Degrees of Separation Gender Gap Among College Graduates Has Educators Wondering Where the Men Are

Washington Post ^ | Tuesday, June 25, 2002 | Michael A. Fletcher

[Frapster]

BALTIMORE -- As Morgan State University President Earl S. Richardson surveyed the sea of newly minted graduates at the school's 126th commencement last month, his joy was tempered by a question that has grown too conspicuous to ignore: Where are all the men?

Not only were the head of student government, the senior class president and 96 of Morgan's 141 honorstudents women, but so were two-thirds of the university's 860 graduates.

Click here to read the entire article.

[BikerNYC]

The men have learned that college isn't teaching them anything they can use, the women just simper about how great their education is.

Black men must have learned this lesson very well, since there are twice as many black women graduating from college than black men.

[Illbay]

It's too bad you see it that way. Our founders didn't agree. They saw formal education as ESSENTIAL for a Republic such as ours, so that ignorance would not become the norm and a crafty political class then arise to take advantage of it.

Come to think of it, pretty much the story of our last fifty years.

The REAL problem is that some time within the last half-century, we lost sight of mass higher education as it was originally intended--to prepare one for LIFE in a Free Republic--and replaced it with this attitude of "college as trade school." That is, we began to see it solely as a means for making more money.

I disagree with your premise. If you have the PROPER higher education--bereft of things like "gender studies" and "multiculturalism", and filled with the traditional arts and sciences, language, literature, history, sociology, etc.--it makes you a SIGNIFICANTLY better individual.

Your attitude is one I have studiously attempted to dissuade my own twenty-something offspring from taking.

I was fortunate to have parents who wanted a liberal arts education for me. I learned a great deal, and then went on to earn an engineering degree as well.

As a result I think I have a far better grasp of the very issues that we discuss on FR than I would otherwise.

[Moleman]

College for me was interesting, I guess...
I learned to drink beer from a funnel and hose ;-)

[quark]

It's simply, really, and affirms this dictum:

If you subsidize something (affirmative action for females & minorities), you get more of it. If you regulate something (reverse discrimination for white males), you get less of it.

So, more female college graduates, and fewer male graduates.

[Illbay]

Most of the under-25's I talk to see college as a scam,...and are working at their own businesses...

VOICE OF ALGORE: "Good! Good!"

VOICE OF HILLARY CLINTON: "Yes, exactly as we planned it!"

VOICE OF BILL CLINTON: "Huhuh, these are the people ah counted on to help me stay in office durin' impeachment. Thur the ones who consistently said that they didn' care about no Constitution 'r rule o' law, as long as the economy was good!"

VOICE OF DICK GEPHARDT: "Our master plan is nearly complete. Now, not only are all the stupid MINORITIES too ignorant to figure out the scam we're playing, but now even the WHITE folks are going to fall in line."

VOICE OF TOM DASCHLE: "EVERYONE will be stupid and happy, and ready to let us take care of every aspect of their lives! Yes, the Founders were clever, but not clever enough by half!"

VOICE OF TED KENNEDY: "Soon, the lahst vestiges of a well-educated popu-lace will be swept away, and this silly 'Ree-public' that those dead white men established will become OU-AH EMPI-AH!!!!"

VOICE OF JIM JEFFORDS (Putting arm around Daschle's shoulders): "Man, I'm sure glad I decided to tag along with you folks!"

[ALL: WICKED, BREATHLESS LAUGHTER]

[CURTAINS]

[OldPossum]

You seem to have the impression that college is some kind of technical school. A college education may provide you with certain skills (knowledge of computer technology, the framework for the various engineering disciplines, etc.) but its main purpose is to enlighten you about your culture and your place in it. As a professor once told me, a major function of higher education is to show you how little you know and how much there is to know.

[chachacha]

THIS IS INCREDIBLE Do we really have to ask what, when, and where this all happened. Are we talking about the same male species that used to be proud and flourished here on earth? Ahh! Yes, we are talking about the beaten and battered White, middle class male. You Know the one the PC folks have been reducing to the level of dunce over the last four decades. The ones that spent all that money to get educated to find out they had to move to the back of the line due to Quotas.

[BikerNYC]

...a major function of higher education is to show you how little you know...

