September 6, 2021
"At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%..."
"The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period.... American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality... have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education.... Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds.... Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications.
Men in interviews around the U.S. said they quit school or didn’t enroll because they didn’t see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense required to earn one. Many said they wanted to make money after high school.... Jerlando Jackson, department chair, Education Leadership and Policy Analysis, at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, said few campuses have been willing to spend limited funds on male underachievement that would also benefit white men, risking criticism for assisting those who have historically held the biggest educational advantages.
'As a country, we don’t have the tools yet to help white men who find themselves needing help,' Dr. Jackson said. 'To be in a time when there are groups of white men that are falling through the cracks, it’s hard.'"
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87 comments:
I am just going to say- white men are avoiding college today because they see that college has become a racketeering organization that endows you with debt only.
Almost everything taught in school, the way they teach it, has all the fun taken out of it.
Identity politics has many victims, whether it is the identity politics of Maoist China or that of the Jim Crow south or that of the modern woke university.
we don’t have the tools yet to help white men who find themselves needing help,
Send money!!
Back in the day, one of the great advantages of college for a young man was to keep the Draft Board away. No longer necessary.
one the one hand; Hurray! this is what we wanted, right? Equal access?
And Nothing says Equal access like 40.5%, right?
So, on the other hand...
You've got women, and persons of color, getting degrees in Woke Wokism, and Ethical Outrage
(and being saddled with 100's of thousands of dollars in debt
On the Other other hand...
You've got white guys, forsaking the college track; and becoming welders and sheet metal workers
(and computer network techs)
I've got 4 cousins (once removed) in California; that All can afford to live in California
EACH of them make At Least as much welding (or sheet metaling) as i Ever did as a database admin
A younger Classmate of mine, dropped out of iowa state his sophmore year. He works for facebook now doing network tech (NO degree; NO degree in Anything)... He has a new house, with an inground pool; but still goes on yearly trips to the carib to go swimming
College is a Ripoff, white boys have figured this out
[which, is why the democrats want to forgive all student loans]
Could it be that white men are more likely to learn a trade and avoid mountains of student debt to acquire Gender Studies degrees ? Another mystery.
Men in interviews around the U.S. said they quit school or didn’t enroll because they didn’t see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense required to earn one. Many said they wanted to make money after high school....
Seriously, which would YOU rather do?
Work at a Starbucks, with your MA in media studies?
or
Be a
Welder? and make money after high school???
Interesting. One might assume that men are better at assessing risk/reward, so are men leading the way in deciding College isn't worth the time and money? Maybe.
Going to college where there are far fewer men than women would seem like a good way to get Tail.
We aren't allowed to worry about white people.
Not to make this be all about women but it does hurt women as well because it means that finding suitable partners can be difficult. Women have to "partner down" and carry more of the load, financially and otherwise, which is also difficult because women aren't raised to expect to have to do that. Girls, at least middle and upper class white girls, are taught that life is a matter of choices and opportunities, not so much about necessities and burdens.
Maybe the white women will start looking to marry the minority men who are educated and, presumably more successful since there has been improvement in that area, thus expanding the reach of female white privilege. After all, they are not going to be denied (said in my best approximation of Glenn Close's voice from Fatal Attraction).
By the logic of "disparate impact", schools discriminate against men and must take steps to eliminate the disparity.
Yet somehow I don't see that happening
...a widening education gap across the U.S.
At least those men who did not enroll will not be miseducated.
If admission standards are lowered, it follows that some of the less qualified will complete their schooling.
I find this is similar to a protest several months ago complaining that the City and County of SF, which tries to enable as many local underqualified job applicants as it can, retained these employees at a lower rate rate as more qualified employees.
59.5% female and 40.5 % male adds up to 100%
What about non-binary students? The high schools (according to my wife) are full of them.
Sally327 is assuming that the qualities that would make a man a suitable partner are conferred with a degree. What a snob!
"American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality... have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education...."
It's because American colleges are "embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality" instead of providing an education. The racial and sexual communism that dominates these institutions that saddle you with debt aren't seen as a good deal anymore. Who wants to take on 6-figure debt to be taught that you're the problem in society? The fact that some people who actually view the lack of poor white men in college as a problem and yet refuse to try to help because they're white tells us everything we need to know about the idiotic mindset dominating colleges these days. No thanks!
