Colleges face a challenge to masculinity that bulging muscles, rumbling voices, and jacked-up pickup trucks won't remedy.
Despite the fact that men and women get equal salary bumps for earning a bachelor's degree, far more women than men are getting the message. As a result, nearly 58 percent of bachelor's degrees and 62 percent of associate degrees are granted to women.
It's not that colleges aren't searching for men. Some start football programs or rugby leagues to attract guys. Others revise their campus brochures to portray men playing various sports. (Next up: A more realistic brochure showing guys slurping beer, eyes fixed on ESPN's SportsCenter?)
And it's not that colleges aren't bending over backward to admit the men they find. Favoring male applicants, in fact, is what caught the attention of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which in November announced that it would investigate whether colleges discriminate against women by granting admissions preferences to men.
Most likely, college admissions officers aren't losing any sleep over the investigation, which has no legal authority. For a private college, favoring men—or football players or clarinet players—appears to be legally survivable, at least for now.
What does cause them to lose sleep, however, is the lost revenue and social awkwardness that can ensue from gender imbalances. And so they continue to ask: Where are those men?
One possibility is that admissions officers are looking in all the wrong places. The boys are findable; it's just that they don't necessarily attend 11th- and 12th-grade college nights in the gym.
My suggestion: Skip back a few grades to ninth grade, where you'll find schools awash with boys. Ninth grade is the "bulge" year, in which nationally there were 113 boys for every 100 girls in 2007, according to the Southern Regional Education Board, which tracks such statistics. Depending on race, ethnicity, and location, the ninth-grade bulge for boys gets even bigger: Among black Americans, there are 123 boys for every 100 girls; among Hispanics, 122. Geographically the bulge is larger in the 16 states covered by the board, with Florida registering 117 boys for every 100 girls.
As an example, let's take Baltimore's Patterson High School, located in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. If you showed up to recruit the Class of 2009 on graduation day, you would have found 164 female and 107 male students. A quirk of birthrates? Not exactly. Had you checked on the ninth-grade class there in September 2008, you would have found 278 girls and 400 boys.
At this point you've probably guessed the cause: Incoming ninth-grade boys unprepared for the college-track rigors of high school get slammed and held back for a repeat "experience."
At my request, Thomas C. West, a senior research analyst with the National Opinion Research Center, at the University of Chicago, plotted the numbers. He drew upon his research from the "Still a Freshman" study released recently by the Johns Hopkins University, which looked at ninth-grade repeaters.
Nationally in 2006-7, approximately 250,000 male students (12 percent of all ninth-grade boys) and 178,000 female students (9 percent of the girls) repeated ninth grade, says West. So about 72,000 more boys than girls repeated ninth grade that year.
On the surface, holding back unprepared students seems logical. Perhaps, but the downside is the steep dropout numbers that result. In the highest-poverty school districts, as few as 15 percent of students held back in the ninth grade make it to graduation day, according to other research from Johns Hopkins.
Across the country, superintendents are discovering, much to their surprise and dismay, that ninth grade has turned into the biggest dropout year. Discipline problems often get blamed for the high dropout rates, but principals consistently tell me that discipline issues often mask learning difficulties. West hears the same. "When you get frustrated [academically], it's seen as more manly to go out fighting than suffering the humiliation of revealing to classmates that the classroom material is beyond your grasp," he says.
And what about the students who struggle to repeat ninth grade and do manage to graduate? Most likely they end up academically damaged. To them, college seems unattainable. They don't bother showing up for those college nights at the gym.
Some people will argue that those students were never college material in the first place. True, few of those 72,000 boys each year were probably Princeton-bound. And if you listen to conservative education commentators, these boys shouldn't even be thinking about college. The country already has too many "degreed" burger flippers, they argue.
There are reasons to think otherwise. First, such gender imbalances trigger unhealthy (and expensive) social trends. Among African-Americans, women graduate from college at twice the rate of men, leaving few black "marriageable mates"—men whose education credentials match those of black women. That's a contributing factor to the soaring out-of-wedlock birthrate among black women.
Also, if President Obama is right about improving the flagging U.S. position in world education rankings, the country needs to rapidly ramp up the number of college graduates. Given the healthy number of women already in the college pipeline, we can't avoid reaching out to men. At least some of those 72,000 lost boys need to be found.
