At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust

New York Times ^ | July 9, 2006 | Tamar Lewin

[wouldntbprudent]

All I can say is "maybe."

My own personal experience and observation is this: a few years out from college, it doesn't make a whit of difference whether you went to a "premier institution," a state university, community college or whatever.

I got a graduate degree from a cheap state university and was hired alongside people who got the same degree from Harvard, etc.

As the years went on, I occasionally found myself working for people who had had no traditional college. They had worked their way up. Some were good at what they did and some weren't, but that's the same for the college grads.

I have a friend who spent over $100,000 to send his kid to a "premier university." When it was all over, the kid came home and got the same job as the kid across the street who had gotten his degree part-time while he worked.

Sure, a sheepskin from a "premier university" initally might open some doors that otherwise wouldn't be opened. But that's the exception these days.

I agree with you that a person is better off with a sound education. I don't agree that a sound education is necessarily obtained only in college, of any sort, much less only at big-name schools.

[wouldntbprudent]

So true---the young men today who forego college (because they think it's basically a joke, an extension of high school that will only serve to hold them back) do so precisely because they want to get on with their lives.

That view on their work life naturally shifts over to their personal life. So, yes, they do tend to marry, marry earlier and start families earler. This, having a young family, oftens concentrates the mind wonderfully, so these guys become even more self-motivated.

The days of women going to college to get a M.R.S. degree are waning. Not, mind you, that many women don't view college as a place to find a husband. It's just that as more and more self-starting men skip the 4-5 years of "butt tax," there are fewer and fewer candidates for marriage by the time the women have graduated.

[wouldntbprudent]

Saw this a lot in the military, unfortunately. For example, a female pilot would take a job considered undesirable in the aviation field because it did not involve lots of flying and, therefore, she could be home more with her kids.

Come promotion time the board wants to advance those individuals who took the hard jobs and spent years on grueling deployments and training operations. But, oh, that meant some of the individuals (who happened to be women) who took and asked for non-flying, admin-type jobs would get passed over.

Well, that couldn't be allowed.

I always thought, hey, if you took a job that is not career-enhancing, that's your problem. If you always want time off, etc., don't be expecting to advance.

[Teacher317]

I'd wager that there's also a noticeable rise in the number of 20-something males who are basically living parasitically off of 20-something females who are working, going to school, and trying to build a nest. Why work if one can live the modern suburban variant of the "pimp lifestyle"?

[GOP Poet]

From what I have seen, this is very much the exception rather than the rule. Some of those slackers I mentioned earlier make it to their mid-thrities somehow without Daddy's money. But this is only based on my own experience for what that is worth.

[GOP Poet]

Although now that I think about it the media seems to play up these scenarios. Probably as part of the 'attack' against the white male once again. But it really is not reality that I see.

A lot of the young women in these scenarios are single mothers that seem to not understand a real man that works is a good idea and pick some slacker as a second child. But men that have morals are generally not attracted to single women with children already.

[CatoRenasci]

Well, this sort of nonsense was not in evidence when I was a graduate student in history in the early 1970s. I have saved, and have had my kids use for their AP classes, solid traditional (political history- known in the trade as "kings and battles") and semi-traditional (more emphasis on the then fashionable intellectual history rather than the now fashionable history of the various forms of the "downtrodden") textbooks from that period: Bob Kelly's The Shaping of the American Past and Morison, Commager and Leuchtenburg's The Growth of the American Republic for US history and the R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton's The Making of the Modern World for a very traditional Western civilization course concentrating on Europe and its antecedents. (The 1970 edition is my favorite, but the newest edition is still useable IMHO).

Seems to me if boys want to learn about successful men, the traditional study of history or perhaps classics, is the best way to do it.

[mcvey]

Commager and Palmer would be considered outside the pale these days. Commager's great Documents of American History is no longer being updated. It had lots and lots of court cases and political talk and doctrines and such. Nowdays, documents books are mostly exercises in minority writings--some of them, I am pretty sure, not what the majority of people in a particular minority thought. Good for you for keeping the flame alive! McVey

[TheSpottedOwl]

Thanks for pinging me. Lots of interesting commentary on this thread. The history textbooks are a disaster. Years ago, I had a word processor that I was using to regain typing speed. I used my older daughter's history book. I couldn't believe what I was reading! Ooooh that eeeevil white man.

My mother's stance was that since I was female, I didn't need to go to college. My destiny was a crappy office job, while waiting for some guy to marry me. Yippee. When I was younger, I wanted to be an architect. By the time I was in HS, I just didn't understand why I was expected to pull in good grades if I wasn't allowed to attend college. Oh, I graduated and got my diploma. I showed up for finals, if not bothering with classes. I was pissed off.

The number one problem imo, is the lack of effective discipline in homes and schools regarding boys. There wasn't any divide over academic and behaviorial performance between boys and girls back in the day. Everyone towed the line. Now you can't paddle them, damage their "self esteem", or expect anything from them.

