<p>Can't answer all your questions Percy. But I can tell you that right now women still earn a percentage of what men earn. They don't lead major corporations. They aren't asked to be directors on boards of major corporations. And so on.</p>
<p>It is possible this situation will change in the next few decades, given that the situation is changing in high schools and colleges. Girls are outperforming boys, and their college-going rate is significantly higher. In fact, I wonder if one of the reasons there are more girls at MIT now is because so many girls are outperforming boys these days. Perhaps the female applicants to MIT are better than the male ones who get denied?</p>
<p>As Bethie pointed out several pages back, girls are suffering discrimination at many LACs. It is harder for them to get in, despite their stellar GPAs and SATs and ECs, because so few boys are applying and these colleges want as close to a 50/50 ratio as possible. Girls who apply to the tech colleges are smart -- they are a wanted commodity there. Perhaps some of those male MIT applicants should start applying to the LACs -- they are in demand there. </p>
<p>Do you want MIT to go back to being 17% women? Have the women on campus watered down the education there? Is MIT being dumbed down? I'm still waiting for evidence that that's happened.</p>
<p>Cheers - is this one of those "heads I win, tails you lose" type things? If MIT fails to vet women as much as men, this is "ambivalence". If MIT vetted women MORE than men, that would surely be bad in your book too. I'm guessing that this was not "ambivalence" but probably just plain sloppiness. I agree that this has sabotaged women to some extent but that's just because their "positive discrimination" backfired on them, not because they were "ambivalent".</p>
<p>Sly - regarding 17% women - based on this years applications it would be 27% women assuming that the male and female pools were equally qualified and therefore accepted in the same ratio that the applications come in. I have no problem with that - let the chips fall where they may. If it were up to me, the applications would be coded so that the readers didn't know the name, race or gender of the applicants. They would judge each file purely on its merits. I don't think we would stand for it if exams were scored in the way that admissions are done now. Longer term I'm sure that the % would go up anyway.</p>
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They don't lead major corporations. They aren't asked to be directors on boards of major corporations. And so on.
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</p>
<p>Oh please. Immediately, the CEO of Pepsi Co., a graduate of Indian Institute of Management and Yale comes to mind. There are many many others. I agree that there aren't as many as males, but making such a blanket statement is just plain wrong.</p>
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..girls are suffering discrimination at many LACs...
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</p>
<p>And males are suffering discrimination at MIT. It's funny how you recognize one but not the other.</p>
<p>Percy Skivins wrote: "So, are women to be admitted to alleviate the "suffering" of men from their absence or should they be admitted on their own merits?"</p>
<p>Of course women are to be admitted based on their merit. However, you can also generate the positive side effect that this benefits men as well.</p>
<p>I appreciate this discussion and think it has been quite thoughtful, by and large. Thanks everyone!</p>
<p>I think I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the Martin Luther King phrase regarding judging people on the content of their character has often been employed against affirmative action, but he approved of affirmative action policies. That doesn't mean you can't use the phrase, but (in my humble opinion), one shouldn't imply that King disliked affirmative action. And, in any case, test scores and gpa are not components of character; if they were, you wouldn't have smart people who cheat and lie.</p>
<p>Oh, I see, but making the blanket statement that most females can't "make it at MIT" is okay. Excuse me for not understanding the difference. I can say "most females are idiots," but "all females are idiots" makes me sexist. Good to know there's a line.</p>
<p>"For years, women have outnumbered men on college campuses. Overall, they get better grades than men. And yet, just months after they toss their mortarboards into the air at college graduation, men start to pull ahead of women in pay.</p>
<p>Though the pay gap between men and women is well documented, it is startling to discover that it begins so soon. According to a new study by the American Association of University Women, women already earn 20 percent less than men at the same level and in the same field one year after college graduation. Right at the beginning, before taking time off for childbirth or child-rearing, women find themselves behind. . . </p>
<p>I find it fascinating that so many people seem to care so deeply and morally about the gender composition of MIT's incoming classes and its admissions policies. There is even some denial that this private university ought to have discretion in how it composes its classes. Could this be out of a dispassionate certainty that the country needs a(nother) by-the-numbers-only university, for the good of humanity? Surely it wouldn't be out of any form of sour grapes or lingering anger over someone being denied admission. </p>
<p>Right?</p>
<p>(Note: my comments are meant totally apart from the Jones debacle. I find myself wondering why so many people are so angered about the policies MIT -- not Ms. Jones, but MIT -- has elected to implement.)</p>
<p>I really don't understand why Jones' lies somehow mean that the admissions policies (set by other administrators and trustees, by the way) that worked two weeks ago are suddenly invalid. No one was seriously questioning the ratio of male/female admits prior to this week.</p>
<p>If women were graduating at a lesser rate, maybe there would be a reason to investigate. Or if only the male MIT grads were successful, you might wonder what's going on. But my husband works with many female MIT grads, and they are just as successful as their male counterparts. So, even if the admissions are skewed by gender, the performance seems comparable.</p>
<p>Two of my sisters have M.S.E.E. degrees. The elder, now in her mid-fifties, was often the only woman in her classes. The younger had a better proportion of girls, but engineering was still male dominated. Personally, I think it's more a matter of interest than ability. But it wasn't an easy road for either one, and I think that anyone who earns an engineering degree really HAS earned it.</p>
<p>Finally, from a mother's point of view, I wouldn't want my son to attend a school with much less than 50% girls. Part of the college experience is dating, developing social skills etc. For a quiet, math/science kid, that can be challenging. That's one reason that we encouraged him to look at schools which attract a variety of students.</p>
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...many people seem to care so deeply and morally...
