First , the news…
From USA Today
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As boys slip behind, some feminists reject helping them
Backlash recalls fight a generation ago over attempts to help girls in schools.
With its powerhouse basketball teams, famed chemistry department and high rankings in college surveys, the University of North Carolina shouldn’t be lacking for qualified male applicants. But UNC’s current freshman class is 60% female.
There’s no mystery behind the gender imbalance. North Carolina’s female applicants take tougher courses in high school, earn better grades and score just as high on the SAT college admission tests. So the girls get more spots.
That same phenomenon is playing out across the country. Just as educators are beginning to address it, however, an unhealthy backlash appears to be developing. Some feminists, concerned that what helps boys might hurt girls, are denying that a problem exists  ironically in the same reflexive way that some men repudiated attempts to help girls a generation ago.
Evidence of the backlash turned up in Maine, where a new report that was supposed to focus on the boy problem was watered down to include problems affecting both genders. The two-year study notes that women make up 63% of Maine public college campuses, but it then goes into odd tangents about sexual harassment.
The problem crosses race and class lines.
On paper, middle class boys attend college at roughly the same rate as girls. But many private colleges grant them admissions preferences in an effort to maintain a gender balance. In suburban neighborhoods, parents routinely swap stories about their diligent daughters getting into top colleges while their unmotivated sons drop out or settle for third-tier schools.
Among blue collar boys, modest gaps in verbal skills in elementary school expand in middle school and persist into high school. The study in Maine, where white boys from blue collar families make up the bulk of the male students, places the gender gap in reading as wide as 17 percentage points.
Among African-Americans of all income backgrounds, twice as many women as men are enrolled in college. At historically black Clark Atlanta University, only 30% of the students are men. (more…)
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You thoughts on this one, please.
I tried arguing this issue a while back but was met with criticism suggesting that women in general are still treated unfairly in this country. In some cases this is true, but apparently not in the college world. In a posting that I did back in ’05, I made the following comment:
For those that align themselves with the feminist movement, they must now decide weather or not they are shooting for equality or paybackÂÂÂ
Just as women demanded that the mostly-male power structure on college campuses years ago make room for women (and rightfully so), given this current trend, is it now time for schools to shift some of the funding that is earmarked for special programs for women on campus to develop the same type of programs for men?
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