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

[TradeTheBeal!]

In a technologically advanced society, where the life expectancy is high, it is perfectly understandable that we would transition to a feminine intellectual advantage.  Never ever been a time in human history before where there’s more 40YO+ women with money and education..and health.  And it is good…especially for the young.

 

It’s almost time to bury male-dominated culture forever.  Except for guitar playing.

 

[tshile]

@bearrock

i would say that the history of the genders is pretty well understood among the people here discussing these things. 
 

I would also say that maybe it would be worth it to figure out why the numbers are changing, instead of making it yet another item on the long list of “men are bad, duh” 
 

I’m against changing the system to advantage a group because their representation doesn’t suite your desires. It’s just an attempt to take a shortcut to your desired outcome. 
 

but I’m for looking at why a group is over/under represented. 
 

I don’t find the constant need to acknowledge the fact that throughout history women were disadvantaged, a particularly intelligent contribution at this point. 
 

(unless you were in a setting where the information is not known)

 

but yeah. Maybe they just play too many video games. 
 

stupid males. We can consider this a small price for them to pay for the sins they had nothing to do with. 

Edited September 9, 2021 by tshile

[@DCGoldPants]

28 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:

Stating that a ‘generation of men is giving up on college’ seems a bit of a stretch.

 

65% graduation rate for women versus 59% for men across all types of US colleges, which I don’t think is trending down.
 

Is participation by men lower because they are finding vocational careers, or are they struggling to find college places because women are taking more spots.

🤷‍♂️ I graduation a few decades ago and just decided to go back for an M.S. More of challenge that I can be a better student than I was as an undergrad.

 

If the point to the OP was that traditional college isn't for everyone. Yeah. I've got nothing but respect for people who become masters in other vocations. If anything, they are undervalued imo. 

[tshile]

35 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:

Stating that a ‘generation of men is giving up on college’ seems a bit of a stretch.

 

65% graduation rate for women versus 59% for men across all types of US colleges, which I don’t think is trending down.

Did you look at the graphs?

 

women are 49% of the college age population. Yet the numbers are quite a bit apart for enrollment and applications, not just graduation rates. L

 

We’ve spent a hell of a lot of time over the last 2 decades preaching the importance of equal representation. 
 

are we now saying it doesn’t matter? So does that mean it doesn’t matter for anything? Can we remove quotas?

 

or does it only not matter when the demo affected isn’t one you care about?

 

(I agree with you on the question of vocational schools, etc)

[NoCalMike]

I do wonder if women being higher educated is making relationships less appealing to them because it seemed like in the past when a committed relationship took place it was a lot more on the female to give up any semblance of what life was like before the relationship, especially if marriage & kids were involved. 

 

I also wish we had more on the job training/schooling/certifying going on.  When you look up listings for what is considered "entry level" these days, I start thinking I'm either crazy or the definition of entry level has changed in the last 30 years.   My distrust of large corporations is reaching the point where I am starting to think they purposely are listing these jobs as entry level in order to set a way stunted starting salary.   I have first hand experience with a large insurance company basically start switching job titles and descriptions in order to justify bigger workloads without any significant compensation difference. I am sure that is industry wide too. 

[Corcaigh]

13 minutes ago, tshile said:

Did you look at the graphs?

 

Of course I didn’t. I’m a dude who gave up on college decades ago.

[bearrock]

18 minutes ago, tshile said:

@bearrock

i would say that the history of the genders is pretty well understood among the people here discussing these things. 
 

I would also say that maybe it would be worth it to figure out why the numbers are changing, instead of making it yet another item on the long list of “men are bad, duh” 
 

 

I think we are all in agreement that the underlying reason is important.  But since we know there's no historical adversity against men at play here, unless there's something in the present that is wrongfully causing the underrepresentation, the mere fact that men are underrepresented is not sufficient to justify the position that something is wrong and something needs to be fixed. 

 

It's pure meritocracy where history of generations past is not adversely effecting the presently adversely effected group.  That's happening entirely out of their own achievement or lack thereof.  That's not the same as saying "men are bad" anymore than saying that I don't deserve to play in the NFL due to my atrocious 40 time is somehow saying I'm a bad person.

 

Quote

I don’t find the constant need to acknowledge the fact that throughout history women were disadvantaged, a particularly intelligent contribution at this point. 

