More reacts to the Commission investigation…
What colleges are doing falls short of discriminating against women, argues Mona Charen. Hmmm…try telling that to female high school senior denied her favored college while the slacker boy down the street gets in. Overall it’s a good column, except for her questionable reporting on test scores. Boys outscoring girls in verbal abilities? She must be referring to some college admissions tests, where far more poor and minority girls than boys take the test, skewing the gender results. Flawed reporting.
December 16th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Once again, as in the case of Petula Dvorak, we have a woman commentator who just happens to have sons, in the case of Mona Charen 3 sons and no daughters. Mona Charen is also a lawyer. And Mona Charen also seems to be advocating the abolition of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. I loved this statement, “That this is happening — though it theoretically violates the law for public institutions — is an open secret.” “Theoretically” violates the law? And this from a lawyer. I don’t think that she is so much arguing that colleges aren’t discriminating against women so much as that the boy situation makes the discrimination justifiable. So I guess what she is really advocating is a change to discrimination law to allow all colleges to discriminate on the basis of gender. And she is stating the reverse position from the talk show host. While the talk show host said that since there was no past discrimination against boys that needed to be redressed, he was unconcerned with boys educational problems as a class, she is concerned about boys educational problems as a class. Especially because she maintains (and I think it is an axiomatic assumption going in) that boys are cognitively as capable as girls and that the observed educational deficiencies in boys must have another source. But the key paragraph is this one, “The boy crisis may be an artifact of our weakened families, or our feminized school environments, or Take Your Daughter to Work Day — or all of the above. But as the mother of three sons, that messy backpack with crumpled math homework due last week really resonated.” If she didn’t have only sons, would her position be what it is? Would Petula Dvorak have given a second thought to the educational problems of boys? How many of the 80% of teachers who are women have sons but no daughters? For the majority of female teachers who are not in that situation, does that fact have any impact on the relative ways they deal with girls and boys such as to contribute to how girls thrive in school and how boys have such problems?
December 16th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Charen weakens her argument by a gratuitous attack on the Civil Rights Commission. Otherwise she does a reasonable job in pointing out some of the problems.
In all the fuss about admissions biases a number of points are overlooked.
a. MIT (and probably other engineering schools) do exactly the opposite of what liberal arts colleges are doing. It is much easier for a young woman to get into MIT than for a young man. If gender balance is good for the goose, why isn’t it good for the gander?
b. Most of the DC area schools do not have the lopsided admissions percentages of the leading public liberal arts college in the area, W&M. They are pretty close to parity.
c. At W&M applications from men last year were 13% higher than in 2006, while applications from women increased 6%. In other words, the differential may be slowly shrinking.
d. If one looks at the undergraduate enrollments, Virginia Polytech is 57% male, while W&M is 57% female. The graduate enrollment at Tech is also predominantly male, while the professional school enrollment is predominantly female.
e. Looking at the big picture, I continue to wonder if young men are increasingly getting the message that the old blue collar employment possibilities are declining and that a college degree or at least a community college degree is now almost mandatory.
December 16th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
To me, it’s not enrollments but the discrimination behind the admittance rates, at some colleges. Frankly, to me this whole flap has only one significance — pointing the finger to K-12, where the problem lies. But this issue is the only one people pay attention to. It’s “sexy.”
December 16th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Yes, Richard. Enrollment “bias” is sexy. What is missing is the other half of the picture - what happens at MIT and probably other engineering colleges. I would bet a copy or two of your book that similar admissions patterns can be found at Cal Tech and just about any other school with Engineering in its name.
December 17th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Yes…the problem lays with K-12 education. My question is why cannot colleges be allowed to balance their programs and campuses in such a manner as they believe work best for their schools? Why is this considered discrimination?
Please note: I am the mother of two successful white males (college and senior in high school) and am thrilled the pendulum has finally turned to the plight of boys — predominately minority but all boys have been impacted some way or another…
We need many more male teachers in all grades including elementary…the boys without fathers or other strong positive male role model in their lives need the male teacher…or someone who has some inkling of what they are facing in their lives…