Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

a significant proportion of boys are recruited athletes, which then has an impact on school culture: academic girls, less-academic boys.

The stereotype that athletes are “less academic” is dumb and false.

Not in my experience.
--Professor

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/magazine/men-college-enrollment.html

‘There Was Definitely a Thumb on the Scale to Get Boys’
Declining male enrollment has led many colleges to adopt an unofficial policy: affirmative action for men.

According to the article, it's pervasive at the majority of colleges, since most of them wish to be within waving distance of gender parity.

Take-aways:
1. Girls overachieving in school compared to boys (a fact of life since the 1980s) actually hurts them in college admissions, since they need a better application profile to be considered on an equal footing with boys.
2. Colleges try to appeal to boys: one way is to provide more college sports, which then ensures that a significant proportion of boys are recruited athletes, which then has an impact on school culture: academic girls, less-academic boys.
3. Gender imbalance on campus counter-intuitively can trigger a scarcity dating mindset, which means that women may believe they need to accept all sorts of things they might not have accepted had the pool of available dates been larger. On other words, hook-up culture.
4. In the wider world, the implications of fewer men graduating than women is concerning as well: some people are worried about the group of males without college degrees who may be unable to earn enough to support a family, and may not find a wife or have kids, possibly leading to toxic masculinity issues.
5. Finally, the article raises the question of what our broader conversation should be surrounding privilege and who has access to college, if the real beneficiaries of affirmative action are males?

Too bad the SCOTUS said that sort it thing is illegal now

Anonymous wrote:"5. Finally, the article raises the question of what our broader conversation should be surrounding privilege and who has access to college, if the real beneficiaries of affirmative action are males?"

The NYT never addresses what the real issue is - resource hoarding of the 1%, the truly "privileged". I thought that series of articles today in the NYT was a total distraction. What we need is more equitable taxation of wealth in addition to a truly revolutionary change in which our society thinks about poor people and addressing their needs, but I'm not holding my breath for the NYT to write about that. As long as the 1% controls the conversation and baits us with internecine conflict amongst ourselves, nothing will change. Admissions at a group of selective colleges will barely move the needle.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Equity" at work. Trying to achieve "balance" instead of just going with the best candidates.

What do you do then if your student body is 80% mostly middle class, white or asian, female applicants?
I am all for an academic meritocracy, but if all colleges do this, what are the consequences on society for the next generations?
The article tries to get at this.

I understand we are in a patriarchy. It's hard to accept that we need men in college, even if they don't do as well in school as women. Why would we give them a break if they don't have the best academic profiles as a group, and if the people at the top are mostly all men anyway? But then what do you when hardly any men go on to graduate college, and take menial positions in society?

It would be a very interesting experiment, but perhaps not with the result you have in mind.

PP you're responding to. Fair points. My first inclination to answer your question was "yes, of course that's fine" but that is some food for thought. I doubt it is that skewed though. It's 55/45 or 60/40 ok? And why not try to address the problem at elementary age instead?

I actually doubt men will end up taking menial positions just because they don't go to college. There are lot of very high paying jobs that men are more likely to take than women. There was the recent thread about UPS drivers earning 6 figures. There's plumbing and contracting and electrical work. Police and Corrections may not require college. And you could also see new industries develop, like the coding explosion where many programmars were self-taught. Women can do all these jobs of course, but don't tend to go into them in high numbers.

I worry that they will try to might-makes-right bulldoze the merits of education, Joe the Plumber style. We already saw the prominence of that with the previous pres and the whole effort to stigmatize education as "elite." You have ones like Trump in it for the name (like the guy who doctored transcripts actually did any college level work?) but capitalizing on the appeal of his crude uninformed ramblings. And ones like DeSantis, Hawley and Cruz trying to divorce/bury their education to appeal to the grass roots anti ed momentum. Dude culture is already brewing. Guys foregoing higher ed will be the hops. The next era will be dominated by 24 hr beer pong on ESPN 9.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/magazine/men-college-enrollment.html

‘There Was Definitely a Thumb on the Scale to Get Boys’
Declining male enrollment has led many colleges to adopt an unofficial policy: affirmative action for men.

According to the article, it's pervasive at the majority of colleges, since most of them wish to be within waving distance of gender parity.

Take-aways:
1. Girls overachieving in school compared to boys (a fact of life since the 1980s) actually hurts them in college admissions, since they need a better application profile to be considered on an equal footing with boys.
2. Colleges try to appeal to boys: one way is to provide more college sports, which then ensures that a significant proportion of boys are recruited athletes, which then has an impact on school culture: academic girls, less-academic boys.
3. Gender imbalance on campus counter-intuitively can trigger a scarcity dating mindset, which means that women may believe they need to accept all sorts of things they might not have accepted had the pool of available dates been larger. On other words, hook-up culture.
4. In the wider world, the implications of fewer men graduating than women is concerning as well: some people are worried about the group of males without college degrees who may be unable to earn enough to support a family, and may not find a wife or have kids, possibly leading to toxic masculinity issues.
5. Finally, the article raises the question of what our broader conversation should be surrounding privilege and who has access to college, if the real beneficiaries of affirmative action are males?

Too bad the SCOTUS said that sort it thing is illegal now

No it hasn’t. SCOTUS ruled on race-based admission, but not gender. Gender discrimination has historically been reviewed under the lesser “intermediate” level, as compared to strict scrutiny for race.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Equity" at work. Trying to achieve "balance" instead of just going with the best candidates.

What do you do then if your student body is 80% mostly middle class, white or asian, female applicants?
I am all for an academic meritocracy, but if all colleges do this, what are the consequences on society for the next generations?
The article tries to get at this.