"Women have to "partner down" and carry more of the load, financially and otherwise..."
Nope. They'll have to settle for an "uneducated" rube without debt that does quite well as a plumber, mechanic, electrician, etc.
Hmm, 59.5% of college students are women, 40.5% are men. Added together, that makes *wrinkles brow* 100%. So the WSJ doesn't recognize the tranny, non-binary hype either. Good to know.
It's terribly racist and sexist of white men to reject college at such high rates.
College is a hostile place for straight white males. They are the enemy.
The conventional view on campuses, she said, is that “men make more money, men hold higher positions, why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?”
It says something about academia that they seek to compare the situation for men in their fifties and sixties, and male professional athletes, with the situation for men in their late teens and early twenties deciding whether to go to college.
Frankly I don’t think anyone is worrying about the ratio of men to women on college campuses except that — as alluded to in the article — a 60/40 ratio of women to men means that 1/3 of women graduating college will not find a college-educated man to marry. But perhaps 1/3 of all the graduating co-eds don’t want to marry a college-educated man, and if so then it works.
I would say that each sex has made a value calculation about "college". Women value "college" more than men. How will the market price the outcomes?
I went to a non-prestigious liberal arts college in the late '60s. When I graduated with a BA in English literature, I was fit to go to work in a white-collar training program, to work for my father's business, or to go to graduate school in business or law. I went to law school and practiced in large firms for 40 years.
Could I do the same thing today? Perhaps, but the upfront financial cost of education would be much higher, and the large law firms are no longer congenial partnerships. English literature no longer appears to be a congenial option in the curriculum of many schools, having been subsumed in partisan politics and third-rate Marxist dogma.
Damn, Sally327 beat me to the point I was going to make, less men attending college, women hardest hit. Next thing you know you have a bunch of Women Studies grads complaining they can't find any good men.
I also liked here statement "Girls, at least middle and upper class white girls, are taught that life is a matter of choices and opportunities, not so much about necessities and burdens." Nice that she pointed out gender equality is not about equality but about the power to make choices but not accept responsibilities. Men generally don't have those choices, they are expected to get a job to support a family. So men who do go to college more often select majors like engineering or computer science that have the prospect of a good job instead of less rigorous majors or they go directly to the workforce and look for jobs that often are more dangerous but provide a living wage.
Nope. They'll have to settle for an "uneducated" rube without debt that does quite well as a plumber, mechanic, electrician, etc.
Who will help pay off the enormous student loans these gals undertook to get that Feminist Studies degree.
Quote from the story:
"Race and gender can’t be considered in admission decisions at California’s public universities."
No one actually believes this. Everyone knows that they discriminate against white men specifically and men and whites more generally. The game is to find an excuse that a sympathetic judge can claim is legitimate with a straight face.
My question is what are the percentages by degree. Education tends to be overwhelming female and, frankly, the degree is useful only as a qualification for a teaching job as otherwise it is not a rigorous degree. Almost every degree that ends with "Studies" is useless as actual education, though it is useful in finding employment in the grievance industries.
Men do fine in school if they are bookish and compliant (as I am). But a lot of men are not wired to sit still in a classroom; they want to be outside, doing things. Or inside working with their hands.
I told my son that unless he saw a specific path through college to a specific goal, he shouldn't waste his time or money.
Of course, by the time I told him that he had wasted about two years and quite a bit of money, but that's the way it goes sometime. And for that matter, I couldn't handle the PCBS any better than he could--it was just creeping in back in my undergrad days, but has gotten worse every year since.
Plus, a lot of public u students nowadays are just dumbasses.
Next topic for WSJ article: Why can't college educated women find appropriate mates?
"Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications."
Which also apply to young blacks and Latinos (the fatherlessness way more in young blacks).
Yeah, guys, keep looking under the lamppost for your lost keys just 'cause the light's better. Idiots.
When Christina Hoff Summers wrote "The War On Little Boys" she predicted this outcome.
Grade school is hostile to boys. We were so obsessed with making grade school comfortable for girls.
Reaping time…
Just like China's One Child Policy, the feminization of America will not end well.
MadisonMan@2:09: “ Interesting. One might assume that men are better at assessing risk/reward, so are men leading the way in deciding College isn't worth the time and money? Maybe.
