Reply to Why aren’t males attending college?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Why aren’t males attending college?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Take this out if the DCUM realm.

Look at Western Illinois University, profiled in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago.

Enrollment has plunged from 10,000 to 5000 in the last five years.

Their former director of enrollment management publicly stated that the school was suffering from a lack of white males and underrepresented minorities. The latter understandable in Macon, Illinois, the former really concerning.

Her response? Admit a significant number of students from low performing Illinois high schools with grade points of 2.25 to 2.75. Lower the grade point average to retain a Western Commitment scholarship to 2.0. Permit students with a first semester gpa 0.0 to continue. And double the financial aid pool to attract these students. The result? A 52 percent retention rate after the first year. The enrollment manager was fired - my guess is that she was doing what she was instructed to do.

Illinois schools and indeed the entire suffer from huge pension obligations - 43 percent of the budget goes towards pension obligations - leaving not much for instruction or research. With those pensions Illinois is at the top of the list in per capita public university spending; without them they are still in the top 5.

I mention all of this because the white male student shortage stands out. I am from Illinois, and my high school was very good and did not send many to the directional schools. But if you wanted a criminal justice degree and excellent job placement in law enforcement, Western was the place to go. And yes, that program - their best and largest in the school - attracted many white males. I think the challenge is males in general however.

This is a complicated subject and the escalating costs of a college education is not an easy subject to unpack. But WIU may not exist in five years - think of a Radford going poof - and Illinois public university enrollment has plunged from 380,000 in 2011 to 260,000 today and experts think it will soon head to 200,000. Since UIUC and UIC will likely continue to thrive, this spells massive retrenchment for these other schools.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics