NY Times: "At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust"

<p>That's really interesting about the "College of Liberal Arts and Sciences". I didn't believe it, but Google shows that there are tons of such things out there. </p>

<p>The "Liberal Arts" have always included basic science and math, and most older universities have a "College of Arts and Sciences" which basically corresponds to "Liberal Arts". The traditional distinction was really between knowledge-for-knowledge's-sake studies and professional degrees, like law, medicine, engineering, architecture, accounting (remembering that in most of the world those were not graduate vs. undergraduate fields), not between "Science" and "Humanities".</p>

<p>Wikipedia: "In the history of education, the seven liberal arts comprised two groups of studies: the trivium and the quadrivium. Studies in the trivium involved grammar, dialectic (logic), and rhetoric; and studies in the quadrivium involved arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. These liberal arts made up the core curriculum of the medieval universities. The term liberal in liberal arts is from the Latin word liberalis, meaning "appropriate for free men" (social and political elites), and they were contrasted with the servile arts. The liberal arts thus initially represented the kinds of skills and general knowledge needed by the elite echelon of society, whereas the servile arts represented specialized tradesman skills and knowledge needed by persons who were employed by the elite.</p>

<p>"In the United States, liberal arts colleges are still a particular kind of higher education institution that are typified by their rejection of more direct vocational education during undergraduate studies."</p>

<p>Hate to post if this thread is dying, but I felt the need to add my two cents. As a woman myself attending a tech school as an undergrad in the fall, I wanted to give a reason why women tend to liberal arts majors- I think they are more concerned than men are with the social impact of their future careers. I, much more than than my male counterparts, say I hope to have a job that can make a serious difference in the lives of those who are less fortunate. Yet, I'm planning to be a physics major, and am plenty 'smart' enough to compete with men on an equal standing. If society values invention of material goods and selfish accomplishment over broad changes in the quality of life of a large sector of the population, they can insist that men are more 'successful,' but I think that measure of success is hardly useful. In my experience, women want to be able to look back on their life's accomplishments with complete satisfaction that they did something substantial at the end of their lives. Meanwhile, men may achieve in the business world and promote themselves well enough to be acknowledged as successful, but in the end will they feel they've done the best job they can? Are they pleased that they dont have children, or if they do, that they have had little or no part in raising them? Do they feel they've made a contribution to the world they live in? I think that's less likely, and as a result, people can say that women are doing cream puff majors and are not excelling as much as they can be, but it finally is men that are making less fulfilling career choices. The true boy crisis appears to me to be an increasing concern for oneself and less understanding and interest in the well being of society as a whole, which explains why men are on the polar ends of the scale. (elite achiever/jailbird etc)</p>

<p>Please be a little careful about the generalizations. Men and women have more in common than they have differences. Many men fit closely with the profile you are describing here for women, while many women look more like the profile you describe for men. I agree heartily, though, with your point that it is good to think ahead to a life's meaning and purpose in the broadest sense (and question narrow ideas about success).</p>

<p>Of course most of my post is a generalization, but unfortunately to have this sort of debate there will have to be. There are very few people who know what it's like both to be female or male, so we all speak from our experiences...the real point however is that the true problem is with society's definition of success, not with the progress or capabilities of either gender.</p>

<p>There are a lot more women concerned about social impact than men. At my school, University of Michigan, the women that are in the volunteer-related clubs far surpass the men that involved. I was a part of world service team, and out of the 24 members, only 3 were men. So it is fair to say that in general, there are more women that want to "make a difference" than men. A lot of intelligent women take paths pursing this rather than trying to be a successful doctor/lawyer/engineer, even though they are intelligent enough to do so.</p>

<p>I'm going to be a sophomore at the Ross bschool (the 3rd best business school in the country). I, however, want to end up going into non-profit business eventually, Many men want to be investment bankers (extremely high starting salary) while there are only few women I know who want to pursue this, even though they are just qualified and just as math-orientated as the men. I suppose we want a more "meaningful" career.</p>

<p>"I think men do better out in the world because they care more about the power, the status, the C.E.O. job," Mr. Kohn said. "And maybe society holds men a little higher."</p>

<p>I like the way this revived thread has moved to questions of what counts as success. I agree with the comments that women are more likely to work for nonprofits and more likely to take on broader social issues. You could find that borne out by published evidence about this.</p>

<p>I'd like to add a slight twist on this, however. There are cultural reasons why women do this that are due to factors other than moral superiority. Whether we like it or not, men are still expected to be money producers more than women. Women have "more options" (a positive view) or "more contradictions to face" (a more realistic way of putting it) in their life. Women armore likely than men to take off time from work to raise kids, to work part time, and to accept jobs that pay less than they are worth. This contributes to women's lower income relative to men. And it is not all to the detriment of women and the advantage of men. Men are under a lot more pressure to make a higher salary than their wife and also more than other men. As a man, I don't find this particularly wonderful (though I am not saying women have it easier either). I don't wnat to be a "house husband"--I'm one of the relatively few men who was actually given this as an option and I told my wife, thanks but no thanks! We struggled as a result like everyone else.</p>

<p>I'd like to offer a possible explaination. Society changes alot faster than culture. Women entered the work force in large numbers beginning in the 1970s. Socially women are now in a different position than in the 1970s for this and other reason. But our culture has not really caught up with this. Women still struggle with stereotypes of the past (being attractive; hence the epidemic of eating disorders), and men still worry about being "masculine enough" in a manner that hardly differs from the 1940s. </p>

<p>So, as we can see from the posts on this thread, women are ahead of men right now even in terms of recognizing that problems exist for boys. This reflects core cultural values of women as caring more for others and being less held to expectations of conventional male success (making their own money especially). </p>

<p>Crises are one way that culture is forced to catch up with society. Maybe when men notice boys are doing badly enough they will start to care more about recent social changes. They will listen more to the women who are telling them there is a problem. </p>

<p>It may make a difference to men that it no longer is "just a women's problem" or even a "social problem" (men hear "social" and think "it's about women"--as you can tell from previous comments on this thread about sociology as a "fluffy" field). But now it is a male problem!</p>

<p>
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So, as we can see from the posts on this thread, women are ahead of men right now even in terms of recognizing that problems exist for boys. This reflects core cultural values of women as caring more for others and being less held to expectations of conventional male success (making their own money especially).

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<p>Wait, I must of missed this. Is that when many of the women (and some of the men) basically said that “this boy crisis is total BS and it just white men crying fowl,” or was it somewhere else?</p>

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They will listen more to the women who are telling them there is a problem.

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<p>I haven’t heard much informing of a problem from women. I think the loudest racket is the feminist camp which is saying “no problem, women are just doing better now that you men are repressing us slightly less; see, we are better than you :D."</p>

<p>^
That's because so far it's been mostly a discussion between women. Some are saying there is no crisis while others are saying there is a crisis. So far most of the men are interested in arguing about whether women take easier classes and so get higher GPAs--which leads away from the question of whether boys are in crisis (a "women concern" apparently).</p>

<p>I don't recognize this thread anymore.</p>

<p>It started with an article about a performance gap in college between men and women, which fed into a lot of stuff recently about a "boy crisis" in K-12 education. I think that the "boy crisis" research tends to be only moderately politicized, but that the commentary on it in the media is highly politicized, with the usual right-wing suspects screaming about feminists castrating our sons and feminists responding that there isn't any problem except fear of women. (And as far as I can tell, there are men and women on both sides of that debate. Certainly many, many male columnists have weighed in on the "boy crisis".) The discussion here followed that pattern: a range of responses, some pretty rhetorical, some sticking closely to the data, all more or less affected by each person's political bias (and I'm certainly not excepting myself here).</p>

<p>In the process, a separate position emerged, which was largely young men addressing the college performance gap data and -- from a pretty anti-feminist perspective -- denying that the data described a real performance gap because girls' better grades were the result of their disproportionate concentration in majors with easier grading standards. Which, by the way, is an interesting hypothesis and probably explains at least some, and maybe a lot, of the performance gap. Some of these posters actually implied that women underperformed men in college because they mainly take fluffy courses. The conversation then seemed to devolve into a discussion of whether "female" majors are indeed less rigorous (as opposed to less rigorously graded) than "male" majors, and why women and men do not study the same things in equal proportions.</p>

<p>So far so OK. But now, we seem to be completely lost in space. The last few pages seem to be filled with utter stereotypes and generalizations so broad and so inaccurate as to undo themselves by the end of a sentence. Aspiring scientists are less oriented towards service to others than, say, French majors? People working in the private sector don't affect other people's lives? Mostly women care about boys' education? Give me a break. This is the Parent's Forum, not the Teen-Toking-And-Talking Forum. </p>

