Posted on 04/01/2005 7:10:11 AM PST by GMMAC
Where are all the guys on campus?
If men outnumbered women 515,000 to 375,000 in colleges, there'd be an uproar
The Edmonton Journal
Fri 01 Apr 2005
Page: A18
Section: Opinion
Byline: Lorne Gunter
Of the 52 traditional bricks-and-mortar universities in Canada, only one has more male students than female.
Just one.
Ontario's University of Waterloo has a male-female ratio of 54 to 46, according to Maclean's magazine's 2005 Guide to Canadian Universities.
At all the rest -- every last one of them -- women outnumber men.
At Carleton University in Ottawa, it's nearly equal. The numbers there reflect the split between men and women in the population as a whole -- 49 to 51.
But at most post-secondary schools, it's not even close.
At just 10 of the schools Maclean's surveys each year are men as much as 45 per cent of the student body. At 20 schools -- nearly two-fifths of Canadian universities -- men comprise under 40 per cent of the student body.
At the University of Alberta, the ratio is 43 to 57. At Calgary it's 45 to 55, and at Lethbridge it's the same as at the U of A: 43 to 57. Those are pretty typical of the country's large, multi-facultied universities.
At prestious universities such as McGill, Queen's, Western and Laval, men are 40 to 42 per cent of students.
At Memorial in Newfoundland and York in Toronto, they are 38 per cent. At Brandon and Winnipeg, they are 34 per cent, at St. Thomas in Fredericton, 32, and at Nipissing in North Bay, Ont., a mere 28 per cent.
Throughout the five campuses of the Universite du Quebec system, men are nowhere more than 38 per cent of the total.
The imbalance is even greater at most two-year and community colleges.
Mount Saint Vincent in Halifax has the lowest level of male enrolment of any university in the country, just 19 per cent. I guess that's understandable. Until 1967, MSV was an all-female university.
But if I said it was understandable that Waterloo has more male than female students because its focus is math, engineering and computer science, there would be a lot of feminists and other assorted politically correct types who would be anything but understanding.
Lawrence Summers, Bill Clinton's former treasury secretary who is now president of Harvard University, wondered aloud at a closed-door academic conference in January whether the alleged under-representation of women in math and science might, just might, be due to some innate difference between the sexes rather than systemic discrimination or social conditioning alone. And ever since he has been pilloried for even suggesting such a sacrilege.
And that's my point. If the shoe were on the other foot -- if men outnumbered women, significantly, at all Canadian universities but one -- we would never hear the end of it. Yet Canadian universities have become dominated by female students (women now also earn 10 degrees for every seven awarded to men, according to Statistics Canada), and no one even notices.
If men and women both are in our schools of higher learning on merit, then the male-female ratio is unimportant. But it would not be treated as unimportant if the ratio went the other way, even if merit were the explanation, because merit would not be an acceptable application. It wouldn't feed the cause.
Political correctness, feminism, even modern liberalism are outrage "-isms." They feed off the indignation of perceived slights and injustices. If an outraging explanation cannot be found for a difference between men and women, rich and poor, whites and non-whites, then one must be invented. One that cannot be disproved -- an invisible conspiracy, imperceptible social conditioning, systemic discrimination -- is the best kind, since it permits the outrage to be stoked indefinitely.
As women have roared past men in total post-secondary enrolment -- there are now nearly 515,000 women at universities, colleges and technical schools in Canada, compared to 375,000 men, according to StatsCan -- the only "facts" that get reported are the outraging ones: that men still earn more doctorates and masters degrees.
Never mind that the number of men receiving doctorates in the most-recent six-year period fell by 18 per cent, while the number of women doing so rose 19 per cent. It is an outrage to the PC and feminist crowd that parity has not been achieved yet. Only now is soon enough.
When the number of women receiving advanced degrees surpasses the number of men -- sometime around 2014 --expect some new outrage to be found.
If the number of men studying law had risen two per cent in the past decade and the number of women had fallen nearly 18 per cent, instead of the reverse, there would be calls for royal commissions. If male enrolment in business programs had increased 11 per cent and female fallen two per cent, instead of the other way around, newspapers would be filled with stories decrying the imbalance, the unfairness.
The CBC would have several special reports pointing fingers at the patriarchy or cowardly politicians for their lack of funding, or both, if male enrolment had risen 35 per cent in natural resource courses since 1995 and female had fallen 10 per cent. But let the opposite be true and ... silence.
An imbalance in favour of women is considered justifiable payback, un-newsworthy; the universe unfolding as it should.
Lorne Gunter
Columnist/Editorial Writer, National Post
Columnist, Edmonton Journal
Tele: (780) 916-0719 / E-mail: lgunter@shaw.ca / Fax: (780) 481-4735
But think of all those poor college women (like me), who already have to search through the drunkards and players, and try to find a decent guy.
Woman hits man, woman yells at man, woman throws objects hitting man. Man does nothing but try and run away.
Neighbor calls police.
Police arrest man.
I think part of the story that is not told is how in the low end schools, which are mostly vocational oriented. Women overpoplation is skewing the numbers for all university education.
Hysterical What can I say, your on top of your Game.
3 things account for this:
1. radical feminism in public schools have resulted in many men not wanting more of the same in universities. blue collar jobs offer freedom from bureaucracy.
2. many trades now offer excellent pay: a. baby boomers are retiring. b. the preference for college educations of the last several decades led to shortages of labor.
3. the cost of college educations may not justify the expenses of money and the years spent to get the degrees.
many colleges reduced tenured faculties' teaching loads from 3 to 2 courses per term. meanwhile, the taxpayers who support public schools by means of their taxes increased their productivity, and have no tenure.
tenured faculty average about $100,000 per year -- not bad for 9 months' work with lots of vacations through the year.
One interesting thing is how some majors are still almost exclusively male. In my anectdotal experience, the College of Business at my school is slightly majority male. However, within that, you have some majors like mine (MIS) which is almost exclusively male, while a major like Marketing seems to attract a majority female. Other majors like Accounting or Finance seem to be about 50/50.
This is true of other colleges as well. The College of Education is heavily majority female. The inverse is true of the College of Engineering. Just some random observations..
Ever been to an Engineer School lately? Still 80%+ men. I guess the average salary of $102,000 a year doesn't interest women as it does men.
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