And that's why the Oracle proclaimed Socrates to be the wisest man in Athens, since he was the only one to know that he knew nothing (which is what got him into so much trouble---asking all those damn, troublesome, difficult questions).

[angkor]

It's high time that we squash the idea that all degrees are guarantees of a secure, and highly-paid future.

A CS degree can leave you in a moderate (not high) paying coding job forever.

This week I've spoken with two very wealthy guys, neither of whom has a degree and both of whom are entrepreneurs (actually former grease monkey mechanics).

I have liberal arts degree and am in a highly technical position.

College degrees aren't meal tickets, nor do they permanently determine the career choices or financial prospects of students who are barely out of their teens.

Students should study what they like and what interests them, regardless of the presumed "practicality" of that interest. IMHO, discovering what interests you is the only purpose of higher education.

[nothingnew]

I'm confused...why are they wondering? Isn't that what they have wanted and been working towards lo these many feminazi years?

Dom't bee cornfuzed...yew halve it rite.

FMCDH

[Snuffington]

I've seen too many college grads working at minimum wage jobs.

Heck, I worked a minimum wage job after college. Not a lot of employers are terribly enthusiastic about a liberal arts bachelors degree.

But if students spend their time sharpening their minds in college, they'll thrive in a work environment and quickly leave minimum wage behind. The majority of that burden is on the college grad himself. Not the college.

[lavaroise]

Why would men be interested in the consumption of ideas and people's consciousnesses at the university?

A man knows what NOT to worship. Enough said.

[Frapster]

Yeah, like going to college makes one significantly more literate and educated. What a load of dogwaste.

While I am no Rhodes Scholar I would agree that the elitist mentality of the "well educated" cracks me up. Particularly the notion that the females who attend college are significantly more educated than their mail counterparts. Regardless of the gender of the so called "educated" it's my understanding that our educational systesm are full of teachers who have knowledge issues to the point of the absurd at times.

[goodieD]

I disagree, it's a half/half proposition. The grad has certain responsibilities (showing up to class, putting forth the effort, keeping grades up, etc)..but the college has certain responsibilities as well... preparing young men and women for the work world, teaching things of value to that end, providing a safe and sane place for young people to learn. On those counts, many of today's schools have dropped the ball.

[goodieD]

The problem is, it's very difficult to find schools anymore that have any interest in teaching anything of real career value. They have become mouthpieces for the left, many have dropped legitimate programs in favor of social engineering classes.

[goodieD]

What I say is not utter nonsense... at our local university, we had certain required math courses dropped in favor of african american studies, and women's studies programs. This happens everywhere. Universities and colleges are merely propaganda distributors for the left.

[Mugwumps]

I disagree with your premise. If you have the PROPER higher education--bereft of things like "gender studies" and "multiculturalism", and filled with the traditional arts and sciences, language, literature, history, sociology, etc.--it makes you a SIGNIFICANTLY better individual.

Don't you ever long for the true liberal arts education of, say, the 1700's? The kind that produced thinkers like our founders?

[Illbay]

Yes. As I said, I had a "liberal arts education" myself, and I did gain a great deal from it. But mine was in the 1970s, the college was BLATANTLY liberal in political philosophy--I voted for the first time in 1976, for Jimmy Carter, and was called a "right-wing reactionary" for doing so. There was STILL a lot of cr*p I had to wade through.

But even then, I learned the smell of cr*p, and can still discern it to this day.

[maxwell]

Your attitude is one I have studiously attempted to dissuade my own twenty-something offspring from taking.

And YOUR attitude is one I've studiously attempted to avoid throughout my undergraduate and graduate school careers, dude-- namely, assuming that I am automatically more enlightened about anything than anyone with less education than I.

Since you have 20-something offspring, I'm assuming that you're old enough to be my father (Gawd-forbid... Bwahaha...) and thus was educated in the sixties, perhaps before or despite the onset of mass intellectual stagnation and rot that gripped academe during that time... An education today means a hell of alot less than it meant 20, 40 years ago. Nobody understands that better than I, completing my doctorate in physics at a time when the degree merely shadows the breadth and depth it had at the beginning of last century...

No I didn't get bogged down with "gender studies" and crap like that; I actually had a rather decent liberal arts education, as far as that goes... Being a hard-a$$ science geek, however, I tend to attribute less importance to Homer et al. than to, say, Newton and Dirac...