Going to college where there are far fewer men than women would seem like a good way to get Tail.”
Your comment contradicts itself. If (IMHO correctly) we assume that men are better at assessing risk/reward (and therefore don’t waste $/time on “higher education”) then precisely for that reason do they see past the numerical advantage (6 girls for every 4 guys) and spot the trap, which is the flourishing Title IX operation. Men going to college these days are targeted as rapists-in-training for whom due process is not to be had; and men increasingly realize that.
You be told that you are a racist, sexist, the cause of ALL the evils of the world since you were born ( because of the color of your skin and your sex ) and be passed over for affirmative action hires long enough and see how your world view changes.
This is exactly what democrats want to happen.
Many smart, and in the long run successful people go to college, but this does not mean that going to college will make you smart or in the long run successful. In the past, the magic parchment did mean a reasonably good job. But that hasn't been increasingly the case since 1975. A new twist is that it is easier to get in the trades than it was in 1980 when all the factories were dumping trained men and women onto the market and who thus had a leg up getting a job in the trades. This goes double because they'd started dropping shop classes so if you took the college-prep classes, you were essentially precluded from doing the half day at vo-tech 10 miles away.
Most succinct assessment of how colleges have failed to adapt to the modern needs of students:
==========
"But, I want to go to the other end of the spectrum, which is intellectual services. It used to be, if you wave your Bachelor's degree, you're going to get a great job. When I graduated from college, it was a sure thing that you'd get a great job. And, in college, you'd basically learned artificial intelligence, meaning, you carried out the instructions that the faculty member gave you. You memorized the lectures, and you were tested on your memory in the exams. That's what a computer does. It basically memorizes what you tell it to do.
But now, with a computer doing all those mundane, repetitive intellectual tasks, if you're expecting to do well in the job market, you have to bring, you have to have real education. Real education means to solve problems that the faculty who teach don't really know how to solve.
And that takes talent as well as education.
So, my view is we've got to change education from a kind of a big Xerox machine where the lectures are memorized and then tested, into one which is more experienced-based to prepare a workforce for the reality of the 20th century. You've got to recognize that just because you had an experience with, say, issues in accounting, doesn't mean that you have the ability to innovate and take care of customers who have problems that cannot be coded."
--Econtalk podcast with economist Ed Leamer, April 13, 2020
This should be a real, practical, concern. Of all the women graduates, how many focused on STEM subject matter, other than perhaps doctors and the like? This country will not survive/prosper unless we have home-grown technical experts that can carry the load demanded by a very competitive world -- and from personal experience I haven't seen too many women in those fields. The Asians will literally eat our lunch if the educational ship can't be righted. And BTW, thinking most men are rapists and sexual deviants as a going-in assumption doesn't help.
Ann, this is just an excerpt from an article near a century ago, but it does seem to clarify what college really used to be and how it has kind of lost its way in the last 50 years. Might not rate being approved as a comment but I thought you might find it of interest. BTW, the referenced Scibner's Magazine volume has quite a few articles on the nature of college and universities. Seems either the topic never wanes or there's a cycle to concern over higher education.
============
The idea is, of course, that men are successful because they have gone to college. No idea was ever more absurd. No man is successful because he has managed to pass a certain number of courses and has received a sheepskin which tells the world in Latin, that neither the world nor the graduate can read, that he has successfully completed the work required. If the man is successful, it is because he has the qualities for success in him; the college "education" has merely, speaking in terms' of horticulture, forced those qualities and given him certain intellectual tools with which to work—tools which he could have got without going to college, but not nearly so quickly. So far as anything practical is concerned, a college is simply an intellectual hothouse. For four years the mind of the undergraduate is put "under glass," and a very warm and constant sunshine is poured down upon it. The result is, of course, that his mind blooms earlier than it would in the much cooler intellectual atmosphere of the business world.
A man learns more about business in the first six months after his graduation than he does in his whole four years of college. But—and here is the "practical" result of his college work—he learns far more in those six months than if he had not gone to college. He has been trained to learn, and that, to all intents and purposes, is all the training he has received. To say that he has been trained to think is to say essentially that he has been trained to learn, but remember that it is impossible to teach a man to think. The power to think must be inherently his. All that the teacher can do is help him learn to order his thoughts—such as they are.