There is a good reason though for women to get degrees in whatever can give them gainful employment, even if they plan on marrying and being a stay at home mom. Sometimes something bad happens to the breadwinner, and someone has to support the family. I actually have enlightened family members who know the long term value of an education. If you do have a degree, take classes to stay on top of whatever it's for. Needless to say, my family wouldn't know how to spell welfare.

[Seamoth]

Gotta love FR. If women have a career, they're raging selfish feminazis. If women don't have a career, they're lazy selfish feminazis.

[GOP Poet]

Yes. I believe it is essentially based on the tenets of Howard Zinn these days. It is a pretty sad state.

I am going to get the books listed though. I am sure the one mentioned should be available in out-of-print books online if nowhere else. I would have loved to have taken your history class, but it great to see that others are!

[GOP Poet]

Gotta love FR. If women have a career, they're raging selfish feminazis. If women don't have a career, they're lazy selfish feminazis.

To begin with I believe the most powerful career woman on the planet. Condoleeza Rice is absolutely respected and honored in her talents, achievements, and intelligence on FR. So much so I regularly see people post they would like to see her run for POTUS.

Now where have people called women who don't have a career "lazy selfish feminazis", as you've accused?

[CatoRenasci]

Actually, I was referring to my own daughters, not students - I bailed on academia long ago and am now a lawyer. When my daughters were in high school (not so long ago, younger just finished her freshman year in college and the older is a rising senior), I went around and around with some of the history faculty. They did use the execreble Zinn for US history and I went ballistic. Made the daughters read real books. They also had a text by Forest MacDonald that wasn't too politically correct, but it was way watered down. AP Euro was a nightmare for my older daughter, the teacher had Palmer on his reading list, but openly hated it and gave my daughter a very hard time and low grades for work and interpretations that I know were very solid. Her AP 5 was the best revenge. The other daughter had a teacher who was further left, but actually more fair. He didn't use a text, but numerous articles and chapters of books - most of which I thought were pretty solid. Daughter was annoyed I made her read Palmer, too, but said afterwards it pulled everthing together for her (which is one of the text's great virtues - when I was a grad student, it was the last book almost everyone read (well, reread, actually, since most of us had used it and taught from it) before taking their PhD exams, because it was such a solid and cohesive narrative).

[JamesP81]

There are studies which indicate that one of the reason boys are lagging behind is because the curriculum, particular the reading part of it, is designed to help girls, not boys. I suggest that differences between the sexes are only mentioned when it helps the feminist cause.

I agree. In fact, our culture in general is hostile men and manliness in general. That's why the 'in-style' for men is the metrosexual look.

[JamesP81]

I will put up my degree in Electrical Engineering up against a Communications degree any day.

Agreed. My computer science degree is worth quite a bit more than the average lib arts degree. Although, it's probably not worth as much as EE; in computer science, the teachers tended to be pretty laid back. They didn't really much give a crap what you did or even if you came to class, but OTOH, if you didn't and you started failing then you're complaining would fall on deaf ears. I liked it that way, myself.

Also, in any given computer science class with 25 students, generally at least 22 of them were men. It was the only thing I regretted about majoring in computer science; there are no ladies in the field to get to know better :)

[JamesP81]

This just goes to show they make it so male unfriendly and overly female friendly in atmosphere and support.

I think it might be better to say it's feminist friendly. Not every lady is a howling moonbat feminazi. Unless, of course, you're in college.

[JamesP81]

I've known women with communications degrees, and I don't really ever feel like communicating with them for more than a couple of seconds.

I hear that. When I was in college (only a year and a half ago, seems like much longer for some reason) the women to men percentage was about 65% women and 35% men. You'd think that I'd have found this an optimum dating situation. Not even close. I'm pretty sure they'd all have turned me down (I'm not exactly the first thing a woman thinks of when she thinks of her ideal man) but that didn't matter because I didn't ask. I realized that over 90% of them were bad medicine that I didn't want.

They might've been cute and friendly but most of them were just...dayum. If I wanted to commit suicide there are quicker and easier ways.

[JamesP81]

My own personal experience and observation is this: a few years out from college, it doesn't make a whit of difference whether you went to a "premier institution," a state university, community college or whatever.

You got that right. Getting a degree from Harvard might start you off out of the gates a bit faster than everyone else, but you'll finish the race based not on your degree, but on yourself. I got my degree from a small state U in Kentucky, and I can get the same jobs as people with degrees from Vanderbilt.

[GOP Poet]

I think it might be better to say it's feminist friendly. Not every lady is a howling moonbat feminazi. Unless, of course, you're in college.

Huh?

[wouldntbprudent]

That's why it's also sad that parents/kids either blow a load of money or go into unbelievable debt to finance an education at an expensive school when, in the end, it won't do any more for them than a reasonably priced education at a different institution.