(unless you were in a setting where the information is not known)

 

That's in response to you conflating men/women with other under/over representation due to systemic problems.  You tried to raise how male underrepresentation is not raising the concern of systemic problems underlying the issue, but given the history of the male/female dichotomy, what reason do we have to suspect a systemic problem against men to begin with?

 

Quote

but yeah. Maybe they just play too many video games. 

stupid males. We can consider this a small price for them to pay for the sins they had nothing to do with. 

 

They have something to do with it.  They are apparently less qualified then women for college.  Unless there's some historical or external factor that is causing the disparity, that's a problem entirely of their own making.

[tshile]

6 minutes ago, bearrock said:

That's in response to you conflating men/women with other under/over representation due to systemic problems.  You tried to raise how male underrepresentation is not raising the concern of systemic problems underlying the issue, but given the history of the male/female dichotomy, what reason do we have to suspect a systemic problem against men to begin with?

 

 

no, what I’m saying is that the same people preaching diversity and equal representation, are seeing a situation of significantly unequal representation and diversity, and saying (seemingly without understanding the actual causes) that it doesn’t matter and it must be video games. 
 

sorry. Not logically consistent. Equal representation and diversity either matter, or they don’t. I honestly don’t care which one you pick, but be consistent. 

 

 

6 minutes ago, bearrock said:

 

They have something to do with it.  They are apparently less qualified then women for college.  Unless there's some historical or external factor that is causing the disparity, that's a problem entirely of their own making.

“they are apparently less qualified than …” is basically the same kinda trope people used when the issue was with women, or minorities classes. 
 

Now it’s ok to assume? Hmmm….

 

you don’t consider massive culture shifts in many ways historic or external factors? You don’t consider things like affirmative action, metoo, and a desire to make it public that you’re focusing on diversity and such historic or external factors? Come on. 
 

(I do not think something being an external factor that causes an undesirable result is, by default, a bad thing. I don’t want to undo some of the things I listed even if they are a cause of this somehow. Just want to be clear on that. )
 

and maybe those changes have nothing to do with it. If someone has data/sound argument, I’m happy to accept it

 

all that said this is, if I had to pick one or the other, this is actually a nice thing to find out for me personally. I’m not at all upset yo find out males are now receiving a boost in higher education admission because they’re now underrepresented. If I decide to go back to grad school that’s a good thing for me. It’s a good thing for my son. May hurt my daughter, we’ll see, but for right now I’m assuming she’ll be just fine. 

my only frustration, and it’s minor cause I’m reality I don’t give a ****, is that the type of people that played a huge role in how ive changed over the last decade, how I analyze things, how I prioritize things, and how I try to rise above only caring about what’s good for me (which honesty isn’t very rewarding cause as soon as I’m on a side that may need some help those people literally say “oh you can afford it”, or “oh you’ve had such an easy life, whine some more”) have all the sudden decided they don’t care about equal representation and diversity 

 

calls into question their stated motives over the years. 
 

it’s also possible men have figured out college isnt for everyone quicker than women (what? I don’t know) and what we’re really seeing is the start of a general decline in people going to college. And soon enough that trend will hit women, the numbers will even back out, and the real story is a general decline in people going to college 🤷‍♂️ 

[bearrock]

13 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

no, what I’m saying is that the same people preaching diversity and equal representation, are seeing a situation of significantly unequal representation and diversity, and saying (seemingly without understanding the actual causes) that it doesn’t matter and it must be video games. 
 

sorry. Not logically consistent. Equal representation and diversity either matter, or they don’t. I honestly don’t care which one you pick, but be consistent. 

 

It's hard for anyone to carry the banner for every spectrum and flavor of diversity and equal (I would rather use fair) representation.  But none (unless there's a extremely small minority I'm missing) of that has been about some kind of a quota.  

 

Every uneven representation amongst groups give pause.  When it's underrepresentation of a historically disadvantaged group, one wonders, often correctly so, whether the historical discrimination is having a carryover effect.  That requires correction.  But when underrepresentation happens without history attached to it, then there's no reason to suspect the carryover effect.  Now that doesn't mean that there couldn't be some other present day effect.  And everyone writing in this thread acknowledged the importance of getting to the bottom of why and some posited theories on why that may be.  But that's different from zeroing to "well, the men are getting wronged here".  Maybe, maybe not.  But at least there's no reason suspect an historical effect, which would of course be unjust.  Then we've struck at least one very common source of unjust factor that requires societal correction. 

