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

[Cooked Crack]

Quote

Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.

 

At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline, the Journal analysis found.

 

This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

 

In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.

Quote

The gender enrollment disparity among nonprofit colleges is widest at private four-year schools, where the proportion of women during the 2020-21 school year grew to an average of 61%, a record high, Clearinghouse data show. Some of the schools extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants, trying to get a closer balance of men and women.

 

“Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?”

 

Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter.

 

“It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said.

Quote

Men dominate top positions in industry, finance, politics and entertainment. They also hold a majority of tenured faculty positions and run most U.S. college campuses. Yet female college students are running laps around their male counterparts.

 

The University of Vermont is typical. The school president is a man and so are nearly two-thirds of the campus trustees. Women made up about 80% of honors graduates last year in the colleges of arts and sciences.

 

One student from nearly every high school in Vermont is nominated for a significant scholarship at the campus every year. Most of them are girls, said Jay Jacobs, the university’s provost for enrollment management. It isn’t by design. “We want more men in our pipeline,” Dr. Jacobs said, but boys graduate from high school and enroll in college at lower rates than girls, both in Vermont and nationwide.

 

The young men who enroll lag behind. Among University of Vermont undergraduates, about 55% of male students graduate in four years compared with 70% of women. “I see a lot of guys that are here for four years to drink beer, smoke weed, hang out and get a degree,” said Luke Weiss, a civil engineering student and fraternity president of Pi Kappa Alpha at the campus.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-university-fall-higher-education-men-women-enrollment-admissions-back-to-school-11630948233?st=iafw9ppsg89225v&reflink=desktopwebshare_twitter

Going to be wild when a conservative court gives the okay to affirmative action cause men are in jeopardy.

[China]

Yeah, but as a college aged guy, I'd love the 6-4 girl to guy ratio.

[Corcaigh]

This isn't new. In 2007 the Dean of Admissions at William and Mary (my daughter's alma mater) said to the Washington Post that preferentially admitting men was important because it's "he College of William and Mary, not the College of Mary and Mary" and that colleges "that market themselves as coed, and believe that the pedagogical experiences they provide rely in part on a coed student body, have a legitimate interest in enrolling a class that is not disproportionately male or female"

[PokerPacker]

2 hours ago, China said:

Yeah, but as a college aged guy, I'd love the 6-4 girl to guy ratio.

Don't go into electrical engineering if that's what you're after.  Trust me.

[Forehead]

3 hours ago, China said:

Yeah, but as a college aged guy, I'd love the 6-4 girl to guy ratio.

 

It was like that at the college I went to.  I wasn't complaining.

[zCommander]

Why go to college when you can go online and take a course in cybersecurity, or computer classes to get an IT degree. There are a lot of other specialized education available and you don't have to go to college and take bio 101 or chem 101 that has nothing to do with what you are trying to do. it is now easier than before to get ahead in your choice of career by spending less. A lot of companies will hire you based on your experience that can equal a college degree instead. 

[RansomthePasserby]

18 minutes ago, zskins said:

Why go to college when you can go online and take a course in cybersecurity, or computer classes to get an IT degree. There are a lot of other specialized education available and you don't have to go to college and take bio 101 or chem 101 that has nothing to do with what you are trying to do. it is now easier than before to get ahead in your choice of career by spending less. A lot of companies will hire you based on your experience that can equal a college degree instead. 

Yeah, not only that, but a college degree doesn’t necessarily equal a high paying job. Whether it’s getting hired based on experience or starting your own company,  I think a lot of guys are looking at alternatives to the traditional college route because the cost/benefit ratio of definite debt vs. potential salary just isn’t appealing anymore for many/most degrees.

 

It will be interesting to see how male vs. female debt, wealth, and income plays out over the next few decades. 

[Destino]

This has been known about for some time but anytime I saw a discussion come up publicly the response was to blather on about how women still lag behind in certain programs or even calling it men’s rights.  I think a lot of people just can’t get beyond their own bias and accept that yesterday’s problems may not be today’s problems.  Things change.  
 

Education systems have to start doing more to help men and boys succeed.  Im sure that will go over well.  

[RansomthePasserby]

6 hours ago, Destino said:

Education systems have to start doing more to help men and boys succeed.  Im sure that will go over well.  

Our culture has a scarcity “us vs. them” mindset. If men are receiving support and resources, then it somehow must be depriving women. Which sends the message to men that they’re not worth the investment compared to women. Why would men want to take on backbreaking debt to go where they’re not wanted?

[tshile]

7 hours ago, Destino said:

I think a lot of people just can’t get their own bias and accept that yesterday’s problems may not be today’s problems.  Things change.  