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</p>
<p>I do care. I care because MIT is something special. MIT is about scientists and engineers. Scientists and engineers are supposed have moral standards. Scientists and engineers care about numbers, results, facts, truths, and justice. They usually don't care about touchy-feeling things. This is a good thing.</p>
<p>MIT seems to favor some groups in admissions. This is bad thing, because by favoring a group, it's lowering the standards and compromising the moral high ground.</p>
<p>What does it matter to you if one excellent university "compromises" what you see as "the moral high ground"? There are other excellent universities for scientists and engineers. If you find the MIT admissions approach distasteful, don't apply there.</p>
<p>Because that could lead to the domino effect.</p>
<p>"Hey, if MIT does it, why can't we?" MIT is supposed to set the standard. MIT isn't supposed to be ashamed of its Admissions Dean. MIT isn't supposed to discriminate. MIT is supposed to accept the best, educate the best, and produce the best.</p>
<p>What do you mean, "MIT is supposed to set the standard." According to whom? MIT is a private institution which is entitled to admit students according to whatever rubric they choose. There are a variety of other institutions to which any student can apply -- no one has the "right" to attend ANY school.</p>
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MIT is supposed to accept the best, educate the best, and produce the best.
[/quote]
And they do. If you don't like their policies, there is nothing saying you need to apply there. Where did you read that "MIT is supposed to set the standard"? For what, and for whom?</p>
<p>I suspect that many people who continue to express some form of moral outrage about MIT's admissions policies may have other reasons to object to them. It's a private university, not a national treasure that needs to be brought back into line or civilization is in danger.</p>
<p>(EDIT: Ah, cross-posted with sjmom -- I see we're on the same wavelength here.)</p>
Yes we know. Which is why it's wrong. If you have to push someone up artificially, then that implies that they couldn't have made it own their own.
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</p>
<p>And yeah, I'm being defensive. I've been posting to CC for a long time, and I'm getting kind of sick of CONSTANTLY listening to people question everything about me (intelligence, passion, ability to succeed, oh, and my physical appearance) because I happen to have some female body parts.</p>
<p>And most people <em>do</em> make it at MIT, so I don't know where the rest of your statement comes from.</p>
<p>I don't have time for an in-depth search, but I found this quickly enough: </p>
<p>"Women CEOs Still Rare Among Top 1000 Firms - Only 1.7%
Some 48% of the thousand largest U.S. firms had no woman in their official listings of principal executives, according to a new study by two Tuck School of Business researchers and a colleague from Loyola University Chicago. Of 942 companies analyzed over a six year period, only 7.2% had more than two women in the top ranks, and a mere 2.6% had more than three. </p>
<p>On the basis of the number of women CFOs and the number of other female executives with high-level line positions (that is, with direct profit-and-loss responsibility), the authors estimate that the proportion of female CEOs will increase from the current level of about 1.7% to about 4.9% in 2010 and 6.2% in 2016.</p>
<p>"Even though 6.2% is more than triple the current percentage," comments professor Constance Helfat, "it doesn't seem very impressive when one considers that by 2016 it will have been about 40 years since women entered corporate management in force." </p>
<p>Currently, 10 FORTUNE 500 companies are run by women, up from 9 last year, and a total of 20 FORTUNE 1000 companies have women in the top job, according to Fortune.</p>
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And most people <em>do</em> make it at MIT, so I don't know where the rest of your statement comes from.
[/quote]
My mistake. I meant getting accepted to MIT.</p>
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CONSTANTLY listening to people question everything about me
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No one is questioning anything about you. MIT students, male or female, are brilliant, able to succeed, etc.</p>
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If you have to push someone up artificially, then that implies that they couldn't have made it own their own.
[/quote]
I still stand by this statement. To me, someone can be smart without showing the "qualifications," but the other way around doesn't work. Somehow, Jones managed to increase female enrollment without changing the inherent nature of applicants. </p>
<p>I find it very odd how MIT managed to get nearly the same number of admitted males and admitted females, despite the fact that the pool of male applicants is many times larger. Maybe more of the female applicants perfectly match the criteria. Maybe not.</p>
<p>A few so far, any more takers? This is actually getting interesting now.</p>