 

Quote

“they are apparently less qualified than …” is basically the same kinda trope people used when the issue was with women, or minorities classes. 
 

 

Someone getting a lower GPA or SAT score is objectively less qualified, at least as the colleges have apparently deemed it.  What matters is how that lower qualification came to be.  Was it likely due to some unjust historical of societal factors or was it due to the individual's achievement?  One requires societal correction, the other doesn't.  I don't get to blame the NFL for keeping me out for my inability to beat press coverage.

 

Quote

Now it’s ok to assume? Hmmm….

you don’t consider massive culture shifts in many ways historic or external factors? You don’t consider things like affirmative action, metoo, and a desire to make it public that you’re focusing on diversity and such historic or external factors? Come on. 

(I do not think something being an external factor that causes an undesirable result is, by default, a bad thing. I don’t want to undo some of the things I listed even if they are a cause of this somehow. Just want to be clear on that. )

 

If affirmative action favoring women was skewing male/female admission ratio to 60/40, that's a problem.  I've said precisely that in my first post.  But it's not.  Apparently admission process is favoring men.  So we know that's not the issue.

 

Not sure what metoo does to dwindle male admission, but if that's the reason, I'm not sure what society can do about it.  I would guess nothing.  Same with focus on diversity.  Is this generation of men so fragile that the mere mention of a diverse society shun them away from colleges?  Come on, surely you can do better than that.

 

Quote

my only frustration, and it’s minor cause I’m reality I don’t give a ****, is that the type of people that played a huge role in how ive changed over the last decade, how I analyze things, how I prioritize things, and how I try to rise above only caring about what’s good for me (which honesty isn’t very rewarding cause as soon as I’m on a side that may need some help those people literally say “oh you can afford it”, or “oh you’ve had such an easy life, whine some more”) have all the sudden decided they don’t care about equal representation and diversity 

calls into question their stated motives over the years. 

 

I don't know who has influenced your thinking over the years, so I can't speak to their motive.  But if you think equal representation and diversity is some dogmatic adherence to outcome and quota or some altruistic benevolence by the privileged, I think you've completely missed the point. 

 

It's about doing the right thing.  Ensuring diversity and greater opportunity and access for people who've unjustly bore the brunt of past and present discrimination is doing the right thing.  If men are not getting into college due to some unjust factors, correcting that is the right thing too.  But if more women are earning their admission into college then men fair and square, tipping the scales to favor men in that scenario would be the wrong thing.  Sometimes the right thing may favor you, sometimes not.  Personal benefit shouldn't factor in the evaluation.

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, tshile said:

 

no, what I’m saying is that the same people preaching diversity and equal representation, are seeing a situation of significantly unequal representation and diversity, and saying (seemingly without understanding the actual causes) that it doesn’t matter and it must be video games. 
 

sorry. Not logically consistent. Equal representation and diversity either matter, or they don’t. I honestly don’t care which one you pick, but be consistent. 

 

Colleges are saying it is important, which is why the are putting their thumb on the scales to favor men.  I was at a faculty meeting in the spring where they were going over the enrollment numbers.  The % of men was lower than our "target", and somebody (a man) asked, isn't that number low.

 

And the answer was, yes, we know it, we're looking into it, and as long as it is a one year thing we aren't going to change things, but if it repeats things will change (again) to address it.

 

(As part of that, the numbers don't look too bad in terms of percent because there is a willingness to change things to continue to bring in males.  Colleges know that the number of well qualified (equal to females) are falling and are absolutely worried about it.  And this isn't exactly new:

 

economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Workshops-Seminars/Labor-Public/anderson-010209.pdf

 

(from 2000))

 

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by PeterMP

[tshile]

I honestly think I’ve outlived my usefulness in this conversation. But real quick. 

8 minutes ago, bearrock said:

 

Someone getting a lower GPA or SAT score is objectively less qualified, at least as the colleges have apparently deemed it. 
 

I can’t find it right now. But I listened to an npr podcast (probably hidden brain?) that covered a study on how much influences a score for students. There’s a lot outside of actual ability to answer the questions. So I have a problem with this mindset. 

 

8 minutes ago, bearrock said:

 

Not sure what metoo does to dwindle male admission,

 

I was just citing it as an example of historic external forces. At least I certainly see it as one. A good one. 