Marks, Percy, "Under Glass", Scribner's Magazine Vol 73, 1923, p 47
http://www.archive.org/stream/scribnersmag73editmiss#page/46/mode/2up
As I think I mentioned before on this blog, my plumber drives a Ferrari...enough said.
JK Brown @ 4:14: excellent citation. I note with approval, even a little envy, not only the quality of the argument but the clarity and economy with which it is expressed. If college does nothing else, it should force the student to write well: in multiple voices and on multiple themes.
"Not to make this be all about women but …"
Women and minorities hardest hit.
Nope. They'll have to settle for an "uneducated" rube without debt that does quite well as a plumber, mechanic, electrician, etc.
Who will help pay off the enormous student loans these gals undertook to get that Feminist Studies degree.
And then she’ll divorce him.
The educational design of schools has favored women since the time of Tom Sawyer, which has allowed them to gradually overcome the sexism of how the rest society is structured. Among the Big Five characteristics, conscientiousness is strongly rewarded at schools, and is somewhat more common among women. (See also neuroticism.) This advantage starts in kindergarten or before, and compounds, because, women run it, and are abkle to enforce that value and make sure only certain men can enter the hierarchy, even as the reward structures modify in later years. I am 68, and this has been true since I was at Straw School in a mill city for grammar school. The teachers, all female, adored the bright, conscientious girls (though they were perhaps even more condemning of females outside the norm than males. Hard to say.) Boys were shamed, boys dropped out much more often in later years. "The system" has been rigged for decades. This change has been building inexorably, and exactly parallels the continuing decreasing value of formal education. the Chines will have this happen eventually as well, but they had a later start.
I maintain that this was the origin of 60s-70s feminism, that females who had followed the directions at school and were told this was the key to success were incensed when they graduated, finding that the other structures of society played by different rules. Their brothers and boyfriends who had done less homework were surpassing them once school was done. Unacceptable. Because of the bleed-over effect of believing that all systems were against them, the girls accused the schools, which had been favoring them for decades, of being stacked against them as well, because of stray sexist comments that teachers made or boys made that were not punished severely enough. At the time, society favored males, but the supposed preparation for society favored females. In a litigious society, the result was not in doubt, though it was seldom understood even as it ground its way along.
So women went into the fields where they could bully others into submission: academia, civil service (including the social sciences, where people are largely employed by governments - education, social work, psychology, library science, nursing), and law. Sorry to seem insulting. I am sure you are quite bright and talented and your rise was not undeserved. You would have had some nice career anyway even if you did not have advantages.
Females continue to make up 2/3 of the honor roll and 3/4 of the high honors. That result for males would have been litigated out by 1976. But when standardised tests show any bias toward males, the tests are changed. Oh yes. The College Boards, as we used to call them, used to show a significant advantage for males in math, a slight advantage for females in verbal. Which do you think was changed in the 1970s? The math problems in the practice tests that females did worse on were eliminated. No modification was made to the SATV. The math scores are now about even, the verbal advantage remains. This is not so in culture-free tests like the Raven's.
If I sound unnecessarily bitter and angry, consider that I have two brothers and five sons. The structure of schools destroyed two of the first generation and one of the latter (the one who was not flat out brilliant) and the rest of us have spent our careers catching up (we mostly have). For some males, it was an advantage to learn long ago that the school track was never going to be fair and other routes had to be sought. But the dropout rate shows the destruction. It has been getting worse as long as I have been observing it. Please, no blathering about pornography and video games. Those are the solace of the disfavored. They shouldn't, certainly, but I have no heart to kick them.
Sometimes people just get tired of being demonized and say to themselves, "I don't need this shit."
Chatting with an HVAC guy while he fixed my a/c. Said he and his daughter ride both western and dressage. Not a cheap entertainment.
But it may be about the sorority reunions, or similar status requirements in choosing a husband prospect.
I mean, what if he's in Louisiana bringing electricity to people in desperate need, pulling down whatever they pay for that--double time maybe?--putting a real hurt on Motel Six's free breakfast and everybody he sees gives him a thumbs up? Would you want to admit that to your sorority sister whose hubby is spending his time trying to make it rain on the law office in which he is trying for junior partner?
Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds....
Um, "Black, Latino and Asian"? how do the numbers break down when you move Asians to their own group?
Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications
no we're getting somewhere. the feminized education system hates males, especially males who act like "typical males", and try to beat them down with drugs to force them to fit into the female mold for "proper behavior".
Men in interviews around the U.S. said they quit school or didn’t enroll because they didn’t see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense required to earn one.
Sound's like they're far more intelligent / wise than than all those baristas with $100k+ in "education" debt, and utterly worthless "degrees"
Many said they wanted to make money after high school....
Many said they wanted to be functional human beings. "Educators" are very confused by this.
Jerlando Jackson, department chair, Education Leadership and Policy Analysis, at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, said few campuses have been willing to spend limited funds on male underachievement that would also benefit white men, risking criticism for assisting those who
The current orthodoxy holds up as "the Other" and "the enemy".
Because, as always, racism and sexism are alive and well on the Left, their natural home
gilbar said...
Seriously, which would YOU rather do?
Work at a Starbucks, with your MA in media studies?
or
Be a Welder?
Welders get worse burns.
Welders need to be physically strong, and tend to work in a mostly male environment, which means they have to find women to date outside of work.
So, if you ask me now? Welder
If you asked me when I was graduating from higschool? Well, I wasn't going to get an MA in anything, but I'd have rather worked at the Starbucks. There I could work my way up the management track
Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications.
Don't forget the biggest distraction to boy's education: the miniskirt.
"They'll have to settle for an "uneducated" rube without debt that does quite well as a plumber, mechanic, electrician, etc."
Based on social media and news articles it appears that at least 20% of women college students are of the lesbian persuasion, which leaves only .8X60 = 48 of every hundred female students who are straight and looking for a male partner. Assuming 10% of male college students are gay and also need a male partner, then around 36 men are available to pair up with 48 women. The obvious solution is to get the lesbian population up to to around 40%, which would leave the cis population of each sex roughly equivalent at 36 per hundred. Based on the coeds I've seen that shouldn't be hard to do.
If you'd like to know where a lot of the "men are rapists in training" BS is coming from, it's coming from that 60:40 female:male ratio.
When you have that imbalance, it's far easier for men at college to get a date than for women. Which means there's a lot of pressure on women to do what the guy wants, because if they don't, he'll just dump them and go on to the next girl, and she'll be on the sidelines out of luck.
IOW, it's a collective action problem: it's in every wamn's individual interest to behave in a way that's against a lot of the women's desires.
In the past, this was death with by "slut shaming", and religious / ethical rules that put society on the side of the girls who didn't want to put out.
You're no longer allowed to shame sluts, and "being a good girl" is no longer societally supported. So instead we get new "societal rules" that let women randomly harm men who are following all the official rules.
It's an effort to try to force guys to be less interested in having sex with their date. But, since they can't be honest about it, it's a shitty system that doesn't actually work, it just gets random relatively innocent guys screwed over
As I think I mentioned before on this blog, my plumber drives a Ferrari...enough said.
@Joe Smith, an old joke, but still funny.
A brain surgeon has a plumbing emergency on a weekend and calls his plumber. After verifying with the surgeon that he understands about weekend emergency rates, the plumber agrees to come.
Five minutes after the plumber arrives he’s fixed the problem, and he presents his bill.
The surgeon hits the roof! “All this for five minutes’ work?!? Why, on a per-hour basis that’ more than I make as a brain surgeon!”
“Yeah, I didn’t make much money back when I was a brain surgeon, either.”
It's a law of government: You get more of what you subsidize, less of what you tax.
We, as a culture have been working for decades on 'settling accounts' with the men in our society. It started years ago with a concerted effort to not call on boys in classrooms, to look for answers only from the girls. We coupled that with a mass program to drug our young boys with ritalin to make them more docile, less like...boys. And from there we had years of class emphasis on helping, promoting, encouraging, and focusing on our young girls, while ignoring, discouraging, denigrating our young boys. Until we got to the point where we were actually telling boys and young men that they were toxic. That, if they held any masculine traits, they were toxic. Masculinity itself was declared evil. Any romantic moves were to be considered rape or an attempt at it.
Until we've reached today- where the only guys left are Beta Boys, who let you know at the drop of a dime that they are 'feminists', if anything.
The results have been creeping toward this dichotomy for years and, per my opening line- it is by design. It's not an aberration, it's not even a surprise if you've paid any attention to education or our society for the last 30 years.
