One Response to “This might lure more men into college”

1. Anonymous Says:
   January 2nd, 2010 at 11:21 am

   I think this article reflects an analogous problem college professors and staff share with their K-12 teacher brethren. They don’t want to be measured by external results. They want to be measured by what they want to be measured by. K-12 teachers, through the unions, do not want to be measured on any objective result, such as how many students, in an individual class with an individual teacher, pass a standardized test or eventually graduate. They want to be measured on such factors that have nothing to do with the results of individual students such as did you write a good lesson plan. Colleges also don’t want to be measured on factors like how many of your graduates get a job. They want to be measured by factors like how many papers did you publish. So long as students keep coming, and so long as guilt at seeing your graduates driving cabs (if they can even get that job these days) is kept at bay, you can get back to your research. I think colleges long for a past that is disappearing somewhat. In the bad old days, significant portions of the student body fell into two classes. One class was the children of the rich. They were the ideal student for what colleges like to be. Career aspirations were irrelevant because they were guaranteed. There were relatively few college graduates. They were guaranteed jobs because of their scarcity. And, as a last resort, or by original intent, they could simply go into the family business. The GI Bill started to bring many students outside that group into colleges, but they were still a minority, so they could always get jobs. Finally, a decent percentage of students, although way less than 50%, were women. In the bad old days, these women knew they were going to get married and stay home and so the career implications of their college degrees were relatively minor factors. In fact, one aspect of that was that a lot of agencies that these women eventually volunteered for got the free benefits of their education. But now, the women are the majority on campus. They are heading out to individual careers. The children of the rich are still there. But they are a much smaller percentage of students. And so the issues in this article are becoming a greater and greater concern for colleges. Add to that the ever increasing inflation in college tuitions. The system of loans allows most students to go, but at the cost of a debt that is becoming greater and greater. Being able to “guarantee” that you will be able to make enough money after graduation to pay it off without living a life in poverty is something that students have to worry about but that is scarcely a blip on the radar for college staffs. So far, colleges have been easily able to resist these pressures regarding accountability of their student’s outcomes, just as the K-12 teachers have been able to resist calls for measuring the effectiveness of individual teachers based on the results of their students. But this article shows that the pressure is starting to mount. I don’t see why these trends are likely to convince more men to enroll and graduate, at least not directly out of high school. As has been stated by many, the college gender gap has its roots in the deficiencies of boys in K-12. In fact, it said in the article that 89% of employers surveyed said they wanted more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing.” A way needs to be found to significantly improve the literacy skills of boys or I think that the factors raised in this article will be very minor with regard to convincing more men to enroll and graduate.

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