THANK GOODNESS FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Mysterious Decline-Where Are the Men on Campus? (Glenn Sacks on 04/30/03, American Daily)

Everybody wants to know where all the men have gone. The Washington Post calls their disappearance the "question that has grown too conspicuous to ignore," and USA Today notes "universities fret about how to attract males as women increasingly dominate campuses."

Females now outnumber males by a four to three ratio in American colleges, a difference of almost two million students. Men earn only 43% of all college degrees. Among blacks, two women earn bachelor's degrees for every man. Among Hispanics, only 40 percent of college graduates are male. Female high school graduates are 16% more likely to go to college than their male counterparts.

"This is new. We have thrown the gender switch," says Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men. "What does it mean in the long run that we have females who are significantly more literate, significantly more educated than their male counterparts? It is likely to create a lot of social problems. This does not bode well for anyone."

"As a nation, we simply can't afford to have half of our population not developing the skill sets that we are going to need to go into the future," says Susan L. Traiman, director of the Business Roundtable's education initiative.

Researchers from Harvard University, the University of Michigan and the United Negro College Fund have now agreed to study the issue.

"This is a powerful issue we need to stop talking about in generalities and really dig into," says Michael L. Lomax, president of Dillard University in New Orleans. "We just can't figure out how to get more male applicants, and we're not going to turn students down on the basis on gender," Lomax says. "I don't understand what is happening in the male community that is making education seem less attractive and less compelling."

The trend is unmistakable and some fear it is irreversible. Men made up the majority of college graduates when the first national survey was conducted in 1870. Except during World War II, when slightly more females enrolled than men, males were in the majority until men?s graduation rate began to decline in the late 1970s. By the early 1980s women began to represent the majority of graduates.

In total, the U.S. Department of Education estimates that 698,000 women received bachelor's degrees in 2002, compared to 529,000 men.

Gee, who'da thought that several decades of systematic discrimination against men would have an effect? Luckily, thanks to affirmative action, we can just let in a bunch of unqualified men until it gets back to 50/50. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 30, 2003 7:49 PM