Families and schools bear the biggest burden here, but colleges and universities can play an important role by taking steps like these:
n Scratch ninth grade from calculations of grade-point averages for all students. Boys are getting clobbered by school reforms that push higher-level academic skills, especially advanced literacy skills, into the lowest grades. They fall behind quickly, get passed through middle school, and then hit a wall in ninth grade as they enter high-stakes territory. Even if the boys recover, their senior-year GPA's will never match those of the girls. Think of it this way: improving boys' GPA's will allow you to scale back those male admissions preferences, making you less of a target for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
n Help elementary and secondary schools align their graduation standards with college-placement standards. It's embarrassing when students get straight B's, or even better, in high-school English, pass the state high-school exit exam, and land in remedial English at the local community college or state university. And yet it happens all the time in English and math. Nationally, an alarmingly high number of first-year students in community colleges get shunted into remedial courses.
n Adopt a community college that in turn adopts community high schools. I'm writing a case study for a foundation about the Pathway program at Northern Virginia Community College, which does just that. Special counselors prowl high schools recruiting nontraditional college students. Their promise: Work with us, and we'll guarantee you a smooth path through community college and a guaranteed acceptance at a four-year college (in this case George Mason University) as long as you graduate with decent grades. Just for the record, it's working—even better than you might imagine.
n Shake up teachers' colleges. For the most part, those colleges deserve the opprobrium blasted their way. Delivering classroom-ready teachers has not been a notable achievement. One way to remedy that, however, is by hiring top school-district officials as part-time instructors. They have excellent motives for ensuring that your graduates turn out ready to be effective teachers the first week on the job. This works best, of course, if you're lucky enough to have high-performing urban districts as neighbors. That was the case for the Long Beach, Calif., Unified School District and California State University at Long Beach.
Let's be realistic. Making these changes won't guarantee that an additional 72,000 boys will show up each year at college nights. But at least admissions directors won't be looking for guys in all the wrong places.
Comments
1. raymond_j_ritchie - February 08, 2010 at 06:46 am
I teach biology I at a university in Australia and also plant biology and biochemistry at higher levels. Classes are at least 70% female, sometimes above 90%. It is rare to find a good male student straight from highschool. The few good male students we have are overseas students and mature age students. Richard I think you are missing a point about boys in schools today - girls get all the encouragment in the world but boys do not. Females in Australia have on average more than 3 years more formal education than males. That leads to interesting social problems. Some progressive female colleagues of mine did not know what I was talking about until their sons and daughters started to grow up. They are now horrified at the anti-education attitudes being instilled into their male children.
2. dthornton9 - February 08, 2010 at 10:11 am
These "anit-education" attitudes aren't just being taught to the male children - but are pervasive throughout the "politically correct" education system. And really extend into the overall "Anti-male" category. For example - a recent high school show choir performance featured the girl dancers pretending to slap the boys. And the director is, I thought, a pretty conservative man. Today's television commercials, and popular shows, mock men and their skills and abilities at all levels. It's sad. If we continue to lose successful men, and respect for men, at the current rate - the country is in trouble.
3. spc09lib - February 08, 2010 at 10:49 am
Ninth grade is too late! Get into the elementary grades (the lower the better), make sure boys can read, and give them things to read that encourage them to enjoy reading. If you want to open a big can of worms, while you are shaking up the teacher colleges, stop paying high school football coaches thousands more than first and second grade teachers, stop placing first year teachers in the first and second grades, and give all students a better chance to start well so they can finish and finish well. We cannot wait until 9th grade and all of the sudden decide we need to encourage students (boys and/or girls) to reach high. If they are not up to speed already, they are usually too far behind to catch up and they already do not care.
4. sabbatical - February 08, 2010 at 11:09 am
Most teenaged boys have holes in their brains. (I'm not just a teacher, I'm a mom.) Long-term thought is just missing. Short-term thought can be very precise and complex: which friends I'm going to meet this afternoon and evening, exactly what I'm going to be doing this weekend. Beyond that, pfffft.
If I ran the world, I'd offer more "gap year(s)" programs that would be factored into the academic record. No, it won't get to the boys who dropped out, but the boys who are bright but not doing as well as girls would have a chance to grow up.
5. mbelvadi - February 08, 2010 at 11:36 am
Sabbatical may be onto something. Isn't there neurological research that suggests that boys' brains mature at a different speed from girls in some key areas, most notably the ones that affect characteristics that we associate with self-discipline and "mature" behavior? If so, then a system that pits 18 year old girls against 18 year old boys in competition for class rank, college admission, etc. doesn't make sense. And if that is the explanation, then just scolding the secondary school teachers for being "anti-male" doesn't make sense either. There are still a huge number of "nature vs nurture" questions surrounding this whole "more women in college" trend that aren't answered. In the past decades, we assumed it was "nurture" factors that held women back, and after reforms to change that, the assumption appears to have been vindicated, and then some. Now the question is whether the removal of many anti-female barriers has exposed a natural female superiority (at least, for any given biological age) or created a new set of anti-male "nurture" barriers. So far I haven't seen good proof of either. Let the research continue!
6. rightwingprofessor - February 08, 2010 at 02:42 pm
Mr. Whitmire,
Can you please explain why there are 113 9th grade boys for every 100 girls? Where are the girls?
7. v8573254 - February 08, 2010 at 02:52 pm
It's not that boys or girls have to "repeat" 9th gade; they don't accumulate enough credits.