Christina Hoff Sommers published "The War Against Boys" in 2000. So she saw what had been going on for years, 21 years ago. And I see no lessening of this movement. Except for this:
Women have been taking over positions throughout our corporate and political worlds. They are now living the stress that men have lived with for years. And it is taking it's toll on the young professional women. Some would love to start families, but, guess what? They either don't have the time, or cannot find a man who meets their financial or professional standards (because the men dropped out long ago). And there's the natural fertility clock at play as well. Want to start a family? Well, we're starting later and making smaller families than ever. And those who do it, cannot make up for those who don't have any kids.
So we're going to have more women with drinking problems, high blood pressure, heart attacks, or sitting alone in the office of their psychologist wondering what happened. Think that's hyperbole? Look around you. Meanwhile, we're not even producing enough kids to replace the generations leaving. (But don't worry, we'll have plenty of newly imported young kids speaking Spanish or Pashto or Dari.)
Women should have the opportunities, of course. But not at the expense of half of our society. You don't improve one gender by derailing the other. Just as you don't improve the lot of one race by derailing the other. What we've done to boys is now being done to white people, particularly white men. And it is more out in the open, more systemic, and by design- just like the last program.
When you let your government decide social direction, nothing...and I mean NOTHING good can come of it.
Re: Joe's comment at 4:19
We just had several plumbing projects completed. If my plumber does NOT
have a Ferrari, it's just because he's not a good money manager.
...a widening education gap across the U.S.
Well, I'd say it's a widening credentialing gap instead.
My grandson is totally not college material. He joined the Army Reserves when he was 17. He went to basic training this summer. This will be his last year of high school. After graduation he will go for advanced training as an internal electrician. He will get paid for doing this. We all wish this was happening under the previous president, but c'est la vie. Did I mention he's getting paid to learn a well-paying trade? This route isn't for everyone, but it's at least an alternative for some.
Anthony at 5:53 nails it, pithily, too.
By extension it is easy to see which races and gender would benefit most from student loan forgiveness to be paid by the taxes of those who did not incur student debt.
If the numbers were reversed, this would be a national crisis and Congress would be scheduling hearings.
"One might assume that men are better at assessing risk/reward...."
Why might one assume that? Compared with what other social group(s)?
Weird. If we weren't talking about that evil and lesser race and sex, one might even think something *systemic* was going on.
"... increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications..."
When you subsidize something you get more of it.
Some people are always going to go to college. The children of the middle and upper classes, for example, which I believe are 50% male and 50% female.
So the "problem" of the distinct difference in four year college graduation by sex is mostly expressed in the working class.
I know that community colleges usually feed four-year degree granting colleges. In community colleges, graduation rates for both sexes are abysmal. It is a matter of declining returns, it takes more and more effort (e.g. tax payer dollars) to graduate the next student.
Even with highly subsidized tuition, young men often have to choose between attending college (which costs them money and time) and work (which gives them money in exchange for time). It is not an easy problem to solve.
Blogger Robert Cook said...
"One might assume that men are better at assessing risk/reward...."
"Why might one assume that? Compared with what other social group(s)?"
That would be the "other social group" called "women."
@ngtrains and Big Mike...
I've known him for a while, but I told him he might not want to let his new customers know about his fancy wheels...
And yes, it was 'used' but low miles and only a few years old, but still...
And my gardener once told me what a pain it was to have a horse. Really?
Blogger Rt41Rebel said...
Nope. They'll have to settle for an "uneducated" rube without debt that does quite well as a plumber, mechanic, electrician, etc.
But why would the "uneducated rube" want to marry someone with large college debts, knowledge and skill in damnall (eg; English lit, media, womens studies, sociologyetc and all the other courses women tend to take)
Why would a productive guy want to take on a "passenger" woman?
OK to take out to the van for a quick roll, perhaps. But a long term relationship? Other than her genitalia, what can she possibly bring to the relationship?
John Henry
John Henry
Thank you JK Brown for that excerpt. I’ve always held the belief that college is more like a hazing that proves you can handle the real world and the critical thinking skills that go along with it. And this is is coming from someone who didn’t attend a 4 year college but made it in a manufacturing trade. And as some of you have pointed out already, I’ve always felt that school was always based on woman’s traits. Especially organization of paperwork which I loathed doing. Must be hereditary because my 12 year old son hates too. Also shout out to Temujin for the always awesome comments!
