Gender Inequities in Education

For thirty-three years - since the adoption of Title IX - we have tried to eliminate alleged gender inequities in education. By now it should be apparent that we've not just closed the gap, but reversed it. The Washington Post just ran a report on the disappearance of men from college campuses. No, it's not about some gender-reverse Ted Bundy-type serial abductor, but the worrisome decline in male college enrollment compared to women, with men making up only 43% of the student population on U.S. college campuses. That continues a trend that began in the late 70's when women first passed men in college enrollment. Washington Post story

First, let's clarify that though the writer implies that fewer men are now attending college, that’s not the case. In reality, the number of men attending college has increased since 1990, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of high school graduates. A 2003 study by Andrew Summ, Neeta Fogg, et al. shows that the percentage of male high school graduates going on to college rose by two percentage points from 1990 to 2001. (Study link)

Still, a woman is far more likely to go on to college than is a man. Not only that, she's also more likely to finish high school since males are more likely to drop out before graduating. (Chart) So, why in this era when knowledge is king, are there such gender discrepancies in both college enrollments and high school dropout rates? I believe there are three basic explanations.

The first is differing perspectives of career prospects among men and women. While more women have come to see a college education as their best hope for a good job, many men still cling to the notion that they'll be able to get high-paying, low-skill jobs in manufacturing and elsewhere.

A second, more insidious reason, is the changing educational approach in our primary and secondary schools arising from attempts to satisfy the requirements of Title IX. When first enacted, women were more likely than men to drop out of high school and less likely to attend college. Four years later, men were dropping out of school at higher rates than women. Just two years after that, men became the minority on college campuses. Despite this reality, nearly all the focus on gender inequities in education remained skewed toward alleged hardships faced by girls. Complaints that our schools favored boys with regard to teacher attention, science, math and computer instruction, athletics and more still drove much of the debate in academic circles.

Yet it was the boys who were dropping out and not going on to college. Gender activists claiming to seek gender equity, instead enforced a new gender inequity. We ignored our struggling boys, while continuing reforms that favored girls. Verbal skills were emphasized, while instruction in areas where boys performed well like math and science, was made more girl friendly. Couple this with misguided attempts to improve students' so-called self-esteem, and it's no wonder our boys feel lost. Boys tend to feel good about themselves through restless, competitive, hands-on achievement. But in our efforts to make sure little Johnny's (or Janey's) feelings weren't hurt, we removed opportunities for competitive comparisons. Schools have eliminated everything from letter grades to dodgeball. Lo and behold, we find that boys don't feel at home in school.

This demographic shift in higher education is a harbinger of bad tidings. Lesser education means lesser career prospects. Mismatched academic achievement means mismatched relationships. Underemployed at work and overmatched at home, too many men risk becoming marginalized members of society. The self-esteem we've worked so hard to instill in girls has been at the expense of the self-esteem of our boys - boys who tend more toward crime, violence, substance abuse and unemployment than do women. Directionless men seeking purpose too easily and too often find it in less than ideal groups, as can be seen from the gangs in our inner cities to the terrorist groups of the Middle East. The risk will only worsen as fewer boys grow up with worthy role models.

And therein lies the third reason for college enrollment gender inequities: we’re now into the second and third generation of poorly educated men. While previous generations may have grown up in homes headed by fathers without degrees or diplomas, it was not because the father failed to value education. Today, it is – if there is a father at all.

Yes, gender inequities remain. But now it's our boys’ turn to suffer. If we do not address the issue quickly and effectively, they won’t suffer alone.

[Footnotes: The NY Times ran this David Brooks column in 2022 that amplifies the issues in this piece. 

The intro to Ezra Klein's March 10, 2023 podcast began with a line quite similar to the opener of this 2005 piece: "In 1972, when Congress passed Title IX to tackle gender equity in education, men were 13 percentage points more likely to hold bachelor’s degrees than women; today women are 15 points more likely to do so than men."