(NAME-MCE) Is There a Crisis in Education of Males?

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Is There a Crisis in Education of Males?
Women's group issues report arguing that class and race are more
powerful than gender in trends facing boys, but others question the
analysis.

For related stories, go to:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/21/gender

To download the report, go to:

http://www.aauw.org/research/upload/whereGirlsAre.pdf

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May 21, 2008

Is There a Crisis in Education of Males?

Statistics come out every year showing that greater proportions of
college students are women. At some institutions, the gaps are so
great that officials talk openly of affirmative action for male
students.

But is there really a crisis for male students?

A report issued Tuesday by the American Association of University
Women refers to a "so called" crisis and argues that there is no such
thing with regard to male students as a whole. To the extent that
there is a problem, the AAUW argues, it involves subsets of male
students, such as inner city minority males who may attend poor high
schools and be poorly prepared for college. The AAUW report was
immediately challenged by others who have explored these issues, and
who maintain that there really is a crisis — and that it is
irresponsible to ignore it.

The AAUW report, "Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity
in Education," reflects a growing concern from many advocates for
female students that all of the data about male students is creating
an "either/or" choice and discouraging efforts on behalf of women.
"Educational achievement is not a zero-sum game, in which a gain for
one group results in a corresponding loss for the other. If girls'
success comes at the expense of boys, one would expect to see boys'
scores decline as girls' scores rise, but this has not been the case,"
the report says.

"Women are attending and graduating from high school and college at a
higher rate than are their male peers, but these gains have not come
at men's expense. Indeed, the proportion of young men graduating from
high school and earning college degrees today is at an all-time high,"
the report adds. "Women have made more rapid gains in earning college
degrees, especially among older students, where women outnumber men by
a ratio of almost 2-to-1. The gender gap in college attendance is
almost absent among those entering college directly after graduating
from high school, however, and both women and men are more likely to
graduate from college today than ever before."

A major theme of the report is that what appears to be a gender issue
(lagging male enrollments or graduation rates) is really a race and
ethnicity issue (lagging rates for men from some groups).

Similarly, the AAUW cites test scores on the ACT and SAT to contest
the idea of a crisis in the education of males. "Over all, test scores
on the SAT and ACT exams challenge the notion of a boys' crisis. Boys
continue to hold an advantage, albeit small, on these undergraduate
admissions tests. While the number of girls taking these exams has
risen, so too has the number of boys."

Whenever the AAUW releases reports, there is a quick response from
women's groups that question its assumptions. The Independent Women's
Forum, for example, immediately questioned the analysis.

But so did some education experts.

Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study
of Opportunity in Higher Education, didn't question the specific
numbers in the report or the idea that both male and female students
can succeed at the same time. "Women have made huge progress in
education over the last six decades," he said. "The success of women
is a great story — it shows what we can do when we set our minds to
task."

But he said that in 1970, when he started his career in higher
education policy analysis, there were 1.5 million more men than women
in higher education and "I recall vividly that women complained that
this was a crisis. Now there are 2.7 million more women than men in
higher education and the feminists assert that this is not a crisis.
What am I missing here?"

He noted the hugely disproportionate rates of suicide among men who
are 25 to 34, and of incarceration, and asked how this could be
anything but a crisis.

"The hypocrisy of the feminists — AAUW being a major part of this —
astounds me," Mortenson said. "The fact is male lives are falling
apart at the growing margins of male welfare, and the utter failure of
the education system to address male needs on male terms is indeed a
crisis. We have shown what the education system can do for women when
we set our minds to it."

— Scott Jaschik