 'women' or 'woman', and you'd get immediately cancelled or #metoo -ed.

+1. 30 plus years and billions and billions of resources and propaganda to get more women into cushy, six-figure, office-setting law, tech and management because females are so underrepresented. But for some strange reason nobody cares that men are so over-represented in back-breaking hard labor, janitorial services, trash collection, plumbing, landscaping, auto repair, roofing, oil rigs, etc.

You boys would get a lot farther if you quit the name calling and fact-free rants. As a man in my 50s, I was raised to believe that being a man meant not whining. Maybe you could give that a try? I get that you're mad that you now have to compete with the ladies and you no longer get a free ride because of your gender, but instead of whining on DCUM, suck it up and go look for a better job or build some skills. I really hate the weak-ass man-babies who whine about "misandry." You are an embarrassment to our gender.

Sure cat lady, whatever you say. No one is fooled by you pretending to be a man. But in the event you even are a man, we know who wears the pants in your house.

LOL. This is pretty weak trolling. Can you come up with something from this century?

Of course, the truth is that you already know I'm a man, and you know exactly how much contempt real men have for whiners like you. Why? Because we have jobs, careers and families. We are raising sons and daughters that are happy, play sports, and succeed in school. We don't make excuses and whine, we work and we fulfill our responsibilities. We don't need to keep women (or minorities, or gay people) down in order to get ahead -- we get ahead on our own. We don't need to hide in our basements whining about women or playing with guns or whatever in order to feel like real men because we are living the lives of real men every day.

You should try it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread perfectly illustrates the fundamental flaw of identity politics. Assigning people to groups and seeking to treat them first and foremost as a representative of "their" group is unjust.


Many members of Group X are performing poorly.

DCUM: "Who cares? Totally different members of that group are doing fine, and in the years before the current members were born benefited from XYZ."


As long as you reduce people to representatives of their group and score everything as groups you will never be able to achieve an actual fair and just society.


This is especially true when our racial categories are ridiculously broad. "Asian" captures fully 60% of the world's population. "Hispanic" captures peoples from across North America, South America, the Caribbean, and of course Europe.

White meanwhile is anyone of principally European, Russian, Middle Eastern, etc, ancestry. What exactly does a Kurd have to do with a Swede?

Right, it's not like there is an entire multi-generational institutional structure (including real estate laws, insurance company practices, voting restrictions, entrenched power structures hostile to minorities, racist policing, etc.) explicitly designed to protect the economic interests of white me. Oh, wait....

There is but a lot of this current generation of white men aren't benefitting from it. They believe they should be better off than they are but are putting no effort into improving themselves. They just sit around and complain but do nothing to get ahead. They just expect it should magically happen to them because it is their birthright. They don't realize they need to work to get ahead.

Whose fault is it? I do blame the men and their parents for not teaching them they need to work for success.But we as a society need to start programs (like the men's centers mentioned above) to help these men succeed.

You are projecting. There are plenty of men having success. Open your eyes and look around. All we hear all day long is how white women and poc are not in the top jobs. Now you are saying oh no this is wrong white men are no longer in power…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great! (Sarcastically) now there will be even more underpaid, in/underemployed men who feel emasculated and threatened by women and anyone who is non-white. Then they can take their realized fear of falling behind and being powerless and lash out at others and prop up people like Trump who feed their desire to feel strong and in control.

Word. Weak, weak pathetic men. How we are raising white men to expect their privilege and lash out at others when they don’t get it - rather than earn their place- is horrifying.

This will be bad for women. They will chase around the few “Mr bigs” who will have their pick of women. The ones not picked will be out of luck.

Hahahahha. This reminds me of the NASA plan to send all female astronaut crews on long space flights so that nobody would be having sex.

Newflash: Women don't need men for anything.

Why are you posting on this thread? It’s about men. Seems like you are desperate to escape your all female world. I think you are totally dependent on a man and secretly hopes he fails so you can stick the knife in him( if it makes you unhappy life worst). I guess that is winning to you.