Late to the party here, but I agree with what several people have said to Sally327: The problem is not that the poor, newly-credentialed female college grad will have no man to set herself up in style. There will still be tens of millions of men, and they will still be making lots of money. The actual problem is that a lot of them will not have college degrees. They will still be making money, but not in what our female grad considers reputable work. Why, it might not even be behind a desk!
Sorry, but my sympathy for women who assume they will always be taken care of by someone with just slightly higher incomes and slightly more impressive credentials than they have themselves is, to say no more, severely limited.
Blogger Big Mike said...
The surgeon hits the roof! “All this for five minutes’ work?!? Why, on a per-hour basis that’ more than I make as a brain surgeon!”
“Yeah, I didn’t make much money back when I was a brain surgeon, either.”
When I was selling machinery, I didn't do a lot of billed service work. When I did, I think I was charging $75/hour, 6 hour minimum. Probably mid-90s
There was a guy who owned a water bottling plant, wanted some help with his capper. I'd not sold the machine or anything else to him but there are not a lot of people who can do what I do.
I'd tried to sell to him and he was kind of an asshole. When he tried to tell me that his lawyer only charged $50/hour and he was not going to pay me more, I suggested that he get his lawyer to fix his capper and hung up. Screw him, I didn't and don't need his bullshit.
As my ex-partner used to tell me, the customer is usually right but there are too many good clients and potential clients to waste time with assholes.
John Henry
The world needs only so many "anything that ends in studies" degrees. They are absolutely worthless. I have been a law school professor for 25 years. I know the grift pretty well.
"Why might one assume that? Compared with what other social group(s)?"
The social group that takes out tens-of-thousands-of-dollar loans for a woke degree.
Don't know if that's what he meant. Just spit balling here.
Mechanic rate: $115/hour. No college degree needed
Barista rate: $15/share. College degree required.
weird.
Greg The Class Traitor @ 5:29: very meaty comment about the “collective action problem” arising from a 60:40 female:male ratio: “If you'd like to know where a lot of the ‘men are rapists in training’ BS is coming from, it's coming from that 60:40 female:male ratio.
When you have that imbalance, it's far easier for men at college to get a date than for women. Which means there's a lot of pressure on women to do what the guy wants, because if they don't, he'll just dump them and go on to the next girl, and she'll be on the sidelines out of luck. IOW, it's a collective action problem: it's in every woman’s individual interest to behave in a way that's against a lot of the women's desires.”
What struck me about the (very plausible) scenario you describe was, the destabilizing effect of the disparity in sexes. The “shortage” of males raises their market price so that females have to offer more to get their attention. If that produces a happy and stable win-win result, OK; but we all know it can lead instead to predatory behavior and dashed hopes. Or lead not even to predatory behavior; merely to dashed hopes. At which point females trying to defend their amour-propre or punish the males who rejected them, or go along with the vindictive advice of a “support group” of outcasts or ideologues, will call the Title IX office and start another cycle of he-said/she-said persecution. Which signals to the other males, not only those enrolled but also and especially those considering enrollment, “this is a bad environment, stay away.” So they go off and become plumbers instead. Making the sex disparity even worse.
It’s counterintuitive: you’d think a female-heavy campus would be a buyer’s market for males, with rapid market clearance. But thanks to human psychology it could produce a hellscape of disappointment, broken trust and ruinous litigation. In turn this would drive even more males away. I think here of the Hot/Crazy Matrix as a relevant aid to risk analysis.
Maybe colleges can revert to their earlier role of being a place where you go to get educated, rather than to issue credentials for profit to people looking for a job. That may not draw in more males, but it should get rid of quite a few of the females.
If everyone in the US were to obtain a 4 year degree, then Starbux and McDonald's will make it a job requirement.
"...a widening education gap across the U.S."
Is that as serious as a mine shaft gap?
But why would the "uneducated rube" want to marry someone with large college debts, knowledge and skill in damnall (eg; English lit, media, womens studies, sociologyetc and all the other courses women tend to take)
@John Henry, maybe the poor bugger fell in love?
Greg The Class Traitor said...