[Ball Security]

It’s fairly obvious, after reading this thread, that girls go to Jupiter to get more stupider.  And boys go to Mars to eat more candy bars.

[bearrock]

28 minutes ago, tshile said:

I honestly think I’ve outlived my usefulness in this conversation. 

 

Well, if we've learned anything in this thread, I think it's that we men are quickly outliving our usefulness except as boy toys.  😂

 

Quote

I can’t find it right now. But I listened to an npr podcast (probably hidden brain?) that covered a study on how much influences a score for students. There’s a lot outside of actual ability to answer the questions. So I have a problem with this mindset. 

 

Totally agree.  

[skinsmarydu]

2 hours ago, bearrock said:

 

Well, if we've learned anything in this thread, I think it's that we men are quickly outliving our usefulness except as boy toys.  😂

 

 

Totally agree.  

I do too.  

[RansomthePasserby]

10 hours ago, tshile said:

I was just citing it as an example of historic external forces. At least I certainly see it as one. A good one. 

Another historical external force could be that since men are typically the resource provider in a traditional long term relationship (I.e., marriage with children), becoming more attractive to women as a family provider is one of the major motivations for men to advance in their education, careers, and status.  Now that women are more focused on building their own careers and less focused on marriage and children than they were in the past, perhaps men aren’t as incentivized to invest time and effort into building their status as a family provider.

 

Add on distractions (video games, porn, etc.), the high cost of tuition, the focus on diversity, metoo, “the future is female”, etc., and maybe many men are thinking why bother building long term potential?

[Riggo-toni]

15 hours ago, TryTheBeal! said:

It’s almost time to bury male-dominated culture forever.  Except for guitar playing.

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by Riggo-toni

[tshile]

2 hours ago, RansomthePasserby said:

maybe many men are thinking why bother building long term potential?

Or maybe “why build it this way”

just trying to stay away from the notion that choosing not to go to school is choosing to not build towards the long term. There are other options people can legitimate pursue other than school.

[purbeast]

RE:  Video games...

 

Totally anecdotal, but I played A LOT of video games growing up.  My brother and sister always made fun of me for doing so.  Then I got into piracy in the mid/late 90's and modded my Playstation and started to get games for free, trading them in the snail mail.  At one point I had over 1300 Playstation games.

 

I played in the arcades all the time too.  Every Saturday I wanted to go to Putt Putt in Rockville to play arcades.  I'd go to arcades in the mall.  My dad lived on the Eastern shore and there was a family run arcade and I became super friendly with them and they would let me play for free.

 

But doing all of this gaming is what led me to my field - Computer Science.

 

I wanted to make video games because I liked playing them so much.

 

Then all through college, gaming all the time both online on PC and Xbox Live, and taking a game development course in my upper level, I realized that making games wasn't exactly what I wanted to do.  It was just different than I expected, and I found out how competitive it is in that field and the pay wasn't much.

 

Needless to say, I graduated after 5 years in 2004, and now a days I make WWWWAAAAYYYYY more money than my siblings who also have college degrees.  One of them doesn't use his degree at all, and my sister does but just doesn't make nearly as much as I do, since my field just pays more.

 

My whole point of this anecdotal story is that gaming a lot can lead to good things.

 

And hell I still game a ton and have every new console on launch date.  And I also own arcade games lol.

Edited September 9, 2021 by purbeast

[China]

3 minutes ago, purbeast said:

RE:  Video games...

 

Totally anecdotal, but I played A LOT of video games growing up.  My brother and sister always made fun of me for doing so.  Then I got into piracy in the mid/late 90's and ...

 

[tshile]

@purbeast

same story. Except I quit when I went to college. My problem was partying and chasing chicks. 
 

side note: not sure I ran into anyone else in the party scene that was a comp sci major. And every Thursday/Friday class would end with everyone asking who was doing the madden tourney that weekend (or whatever) and I would just stare at these people. You want to spend your friday/Saturday night as a college student playing madden in the dorms? Oooooooooook. Enjoy that. 

[purbeast]

Just now, tshile said:

@purbeast

same story. Except I quit when I went to college. My problem was partying and chasing chicks. 
 

side note: not sure I ran into anyone else in the party scene that was a comp sci major. And every Thursday/Friday class would end with everyone asking who was doing the madden tourney that weekend (or whatever) and I would just stare at these people. You want to spend your friday/Saturday night as a college student playing madden in the dorms? Oooooooooook. Enjoy that. 