I understand we are in a patriarchy. It's hard to accept that we need men in college, even if they don't do as well in school as women. Why would we give them a break if they don't have the best academic profiles as a group, and if the people at the top are mostly all men anyway? But then what do you when hardly any men go on to graduate college, and take menial positions in society?

It would be a very interesting experiment, but perhaps not with the result you have in mind.

PP you're responding to. Fair points. My first inclination to answer your question was "yes, of course that's fine" but that is some food for thought. I doubt it is that skewed though. It's 55/45 or 60/40 ok? And why not try to address the problem at elementary age instead?

I actually doubt men will end up taking menial positions just because they don't go to college. There are lot of very high paying jobs that men are more likely to take than women. There was the recent thread about UPS drivers earning 6 figures. There's plumbing and contracting and electrical work. Police and Corrections may not require college. And you could also see new industries develop, like the coding explosion where many programmars were self-taught. Women can do all these jobs of course, but don't tend to go into them in high numbers.

I worry that they will try to might-makes-right bulldoze the merits of education, Joe the Plumber style. We already saw the prominence of that with the previous pres and the whole effort to stigmatize education as "elite." You have ones like Trump in it for the name (like the guy who doctored transcripts actually did any college level work?) but capitalizing on the appeal of his crude uninformed ramblings. And ones like DeSantis, Hawley and Cruz trying to divorce/bury their education to appeal to the grass roots anti ed momentum. Dude culture is already brewing. Guys foregoing higher ed will be the hops. The next era will be dominated by 24 hr beer pong on ESPN 9.

I don’t think men ready to give up that easily. Look what we’re doing at New College. Trying to wrest control back of the institutions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/magazine/men-college-enrollment.html

‘There Was Definitely a Thumb on the Scale to Get Boys’
Declining male enrollment has led many colleges to adopt an unofficial policy: affirmative action for men.

According to the article, it's pervasive at the majority of colleges, since most of them wish to be within waving distance of gender parity.

Take-aways:
1. Girls overachieving in school compared to boys (a fact of life since the 1980s) actually hurts them in college admissions, since they need a better application profile to be considered on an equal footing with boys.
2. Colleges try to appeal to boys: one way is to provide more college sports, which then ensures that a significant proportion of boys are recruited athletes, which then has an impact on school culture: academic girls, less-academic boys.
3. Gender imbalance on campus counter-intuitively can trigger a scarcity dating mindset, which means that women may believe they need to accept all sorts of things they might not have accepted had the pool of available dates been larger. On other words, hook-up culture.
4. In the wider world, the implications of fewer men graduating than women is concerning as well: some people are worried about the group of males without college degrees who may be unable to earn enough to support a family, and may not find a wife or have kids, possibly leading to toxic masculinity issues.
5. Finally, the article raises the question of what our broader conversation should be surrounding privilege and who has access to college, if the real beneficiaries of affirmative action are males?

Too bad the SCOTUS said that sort it thing is illegal now

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Invest in engineering, CS and business and don't have to worry about a gender imbalance. UMD is 52% male.

Do you understand what college admissions might have had to do to achieve parity?
Because I think you missed the point of the article, PP.
The gender percentages you're seeing is AFTER the sausage was made.

I skimmed it. Tulane needs to adapt. Half a$$ CS program (a second "major" is required) and only TWO (biomedical and chemical) engineering fields. They don't even have an accounting major in the business school.

Because males are only, or primarily, interested solely in CS, engineering, math and business? OK then.

Stereotyping much?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Equity" at work. Trying to achieve "balance" instead of just going with the best candidates.

What do you do then if your student body is 80% mostly middle class, white or asian, female applicants?
I am all for an academic meritocracy, but if all colleges do this, what are the consequences on society for the next generations?
The article tries to get at this.

I understand we are in a patriarchy. It's hard to accept that we need men in college, even if they don't do as well in school as women. Why would we give them a break if they don't have the best academic profiles as a group, and if the people at the top are mostly all men anyway? But then what do you when hardly any men go on to graduate college, and take menial positions in society?

It would be a very interesting experiment, but perhaps not with the result you have in mind.

PP you're responding to. Fair points. My first inclination to answer your question was "yes, of course that's fine" but that is some food for thought. I doubt it is that skewed though. It's 55/45 or 60/40 ok? And why not try to address the problem at elementary age instead?

I actually doubt men will end up taking menial positions just because they don't go to college. There are lot of very high paying jobs that men are more likely to take than women. There was the recent thread about UPS drivers earning 6 figures. There's plumbing and contracting and electrical work. Police and Corrections may not require college. And you could also see new industries develop, like the coding explosion where many programmars were self-taught. Women can do all these jobs of course, but don't tend to go into them in high numbers.

I worry that they will try to might-makes-right bulldoze the merits of education, Joe the Plumber style. We already saw the prominence of that with the previous pres and the whole effort to stigmatize education as "elite." You have ones like Trump in it for the name (like the guy who doctored transcripts actually did any college level work?) but capitalizing on the appeal of his crude uninformed ramblings. And ones like DeSantis, Hawley and Cruz trying to divorce/bury their education to appeal to the grass roots anti ed momentum. Dude culture is already brewing. Guys foregoing higher ed will be the hops. The next era will be dominated by 24 hr beer pong on ESPN 9.

Today, fewer people are going to college than in recent years. In 2021, 15.4 million students were enrolled in an undergraduate degree program. That's the lowest fall enrollment since 2006. The NSCRC estimates that even fewer undergraduates were enrolled in spring 2023, just 14.1 million students.