This year, the freshman class at many universities could have been called the fresh woman class. Among those enrolling at my university this year, the percentage of females jumped to 70. Since we don’t yet have an “undecided” category for gender that means the percentage of males fell to 30. While many are asking why so many women are going to college it might make more sense to ask why so few men are going to college.As you may recall, I was the first to point out that the changing university demographics would preclude many educated women from marrying their educational peers. Now we know it will preclude MOST educated women from doing so.
There are some fairly obvious reasons for the demographic shift. While claiming to be combatting a hostile environment for women, the feminist movement has actually been creating a hostile campus environment for men for years. In fact, most of their policy initiatives are now hurting men rather than helping women. Title IX provides the most obvious example.
I have no doubt that most of the initial supporters of Title IX envisioned that it would do nothing more than bring female athletes to campus. However, it is now serving as a death sentence for many men’s athletic programs. Furthermore, as anyone following the news in the last couple of years knows, Title IX has been used to do a lot more than shift the balance of power in the arena of sports and recreation.
Unfortunately, Title IX is now used as a weapon to undermine due process for men accused of rape and sexual harassment. Over the last several years, under the expanding requirements of Title IX, universities have been pressured to use a preponderance of evidence standard rather than a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in campus rape tribunals.
But here is an interesting thought. How long do you think corporations, particularly those started by men who didn't bother to get college degrees, will continue to prefer hiring people with them? I mean, I don't even look at whether a programmer has a degree or not, I look at what languages he knows and what his previous projects were.
There is neither an excuse nor a reason for not having previous projects either; the good ones have been programming seriously since they were in their early teens and they are more than happy to show them to you. It's only the college kids with degrees who haven't done anything at all.
It will be amusing when the new evidence of societal sexism cited is the number of young women in heavy debt with useless degrees.