Surprise--The AAUW Finds that More Girls than Boys in College is No Crisis
Ronald Bailey | May 20, 2008, 4:46pm
Crying "crisis" every time some social scientist notices some differences between groups is very popular nowadays. The implication is that equality should be the status quo and that differences must be the result of malign forces. (Admittedly, sometimes there are malign forces, e.g., Jim Crow laws.) Conservatives now indulge in America's favorite passtime of claiming victimhood and so worry about the "boy crisis" in American education. The logic of a "boy crisis" means that special attention must be paid to boys over girls. Naturally this logic threatens the perks and programs of entrenched victim groups.
That being the case, is anyone shocked that the feminists at the American Association of University Women are promoting a "study" that purports to show that the "boy crisis" is a "myth?" Some researchers don't think it's a myth. And the Washinigton Post did not express any concern over how the study sponsored by an organization devoted to the interests of university women might have been skewed by conflicts of interest. At the end of its story on the AAUW report, the Post did note:
AAUW's study does show female students outperforming male students in some measures. Women have earned 57 percent of bachelor's degrees since 1982 and outperformed boys on high school grade-point averages. In 2005, male students had a GPA of 2.86 and girls, 3.09.
I will also mention that a friend of mine at a prominent university told me recently that he and his colleagues could fill all their graduate program slots with qualified women. However, women will refuse enter programs that have too few men, so his program has instituted affirmative action for men in order to attract women.
In any case, I don't believe that there is a "boy crisis" or a "girl crisis." The real victims are boys and girls who are stuck in our deteriorating government-funded educational system.
Whole Post article here.
Disclosure: As an undergraduate I entered the University of Virginia two years after it co-educated. From my point of view, the male/female ratio was far from optimum.
magdelyn | May 20, 2008, 7:56pm | #
Ah yes, the "boy crisis." The AAUW released another study attacking the "boy crisis," much like the Educational Sector's bankrupt report by Sara Mead, which concluded that there is not a boy crisis, and that the disproportionate performance of girls is not bad news about boys doing worse, but good news about girls doing better, and that boys are doing better than ever before. The Washington Post and other news media has passed along this garbage with no critical analysis.
Of course, these arguments are ridiculous. To argue that boys are "doing better than ever before," both the Education Sector and AAUW base their arguments on absolute numbers. That is to say that more men go to college now, than say in 1950. The argument is bankrupt, easily destroyed by arguing the absurd. For instance, say that today 100,000 people are going to college, 60,000 girls, and 40,000 boys (60/40). All of a sudden, the next day, the college population doubles to 200,000 people, 150,000 girls, and 50,000 boys. The argument can be made, "Well, boys are doing better than ever. Now we have 10,000 more boys going to college." But in reality, whereas yesterday we had a distrubtion of 60% girls, and 40% boys, today, we have 75% girls and 25% boys. When exactly does it become a crisis? When 80% of college classes are are made up of women? 90%? Ever? With this argument, we can get rid of affirmative action because blacks are doing better than ever before. Silly.
In 1992, when the AAUW came out with its polemic report that girls were being screwed in schools, the AAUW supressed evidence that girls had already surpased boys in almost all subjects and almost all measures. That trend has condinued. Today, with 57% of colleges made up of women, the disparity continues to grow.
When women were the ones outnumbered at colleges, we blamed the schools and passed Title IX. When boys are getting screwed, we blame the boys and largely ignore the problem. Anybody who has studied the situation knows that both the Education Sector and the AAUW's recent reports are attempts to make lemonade out of lemons, by putting a gloss over that which has become abundantly clear; boys are getting metaphorically raped by an education system.
What has happened is that women's organizations, in an attempt to mitigate any call for the fair distrubtion of resources, have played the race card and said, "Oh, don't worry white middle America, your sons aren't doing that much worse that white girls, its only the blacks and Latinos who are woefully behind -- no problem here." The argument is racist and patently untrue on both the interpretation of the research and the actual facts. Boys -- ALL BOYS -- regardless of income or race fare worse than girls, a reversal of fortunes that has specifically been ignored by both the media and academics, because boys are not as sypathetic as girls. The race/class argument has not, to my knowledge been used when arguing comparative disadvantage of girls.
Both the Orwellian language used in their arguments by opponents of helping boys, and the repeated attempts to disprove the obvious, betray the notion that girls progress has been not come at the expense of boys. This is a fight about resources. Thank God for the women who are mothers of boys.
It is also rather scandelous that Title IX, a gender neutral statute, has been interpreted by the bureocratic establishment as not benefiting anyone but girls. The enforcement has been corrupt.