I would add that they just don’t see it as a problem. 
 

as someone who has always had a problem with doing things this way, I will enjoy watching some people twist into a pretzel to walk away from how important diversity is so they can be against something that favors men 😂 

 

I also find it funny how often people have no respect for time. They think everything should, and can, be fixed immediately. Even in this article they’re complaining about the lack of women in higher up roles. Which makes sense. It takes a while for this kind of think to get up to those levels. Fear not, women will run that one day too. It just takes time. 
 

(I’ve been saying for a while women will run this country eventually. The data shows they’re better at tons of important things - leadership, risk assessment, financial things (which mostly comes from their better risk assessment) etc)

[Captain Wiggles]

Unpossible. My MAGA neighbor keeps saying the biggest problem in America is everyone wants to go to college. 🤪

 

Weird too cuz his spacebook page lists like four college/universities he's attended. 🤭

[Jabbyrwock]

8 hours ago, Destino said:

Education systems have to start doing more to help men and boys succeed.

 

I think there is more than just the education system in this statistic.  Fatherhood, in general, is completely undervalued and under-encouraged in our society, and has been on a general decline over the past century, thought recently there has been some acknowledgement of the problem and a bit of recovery.  Wanna help boys succeed?  Strong father figures playing an active role in their sons lives instilling life lessons is important.  For me, my mother taught the nuts and bolts that formed the basis of my education, to be sure, but responsibility to my loved ones and society, drive, focus and self-competitiveness were driven home by my father...usually by him being a walking living example.

 

Don't want to divert attention from the education system and such...just want to make sure we don't consider the problem in a vacuum.

[PleaseBlitz]

A college graduation gap favoring women is likely a precondition to eliminating the wage gap favoring men.  Women still only make about 82 cents for each dollar earned by men.  

[tshile]

51 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

A college graduation gap favoring women is likely a precondition to eliminating the wage gap favoring men.  Women still only make about 82 cents for each dollar earned by men.  

I may be wrong, been a while, but last time i checked (I think) that was a garbage statistic using all women (meaning women over 40 who’s wage gap has a strong tie to the fact they have been working for a long time before this was a thing) including those that take extended leaves from work (most commonly to raise children)

 

i though if you looked at modern women, that didn’t take extended leaves of a sense, it was something like 96 cents on the dollar. 
 

in fact in the tech world I thought I read recently women are making more than men for the same job (in the companies surveyed, which I’m sure it was like 5 if the top tech companies or something)

 

(side note: I’ve definitely come across situations where it’s a woman with the same job title as me, and I know I make much more, but I also run circles around them)

(And I’d be ok if they made more when they were running circles around me)

(ppps: comparing just job title and salary is stupid, I don’t care which side of what argument you’re trying to argue)

Edited September 7, 2021 by tshile

[Destino]

1 hour ago, PleaseBlitz said:

A college graduation gap favoring women is likely a precondition to eliminating the wage gap favoring men.  Women still only make about 82 cents for each dollar earned by men.  

sabotaging children is a lousy way to try to improve society.
 

 

[PleaseBlitz]

51 minutes ago, Destino said:

sabotaging children is a lousy way to try to improve society.
 

 

 

Who is being sabotaged?  From the way I read the article, men were being advantaged ("Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,”) and still lagging behind.

 

@tshile, I just pulled the figure from google.  Happy to look at other figures if you have a link.  Certainly, there are a million factors that go into it (including more commonly taking extended leave related to parenting, which always seems to fall on the mother and not the father (a discussion for a different time)), but I'm just not seeing a huge problem with a 60/40 split when (1) college admissions and employment/compensation prospects have favored men much more than that for so long unless there is some underlying institutionalized issue that makes it harder for men in general to compete with women and (2) the reason more women are being accepted because they have better academic qualifications (and from the quote I just put above, it seems the opposite may be true).  This is not a diversity issue; it's not like if you go to a school that is 40% men, you aren't going to be exposed to enough men.  

Edited September 7, 2021 by PleaseBlitz

[Destino]

1 hour ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

Who is being sabotaged?  From the way I read the article, men were being advantaged ("Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,”) and still lagging behind.

 

You don’t find it odd that in the era where we’ve accepted equity over equality as a measure of efficacy and progress, to encounter an argument that a group is being advantaged despite results? 
 

What I’m saying is seeing this failure and doing nothing about it is knowingly failing boys.  I call that sabotage.

[PleaseBlitz]

12 minutes ago, Destino said:

You don’t find it odd that in the era where we’ve accepted equity over equality as a measure of efficacy and progress, to encounter an argument that a group is being advantaged despite results? 
 

What I’m saying is seeing this failure and doing nothing about it is knowingly failing boys.  I call that sabotage.

