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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

Men say 'meh' to college

The higher ed gender gap is widening, reports Richard Fry for the Pew Research Center. Fewer young men are pursuing degrees, especially at four-year colleges and universities.


"Co-eds" make up 58 percent of students at four-year colleges and universities.

College enrollment has been declining for all students over the past decade, he writes, but the fall is steeper for males. "Today, men represent only 42% of students ages 18 to 24 at four-year schools, down from 47% in 2011."


Thirty-nine percent of male high school graduates are enrolled in college now, down from 47 percent in 2011, Fry reports. Forty-eight percent of female high school graduates are enrolled in college, down from 52 percent.


The gender gap in college-going is widest for white high school graduates, Pew reports.

13 Comments


m_t_anderson
Dec 22, 2023

After 12 years of public education where boys and young men are pressured to become "good little girls," I suspect many of them decide to get out of that stupid game.

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Chuck Crosby
Chuck Crosby
Dec 22, 2023

Men are publicly villainized and openly discriminated on high school and college campuses. Of course fewer men are exposing themselves to that. The trades and various IT certifications are replacing college as men's entry to good paying jobs. Colleges are skewing heavily liberal arts, with a growing number of low employable degree fields such as gender or ethnic studies. College environment and education are changing ahead of the student demographics.

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JK Brown
JK Brown
Dec 23, 2023
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Well, the one related an incident that happened when he was speaking at a college quite recently. A single woman took issue with an idea and security and administrators were called in. Hardly conducive to open and vigorous debate.


Colleges are now diploma mills not places for debate and investigation.

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JK Brown
JK Brown
Dec 21, 2023

Life long debt and indoctrination? Men say "meh" to that? And just as most of what college offers is going to be taken over by AI?


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…

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superdestroyer
Dec 22, 2023
Replying to

What part of composition is the corrupt part. Or what part of admitting the bad parts of American history is the corrupting part. If one goes back and reviews the book "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" it was not the left creating most of the problems.

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superdestroyer
Dec 21, 2023

In the book "Parenting to a Degree" the authors discussed the phenomenon where parents are more willing to pay full tuition, out of state tuition, sorority dues, semesters abroad and every other item that goes with higher education for their daughters than their sons. Many parents and especially helicopter mothers will support daughters pursuing the daughter's passions when those parents would never support their sons doing similar things.


There is also the problem that since girls mature earlier than boys and schools keep pushing college prep classes into lower grades, the boys start off behind the girls in 7th grade and will probably never be able to catch up.

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