<p>By the way, to the young woman who talked about wanting to go home at the end of the day certain she had made someone's life better: In my experience, that is not how the world works. I am married to a fairly well known, successful children's advocate. Believe me, she does not go home every day secure in the knowledge that she has made anyone's life better. Her key projects take years from conception to implementation, and years from implementation to measurable results, and even more years to refine and to expand the improvements so that they actually impact more than a handful of actual children. Some of them fall apart at each stage, wasting months or years of work. If you think it's a lot different than doing pharmaceutical development, you're wrong. Some people -- women and men -- do almost entirely individual casework (this can be doctors, social workers, lawyers). They do get the satisfaction of daily engagement in people's lives, but they have a very high burn-out rate (except for the ones who become highly-paid specialists). They can usually only handle part of a person's problems, and they can only meet a fraction of the demand that exists for the services they can provide. There is a Groundhog Day effect: they are always doing almost the same thing, with slightly different outcomes, but nothing ever changes. And the less oriented to premium services for the rich whatever you're doing is, the more it tends to become a high-volume, mechanized process which limits your engagement with actual people.</p>

<p>I hope I have not argued that there is no "boys crisis." What I have tried to argue is that the "crisis" is not an educational one, caused by a more "feminine" ethos, a compound of a female-dominated teaching profession, pedagogy that is more suited to girls' learning style and a grading system that rewards behavior again more associated with girls than boys. </p>

<p>There is a crisis, of course, when so many teenage males are drawn into gangs, or are sitting in jail. But this is extraneous to the educational system. As far as boys' performance in school, Cheers and others have suggested that it is a matter of maturity. I found the new thread started by ticklemepink very a propos: What finally got your kid going?</p>

<p>In last week's Sunday NYT magazine, Barbara Ehrenheich had a tongue-in- cheek article. Men will come out ahead of women even with lower college GPAs because employers are de-emphazing academic performance and stressing personal qualities. So the male college slackers who spend their time socializing will have an advantage over the conscientious females who toil in their college library and do the assignments.</p>

<p>Well, there is more to success than book learning as they say. People skills are most important--you can always hire some smart geek to do the number crunching, etc.</p>

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What I have tried to argue is that the "crisis" is not an educational one, caused by a more "feminine" ethos, a compound of a female-dominated teaching profession, pedagogy that is more suited to girls' learning style and a grading system that rewards behavior again more associated with girls than boys.

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<p>I'm curious as to what you think of this, marite. I take summer courses at UCR, and when walking around one of the buildings, saw some posters from a group interested in increasing the number of minorities in the teaching profession (I assume pre-k to 12 only for this group). They reasoned on the poster that over 40% of the kids in public schools in America were minorities, while less than 10% of the teachers were. If that makes sense, would it also make sense that about 50% of the students are male, while x (I would guess 15-20%) of teachers are also male, so they should be increased? I would guess that most of whatever percentage of overall teacher the males occupy are primarily in the high schoo level (followed by middle school), with the sex being near absent from pre-k to 6th grade. But if women really do benefit the students most, I think it would be okay to have them disproportionatly represented as teachers (research to study this would be good), and I would guess that if it is the case that women do disproportionately benefit the students most, it would be true in the younger ages (again, research . . . mmm).</p>

<p>Do you at least think grading partially explains things insofar as women tend to be in subjects that give out much hire average grades and often demand less time investment than men? I'm a male humanities (some say social science) major and find this obviously true- the average GPAs in engineering and the sciences are much lower than the humanities and social sciences, and the humanities and social sciences have far more women present than the science and techinical fields such as engineering. And philosophy, one of the harder grading (if not the hardest grading) humanities (or social science) course is often domniated by men, skewing things a bit further!</p>

<p>
[quote]
In last week's Sunday NYT magazine, Barbara Ehrenheich had a tongue-in- cheek article. Men will come out ahead of women even with lower college GPAs because employers are de-emphazing academic performance and stressing personal qualities. So the male college slackers who spend their time socializing will have an advantage over the conscientious females who toil in their college library and do the assignments.