I'd have rather worked at the Starbucks. There I could work my way up the management track
i wonded what fraction of a welder's pay, a Starbucks manager makes?
"Blogger Robert Cook said...
'"One might assume that men are better at assessing risk/reward....'
"Why might one assume that? Compared with what other social group(s)?"
"That would be the 'other social group' called 'women.'"
Well, that's the obvious other social group. But, I just wondered if the comment was any more comprehensive than that. There are many more social groups than just men and women. In any case, it's an assertion backed up with no offered statistical data.
I don't know if men are better at assessing risk/reward than men, but it strikes me that many men are childish fools. Of course, so can be many women, but women have to assess how well any prospective mate will be as a father, (likely quality of offspring, likely quality of fathering, likely ability to be a provider of food and security). If I had to guess at whether men or women are being better at assessing risk/reward, without reviewing any data, I would say women.
Conclusion is obviously bullsh*t. Women and men can't add up to 100%, especially in college.
So, only people of those two genders attended college?
So, only people of those two genders attended college?
I’m going to defend “Studies” degree, at least the old-fashioned area studies degrees, like East Asian Studies, South Asian Studies, Russian Studies, Latin American Studies. The core of these programs was a foreign language requirement, on top of which was layered classes in different disciplines (history, literature, art, religion, sociology, economics) about that particular geographic area. I would suggest that the rigor in these programs came from the foreign language requirement. For some reason, all the folks who bloviate about multiculturalism and diversity never get around to studying foreign languages. It’s too hard, I suppose.
gilbar said...
Greg The Class Traitor said...
I'd have rather worked at the Starbucks. There I could work my way up the management track
i wonder what fraction of a welder's pay, a Starbucks manager makes?
Having had a high school job at a fast food place, I learned that managers could work their way up to getting their own franchised store. A good one of those makes more than a welder. (Note: I understand that Starbucks his "licenses", rather than "franchises". Beyond that, I don't know the differences)
Now, on average it wouldn't surprise me if welders make more than fast food managers. And if you work your way up to owning a welding business, you may very well make more than the franchise fast food owner.
Of course, owning and successfully running a business where you have multiple employees doing the work is a very different task from doing the welding yourself.
But, like I said: if I were starting now, knowing what I know now, I'd take a good hard look at skipping college and going into a trade.
But high school senior me would still be going to college. In STEM of course
"For some reason, all the folks who bloviate about multiculturalism and diversity never get around to studying foreign languages. It’s too hard, I suppose."
That would be cultural appropriation.
Jan and Dean, both males, celebrated the fact that in Surf City, there are "two girls for every boy." In higher ed today, there are 1.5 girls for every boy. That means that there is a lot of competition in the "get a boyfriend" market and, I strongly suspect, a certain "race to the bottom". If you're a girl, you do what you have to do: earlier sex?, worse sex?, putting up with a lot of sh*t? Probably makes it easier for college women to accept the narrative that they are oppressed.
I'm not STEM material, which is fine with me. I would have taken my high-school Spanish and later few semesters of German a lot more seriously had I known more precisely what I wanted to do in life.
And/or, I might have taken the GED for an early out of high school, but if that option existed in the late 60s I didn't know it.
OTOH, from an early age I've done many different things indoors and out to make money, that helped me figure out exactly what I didn't want to do, for any amount of money or prospect of money.
As it turned out, I ended up in a job that was well suited to my tastes and talents--until managerial administrivia finally broke my spirit . . .
Not to make this be all about women but it does hurt women as well because it means that finding suitable partners can be difficult. Women have to "partner down" and carry more of the load, financially and otherwise, which is also difficult because women aren't raised to expect to have to do that. Girls, at least middle and upper class white girls, are taught that life is a matter of choices and opportunities, not so much about necessities and burdens.
This is where I wish we could embed one of those spit take GIFs. There is an easy and obvious solution to this problem for women, forgo college and take a job as a waitress right out of high school, then you can "marry up" to just about any of your single regular customers.
'To be in a time when there are groups of white men that are falling through the cracks, it’s hard.'"
HA!!! It wouldn't seem hard if they actually cared. Lord knows they have thrown incredible gobs of money and privileges to their favored groups, with little reason to think it would do any good, and, as one would expect, little to show for it.
We have structured a society where many men do not see value in education, and see more risk than reward in getting married. Such a society does not have a promising future.
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