<p>Amherst is not less demanding of low income students. In fact, they have to meet the same standards as others. It does however have a huge endowment and is willing to spend it on the students. It has an active diversity program in which it recruits qualified low income students and even pays for them to come to the accepted students' weekend. Many of these qualified low income students are accepted early write, with nice FA packages. With follow up phone calls from the Prez and others, they court these students. Perhaps that is why they have so many - they are made to feel welcome.</p>
<p>When I graduated in 1983, 4 of the 37 graduating chemical engineers were female. All of us married other chemical engineers (not sure if that was a good idea or not, but it worked for me). It's interesting that there are only six of them, and that none of them are going immediately into the work force.</p>
<p>"Amherst is not less demanding of low income students. In fact, they have to meet the same standards as others. It does however have a huge endowment and is willing to spend it on the students. It has an active diversity program in which it recruits qualified low income students and even pays for them to come to the accepted students' weekend. Many of these qualified low income students are accepted early write, with nice FA packages. With follow up phone calls from the Prez and others, they court these students. Perhaps that is why they have so many - they are made to feel welcome."</p>
<p>Yup - they have been working at it for a decade, put big bucks behind it, and it has paid off handsomely. Better education too.</p>
<p>Not 26th.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So a relative shortage is to be expected.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But, a relative shortage does not impact Harvard's faculty hiring. Of all the schools in the world, Harvard has the resources to hire the cream of the crop from a scarce candidate pool. If Harvard's President and Corportate Board were interested in hiring female professors, they could easily outbid their competitors and have a monopoly on the market.</p>
<p>The University was doing quite well at increasing its ranks of tenured female professors until Summers arrived and awarding tenure to females ground to a screeching halt. He has tried to explain that by saying that it is difficult to find qualified women. But, that's a disingenuous argument for his particular university. A more honest explanation would be to simply state that he doesn't believe it is worth the bother and expense required to add to the ranks of female faculty.</p>
<p>Yup - Harvard gets who they want - who they believe are "qualified". Women aren't. Same with low-income applicants.</p>
<p>26th.</p>
<p>This all harks back to AA type policies: Does Harvard want to hire the more qualified applicant, or the woman, if the woman is less qualified?</p>
<p>"if the school selects one candidate over another because the former contributes to "diversity," then diversity trumps academic merit unless the two candidates are indistinguishable in their intellectual attainments and potential. If Harvard hopes to hire the nation's most promising demographer, searching for the best female demographer may not yield the best or even the third-best scholar.</p>
<p>The search for gender diversity is at war with merit except in cases in which there is pervasive discrimination against women. "</p>
<p>As with the push for more representation of minorities, it usually comes at the cost of less qualified faculty.</p>
<p>If I understand correctly, you are arguing one or both of these, to explain the underrepresentation of women:
Harvard actively discriminates against women, engaging in chauvinism/sexism.
Harvard should focus a little less on merit and more on gender to have more female faculty members.</p>
<p>There are qualified women. The question is, does Harvard want to admit them instead of more qualified men? Harvard seeks to hire the absolute best in any given field. Should it compromise when a woman is not at the top, or near top? If a field has as low as 10% women with PhDs, and in reality even less because some have decided to have children instead of pursuing their career, how can Harvard reasonably hire many women?</p>
<p>Precisely what is the point of having more female faculty? To show that Harvard does not discriminate? For gender equality? Because feminists protest for it?</p>