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<p>I don't think this is a new phenomenon, and I also don't think GPA is the best indicator to choose which person to hire. If it were, the people in the harder grading disciplines would be so screwed (and they tend to be for medical and law admissions), while the subjects with higher average grades given would be even more rewarded.</p>

<p>Drab:</p>

<p>I am not sure I understand your first paragraph. I am definitely for increasing the proportion of male teachers as well as minority teachers. But not because male teachers necessarily have different teaching styles or reward different things from female teachers. My Ss have had both male and female teachers in k-8 and I did not observe differences in style. Perhaps the reason is that people with certain personalities are drawn to teaching, regardless of gender. I do think that if there were more male teachers, the teaching profession would be more respected both by students and by the general public. As for minorities, I do believe in role models. Having more minority teachers would make learning more acceptable to those minority students who are concerned with "acting white."</p>

<p>As for the social sciences/humanities vs. math/science issue, while the students in the former are more likely to be female, those who do the grading--at least in the universities with which I am familiar--are still more likely to be male. Whose gender is the important one?</p>

<p>I do not think that Barbara Ehrenheich would claim that having a higher GPA should be the ticket to jobs. She was just arguing, tongue-in-cheek, that there was a good reason for men not to be so concerned about academic success because that's not what society rewards. I mentioned the article because it seemed inspired specifically by the topic that launched this thread.</p>

<p>I was not aware she had a sense of humor.</p>

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As for the social sciences/humanities vs. math/science issue, while the students in the former are more likely to be female, those who do the grading--at least in the universities with which I am familiar--are still more likely to be male. Whose gender is the important one?

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<p>The important one? I don't think either is that important, really. But lets look at the situation. Let's forget about gender and sex for the moment. In academia, social science and humanities courses tend to give out significantly higher grades to undergraduate students than the sciences and technical disciplines. If we accept that (which is a well-documented phenomenon), if we take into account sex of students in the disciplines, we see that far more women occupy those that have higher average grades given, and far more men occupy the disciplines that have much lower average grades given, so I would understand at least in part why women have much higher average grades than men. I don't think my claims are provocative or difficult to accept when looking at the state of things. </p>

<p>I find it absurd when people or organizations claim things about grades and gpa and ignore this. I have a pamphlet from Berkeley sposored by the Cal Greeks. "Sororiety girls have higher average GPAs than the campus average." "Fraternity boys have higher average GPAs than the campus average." Great- what with 1 total sororiety girl being in the college of engineering this past year, and very few being in the sciences, with most being in the humanities. And the same is very true of fraternity boys, although somewhat more of them are in engineering/technical and science fields. When you ignore this, and when people produce reports showing that the SAT is underpredictive of female performance and overpredictive of male performance and don't even consider grading discrepencies could possibly explain some of the situation, it's absurd and misleading or those and ignorant.</p>

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She was just arguing, tongue-in-cheek, that there was a good reason for men not to be so concerned about academic success because that's not what society rewards.

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<p>I think it depends. Law school admissions very much reward academic success if you define that as "high GPA." The same is very true of med school admissions. Being able to do well what it takes to get good grades has many benefits, as does getting good grades, and is often rewarded. But as she and the informed know, society only really rewards members with a certain type of anatomical feature (and punishes others with a different type). That's what society(aka the patriarchy) cares about, right?</p>

<p>Ah, okay. I understand your argument. </p>

<p>As for Ehrenheich, as I said, she was writing a tongue-in-cheek piece (the back of the magazine, one page article, not an analytical one. You are right that both law school and med school admissions are very grade-driven. I suspect that Ehrenheich was thinking more of the business world (which is what she has explored).</p>

<p>I did think the article carried a sense of "the world is their oyster" so why worry? But we also know that students who spend all their time studying are also described as not making the most of their college experiences and the opportunities for making friends/networking.</p>

<p>The first paragraph in post in #213 was about an argument on some poster at UCR. If more than 40% of public school students are minority students, and less than 10% of the teachers of public schools are from a minority, something bad is going on here. I asked if that's true, and about 50% of public school students are male, and significantly less than half of the teachers are male (I guessed 15-20%, with far, far more in high school and middle school than 1st-6th grade and pre-1st school), how is this situation then not also bad?</p>

<p>Well, I agree it is bad. I gave my reasons for why I think there should be more male teachers and more minority teachers. I don't know what yours are.</p>

<p>Oh, I was trying to help you understand what I had said previously because you had indicated it was unclear. I'm not sure if there should be more male teachers, but I think that there should be if they are as good or better than some of the current female teachers for students and the profession, particularly in benefitting students in acdemic, social, and other ways.</p>