I was VERY close to dropping out of college after my freshman year.

 

Highschool for me was easy as ****.  I got by doing so little work and not having to study much and had like a 4.0 and AP'd out of Calc1.  

 

But my first year in college, I tried to get by doing such little work and it nearly made me drop out.  My second semester I earned 6 credits total, failing my one major comp sci course.  I had like a 1.8 gpa after my first year.

 

Then that summer I decided that I was going to buckle down and didn't want to disappoint my parents and stuck with it.

 

And glad I did because I am 100% positive that I would be nowhere near where I am career/money wise had I dropped out.

[tshile]

20 minutes ago, purbeast said:

 

 

Highschool for me was easy as ****.  I got by doing so little work and not having to study much and had like a 4.0 and AP'd out of Calc1.  

Yup. Very similar story. AP government, calc, computer science, and chemistry. 
 

(I still regret not chasing chemistry. Would have been so much more fun)

 

1210 sat (when it was out of 1600) and somewhere around 3.5 gpa. 
 

highschool and college gpa suffered the same problem - I was smart enough to study and get A’s on tests without going to class and doing homework (step 1 of every class was to skip through the syllabus and see what % of my grade would be homework and evaluate what that means about the minimum amount of homework I had to keep a passing grade with A’s on the exams)

 

the only difference is between highschool and college I swapped video games with partying and chicks. 

[tshile]

Hahaha stupid side note. Just to further explain. 
 

so now wife and I started dating when we she joined me at GMU (where I wound up after my parents discovered I was parting my ass off, not going to class, and only getting B’s, and decided they’re not paying for me to go away and do that and if I wanted help with paying for school I had to come home, live at home and go to gmu…)

 

anyways, we wound up in an English 300-and-something class together. 
 

so, I did my usual, except she made me go to class with her. I would dick around on my computer. She would be angry but whatever. I wouldn’t do any work. We had 3 major projects that required reading a rather lengthy book for each. 
 

I did all three projects through the year without reading a single book. Got like 85-88 for scores. Which I was perfectly fine with. She was so jealous she became influenced by me and tried to pull the same stunt. She wound up with a mid-b for the class. 
 

my wife has a masters degree. Through her entire career she received only A’s, except for that class… she could have had a 4.0 gps. She still holds it against me. 
 

i didn’t get my **** together until I took a senior level Intro to AI class. I was instantly hooked. It helped we had an amazing professor. I did tons of work.  Tons of extra work. In a class where our graded midterms were handed back with a preface lecture of: so, 1 person got a 92. 1 got an 87. (He’s writing this on the board at this point). 1 got an 82. The next highest score was a 38. The lowest score was a 5. And the curve makes a 20 a C. He explained this was pretty typical for this course. 
 

I got the 87. 
 

finals were the same way. 
 

in fact, that’s what lead me to apply for, get accepted, and later drop out of a graduate program at GA Tech for a MSCS with machine learning/AI as the concentration (GA Tech was the #4 ranked school in the country at the time for that program.)

 

Wife had just finished her masters. We were   29. We were at a cross roads and decide we’d either wait for children and if do this program, or if I didn’t get in we’d start with children. I didn’t get in. She got pregnant. I received a call on vacation that summer from GA Tech saying they had reconsiders my application and wanted to know if was still interested and of course I said yes! School started. My full time job got incredibly busy. After staying up until 2am for the third night in a row working on a project due in 4 weeks, I looked around and said “I can’t do this. I have a kid on the way. Something has to change. “ and what changed was I dropped out of school. The thought was I’d return when the children were a bit older. Little did I know life would just get busier. 
 

ive made a lot of mistakes. Run ins with police, party-related decisions that weren’t the smartest, ruined some relationships… different people could reasonably pick different items as the one to regret. Dropping out of that program is my biggest regret. Worse - every day that passes it’s unclear whether I’ll ever be able to take another crack at it. Life comes at you fast. And there’s a looooooooot of **** I’m dealing with right now. And me removing myself from the labor force is currently a card on the table we’re considering to help us get through it all. 
 

Anyways. There’s lots of **** that goes into why an individual takes the path they take. Makes it really hard to draw general opinions about what’s going on that are meaningful. Of course, much of life can be that way. 
 

/endlivejournal 

Edited September 9, 2021 by tshile