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In May, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education posted the inevitable culmination of a trend: Last year for the first time, women earned more than half the degrees granted statewide in every category, be it associate, bachelor, master, doctoral or professional.
...
As women march forward, more boys seem to be falling by the wayside, McCorkell says. Not only do national statistics forecast a continued decline in the percentage of males on college campuses, but the drops are seen in all races, income groups and fields of study, says policy analyst Thomas Mortenson, publisher of the influential Postsecondary Education Opportunity newsletter in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Since 1995, he has been tracking — and sounding the alarm about — the dwindling presence of men in colleges.

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Yet the trends are grave. Women outstrip men in education despite that there are 15 million men and 14.2 million women aged 18--24 in the country. Kentucky colleges enroll at least 67 first--year women for every 50 men. Delaware has 74 first--year women for every 50 men.

The gender gap is even more palpable within the colleges themselves, because women and men gravitate to different majors. While a split in preferences has always been the case, the gender imbalance in the overall college makes departments so segregated that campus life just ain't what it used to be. In North Carolina's public and private universities, a typical psychology class has four women for every man. In education, the ratio is five to one. The English and foreign language departments are heavily female as well.

The consequences go far beyond a lousy social life and the longer--term reality that many women won't find educated male peers to marry. There are also academic consequences, and economic ones.

...

What is going on? Schools are not paying enough attention to the education of males.

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Then too many teachers tend to
be female so boy's loose that kind of intelligent roll model early. I hope others
here add their 2 cents. It could prove an interesting topic.

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ORIGINAL: NakedOnMyChain

Interesting question. I too went to a Big 10 school (Purdue). I didn't notice a drastic difference, though it's been a couple of years since I was in school. There were slightly more females in a few of my classes, but on the round it was pretty even. Hell, I even managed to get a date now and again.

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There are no groups out there promoting changes in the education system that will help boys, and there is no end of groups promoting changes in the education system that will help girls. The result is that we are now graduating nearly 2 female students from college for every 1 male student.

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ORIGINAL: Tristan

In addition to the lack of good male roll models in schools, another factor seems to be chivalry. We are a society that believes in ladies first. A couple years ago a feminist group did a survey on how well male and female students were doing in school. They measured performance in about 35 categories, and found that women did better than men in all but one category and women get a better over all education. Their conclusion...women were being cheated because the one category they did not do as well was technology, which they said paid well. They made recommendations to change that one area, and made no recommendations to change anything else. No one in the media seemed to question this recommendation or promote changes that would allow male students to get an equal over all education.

We are a society that accepts and promotes women first in all things (or nearly all things). There are no groups out there promoting changes in the education system that will help boys, and there is no end of groups promoting changes in the education system that will help girls. The result is that we are now graduating nearly 2 female students from college for every 1 male student.

Tristan

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If it makes any men angry that the attendance of boys at universities has dropped so low, then do something about it. A great place to start would be to become a teacher. Out of the many, many elementary teachers I've met in my line of work, only six or seven of them have been male. The number rises a bit in high school, but the vast majority are still female. If you want to change things, jump in and do it. Maybe it would help the boys I teach to have a stable male role model, and perhaps it would dissuade them of the notion that becoming a teacher or professor, or even going to college is "for girls".

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ORIGINAL: Quivver

Has been since the day Judas said I dont know that man.

Q

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ok. not being cutesy....but hey. "I" never had any role models and yet i have been macho all my life.
i dropped out of school because i had to go to work to take care of myself coz i was kicked out of the house at 16.

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If overall college attendance is down, it would stand to reason that the number of men would have dropped too. The number of men actually attending college hasn't dropped out of the normal pattern. The number of women has simply held steady.

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Why is it that if women are doing better in a given category than men it has to be because someone has "leveled the playing field" or that some poor boy somewhere is being "neutered/ignored/slighted"? Why can't it simply be that maybe we are better at something than someone else? Why can't the boys that didn't make it into college or didn't have the will or desire to go accept responsibility for their own mistakes?

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I'm not sure how closely you read the articles I linked to, but the data don't support that conclusion.

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I mean, if that's true, then you're still left with the question of how is it we've raised a generation of men who don't have the will/desire to go to college.

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Personally, I tend to doubt that men are inherently better at science & engineering, and I tend to doubt women are inherently better than men at attending and graduating college.

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ORIGINAL: pollux


It's interesting that you mentioned the possibility that perhaps women are better than men at college. Did you hear about the controversy that erupted when somebody asked the President of Harvard (I think it was Harvard) why science & engineering fields tend to graduate proportionally more men than women? He said, "well, I think men are probably just better at those things". He was hounded mercilessly for that remark (by women, mostly), and eventually had to withdraw it.

Personally, I tend to doubt that men are inherently better at science & engineering, and I tend to doubt women are inherently better than men at attending and graduating college.