Big (Wo)Man on Campus
Posted on July 10th, 2006
(Source: Indiana University)
Remember the days when men dominated college campuses, especially the elite, Eastern-establishment institutions? No, you probably don't. We're talking the 1960s. Nowadays, women are more prevalent on college campuses, and reportedly are earning better grades.
Consider this from the New York Times:
Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor's degrees - and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.
And in two national studies, college men reported that they studied less and socialized more than their female classmates. [....]
It is not that men are in a downward spiral: they are going to college in greater numbers and are more likely to graduate than two decades ago.
Still, men now make up only 42 percent of the nation's college students. And with sex discrimination fading and their job opportunities widening, women are coming on much stronger, often leapfrogging the men to the academic finish. [....]
The gender differences are not uniform. In the highest-income families, men 24 and under attend college as much as, or slightly more than, their sisters, according to the American Council on Education, whose report on these issues is scheduled for release this week.
Young men from low-income families, which are disproportionately black and Hispanic, are the most underrepresented on campus, though in middle-income families too, more Daughters than sons attend college. In recent years the gender gap has been widening, especially among low-income whites and Hispanics.
When it comes to earning bachelor's degrees, the gender gap is smaller than the gap between whites and blacks or Hispanics, federal data shows.
All of this has helped set off intense debate over whether these trends show a worrisome achievement gap between men and women or whether the concern should instead be directed toward the educational difficulties of poor boys, black, white or Hispanic.
Read the full article here.
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