 

Yes, I do find that odd (see rest of my post).  I guess I just think that sometimes letting someone fail is helping them.  Failure and disappointment are top-notch teachers of lessons.  

[No Excuses]

It’s definitely a problem but the research on why this is happening isn’t very good or comprehensive. It’s tough to come up with solutions when you can’t pin point the root causes.

 

But it’s usually not good for society when a decent % of it’s men are aimless, low in self-esteem and have too much free time on their hands. 

Edited September 7, 2021 by No Excuses

[PleaseBlitz]

40 minutes ago, No Excuses said:

It’s definitely a problem but the research on why this is happening isn’t very good or comprehensive. It’s tough to come up with solutions when you can’t pin point the root causes.

 

But it’s usually not good for society when a decent % of it’s men are aimless, low in self-esteem and have too much free time on their hands. 

 

Agree with your conclusion completely, but not sure not going to college = aimless, low self esteem and having too much free time.  I also know quite a few people that went to undergrad and law school who are all of those things (and have $250k in debt to boot).  A good argument could be made that college is (1) not for everyone and (2) not necessarily a slam-dunk decision from a cost-benefit perspective, especially if your work ethic is subpar.  In other words, I think if you are aimless and low in self-esteem to start with, college may not be the solution you need.  

[Die Hard]

1 hour ago, PleaseBlitz said:

Failure and disappointment are top-notch teachers of lessons.  

Pain (negative reinforcement) is incredibly effective. It also has destructive qualities/potential as well. And I’m not sure if it’s the ideal approach.

 

But I certainly know it’s not the only strategy. There are a lot of better choices.

[No Excuses]

29 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

In other words, I think if you are aimless and low in self-esteem to start with, college may not be the solution you need.  

Agreed, college isn’t going to fix your aimlessness or self-esteem issues, especially if you’re developing them in your youth. 

 

We should be trying to address why men are losing a drive for higher educational and career achievement before its time to apply for college. There’s just no getting around the fact that college-educated men and women in the US have more stable families and earn significantly more over their lifetimes. We should be doing more to nudge youth towards a higher education path.
 

I really don’t like giving young people the advice that college is not for everyone. We should be making it more achievable and accessible to as many people as we can, which we aren’t remotely doing a good job of currently. Partially this is related to bringing down costs, but I do think proper guidance and messaging from adults is sorely lacking as well. 

[RansomthePasserby]

1 hour ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

Yes, I do find that odd (see rest of my post).  I guess I just think that sometimes letting someone fail is helping them.  Failure and disappointment are top-notch teachers of lessons.  

Sure, that makes sense, especially on an individual level. 60/40 is a big gap, so the problem seems to be systemic, it’s not just a few under-performers who need to be fought a lesson. I think figuring out why a significant group of men are deciding not to go to college is important. Are they failures and is there something wrong with them? Or is something wrong with the education system? Or Is it actually failure… or are the men seeing something that gives them an incentive to stay away from higher education and pursue their ambitions elsewhere, and is that a good thing for them and for society as a whole?

[PleaseBlitz]

1 minute ago, No Excuses said:

Agreed, college isn’t going to fix your aimlessness or self-esteem issues, especially if you’re developing them in your youth. 

 

We should be trying to address why men are losing a drive for higher educational and career achievement before its time to apply for college. There’s just no getting around the fact that college-educated men and women in the US have more stable families and earn significantly more over their lifetimes. We should be doing more to nudge youth towards a higher education path.
 

I really don’t like giving young people the advice that college is not for everyone. We should be making it more achievable and accessible to as many people as we can, which we aren’t remotely doing a good job of currently. Partially this is related to bringing down costs, but I do think proper guidance and messaging from adults is sorely lacking as well. 

 

I agree with all of that, and while on a macro level, college-educated people earn more money over their lifetimes, there is a huge opportunity cost that comes with it and quite a bit of downside risk given the soaring costs of school and the broken student lending system and the fact that so many people end up in college simply due to inertia and don't want to be there and just drink and smoke weed and play video games.  There is nothing wrong with any of that, but you can do it without college.  

 

I don't think we should tell people they have to go to college, I think we should tell people they need to figure out who they want to be when they grow up and then make a plan to achieve that.  And i don't mean they need to pick a specific career, but if you see yourself working with your hands and not your brain, or if you have a particular passion, then follow it.   If you are aimless and have no clue, then do something to figure your **** out before you commit to spending $100,000+ on an education that you may not need, want or ever use.   Once you figure your **** out, then college may be a requirement for that, or something else may be a requirement for that.  Or nothing may be a requirement for that in which case 4 years of college would be a waste of time and money.  

[Captain Wiggles]

21 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

 the fact that so many people end up in college simply due to inertia and don't want to be there and just drink and smoke weed and play video games.