And, yes, what is the answer to #6?
8. sophox - February 08, 2010 at 04:09 pm
Holding students back until they have genuinely mastered skills is an excellent idea. The problem is that our culture labels you a loser if this happens to you. Nowhere else in life is this true but in school. If you take a little longer learning to walk, your parents work with you. How many people leave childhood not knowing how to walk? If it takes you a little longer learning how to beat eggs in your mom's kitchen, mom works with you till you get it. No one is "on grade level" in life, but if you stick with it and mean it, you will eventually get the skill. This is learning.
Part of fixing schools means changing the cultural attitude that repeating a class is somehow a sign of failure.
And boy is that going to be a hard change to make. Get it started now, like "Just Say No," got started, and we might have progress in 20-30 years. And it still won't be done.
But we'd better get started.
A good start would be eliminating grade levels altogether. Focus the conversation on skills, not grade levels or age levels.
9. greenhills73 - February 08, 2010 at 05:19 pm
"It's embarrassing when students get straight B's, or even better, in high-school English, pass the state high-school exit exam, and land in remedial English at the local community college or state university. And yet it happens all the time in English and math. Nationally, an alarmingly high number of first-year students in community colleges get shunted into remedial courses."
One of the factors causing this is NCLB. In order to avoid sanctions under this disastrous federal law, some states have simply lowered their standards so that a greater percentage of kids become proficient. How do you begin to fix a mess like this?
10. rwhitmir - February 09, 2010 at 11:21 am
I guess I wasn't clear enough. The number of girls remains steady. The number of boys in ninth grade grows dramatically because so many boys are held back to repeat the grade...richard
11. commserver - February 10, 2010 at 06:02 pm
I am adjunct at community college. The vast majority of my students shouldn't even be there in the 1st place. The math requirements are so lax they are almost non-existent. Their language skills are atrocious.
Yet, it is their fault. The system is often to blame. Many of my colleagues say 'pass them along". This is because without students we wouldn't have jobs.
12. commserver - February 10, 2010 at 06:03 pm
Correction: I meant to say it isn't their fault
13. dmaratto - February 11, 2010 at 04:50 pm
"It's embarrassing when students get straight B's, or even better, in high-school English, pass the state high-school exit exam, and land in remedial English at the local community college or state university. And yet it happens all the time in English and math. Nationally, an alarmingly high number of first-year students in community colleges get shunted into remedial courses."
Embarrassing isn't the word I'd use.
When I worked at CC one of the things I did was placement testing. I had to explain, time and again, to students with recent high school diplomas that they didn't test into college level English and math. As you'd expect, I got lots of hurt, puzzled looks from the students. This is because they're logical people: "I graduated from high school, so I'm ready for college."
It's extremely frustrating and maddening as an educator to have to tell them, "Well, yes, you graduated from high school, but you graduated from probably the lowest-ranked high school in the state, so that diploma doesn't mean much. Therefore, after all the remedial classes, a 2 year associate degree might take you 4 years, putting you behind the rest of your age cohort and delaying or hindering your chances for education and success in life. Have a nice day."
I usually was more tactful than that, but I felt awful for the students that they had to hear this from me. I always hear higher education blaming high school, high school blames grade school, grade school blames preschool, and preschool teachers blame the parents and George Bush.
Let's take responsibility as a society for educating our children and young adults.
14. sophox - February 12, 2010 at 09:05 am
Admittedly my 13-year-old daughter is an above-average kid. Pedigree helps a lot. But it's not all that.
Here's the thing. She took pre-algebra last year and earned a 4.0. Algebra this year, and still a 4.0.
I teach a lot of remedial composition. Most of my 18-year-old students are taking or have taken pre-algebra. A lot of my regular comp students also. And a lot of them are bombing it, or have bombed it. C- or F is a common grade on the transcript.
I have a student in this predicament right now. And she graduated from high school with a 3.7 average!
This has gotta get fixed before we start talking about sending more kids to CCs.
15. sophox - February 12, 2010 at 09:08 am
Huh. I just noticed a potential foolishness on my part. If my student's 3.7 is no good, how do I know my daughter's 4.0 is any good?
In theory, I suppose I don't. But I do know my math, and I have seen her work. The grade is valid. She aces the state core tests, also, which I'm sure my 3.7 student did not, since she bombed the ACT.
16. rambo - February 19, 2010 at 04:30 pm
boys go to work or the military after graduating from HS
17. a_parent - February 20, 2010 at 08:37 am
I realize that this is a serious problem, but it's hard not to look back a few years and wonder why it wasn't a serious problem when I graduated as one of two women in a class of 100 electrical engineers - '84 at CWRU. Did anyone worry about "social awkwardness" that I was going through? Or when the first women were let into Harvard or Yale? Maybe there should be men-only colleges to educate husbands and populate dances.