With only two more days left in the month, I have returned to non-fiction. I have had this essay in mind for several months, and now the time is right. Why? Because now is Women’s History Month. I want to address an issue of grave concern - the distressing decline of men in our nation’s institutions of higher learning.

COLLEGE INEQUALITY

The news was full of the horror; there are more women going to college than men! The number of men going to college is down! This is a tragedy…we need to do something, because the way we teach is geared toward women, and not the right way for men. Oh, yes, I’m sure you’ve heard it. Panic in the streets, in the statehouses, in the newspapers and on social media, and everywhere else. Men are falling behind. I decided it was time to do a little research, see if I could figure out why. I was sure it wasn’t the teaching; there are all sorts of classes taught in all sorts of styles, and if one style didn’t work for men, there would probably be another that would. Besides, I refuse to believe that men are all alike, all barely literate brutes who can’t sit in a classroom and learn.

The place to start was with the statistics. Once I found out the severity of the problem, it might help me figure out why there was a problem. Google was there for me, quickly giving me the information I needed. I discovered that 65.2% of American women have pursued higher education; 61.1% of men. 36.6% of women have completed at least one degree, compared with 35.4% of men. Serious problem, right? YUGE differences. Uh huh. It was a good start, but I needed more. I needed to know when the numbers of men began to drop. Back to research.

I discovered the horrible truth – a sex ratio that was once 50:50 for the sexes has changed to about 40:60 now in favor of women. Zounds! This does sound serious. I still needed to see further historical trends – when did the numbers of males going to college start to drop? Further research showed me the historical trend. The numbers of men, the percentages of men, started to drop…no time. They have not dropped, they have increased.

What, you say? But how have the other numbers changed, then? That’s easy. You don’t even need thirteen hours of statistics, including multivariate statistics. You only need one thing – sense. Looking at the trends, there is one thing obvious. As the percentages of men pursuing college climbed, so did the numbers for women. It is just that the women’s numbers climbed faster…leading the women to now have a slight edge over the men…might I note, a substantially smaller edge than men had over women throughout nearly all of human history.

What I am trying to get at, in a sort of snarky way, is this. There is no crisis of education for males. They are getting educated in higher numbers than any time in history, which brings into question the idea that men can’t learn the way we teach. The only crisis is that women are getting educated in slightly higher numbers. The only thing men have lost is…absolutely nothing. They are still going to college. They are still getting educated. They are still going to frat parties (probably not the last two at the same time; I suspect they may be incompatible). Women, historically locked out of academic life, have been increasing rapidly, as well. On the whole, there are higher percentages of college graduates than in the past…and the percent change for women is off the charts higher than for men, because going from 0% to 36.6% is pretty outstanding.

Changes following World War II made college more accessible for the not-so-rich population. GI benefits, Pell grants, guaranteed student loans…and dropping the requirement to know Latin…opened the doors of the colleges and universities to many more people, people who at one time would have had to settle for a blue collar job and hope it was union. The middle class grew. The women got together and picked the lock that had been so firmly placed on the doors…more like, we blasted it open…and women started gaining an education. They took advantage of it, not wanting to be stuck with needy husbands, screaming babies, and a sink full of dirty dishes as their only life choice.

One more relevant issue is the complaint that the way we teach is wrong for men. The way we teach (and as I indicated above, there is no one way) was once used to keep women out of schools. Women just can’t learn that way, we’re told. Women aren’t good at rationality, mathematics, critical thinking. Their brains aren’t made for thinking, but for feeling. If that didn’t work, they just threatened us with our wombs drying up (didn’t happen; I’ve never heard of a single case of desiccated womb from reading books). Thing is, without having to change the way we taught, women fit into schools nicely, and showed they could learn that way, and could do math, think rationally, think critically. As the numbers of women increased, necessitating a decrease in the percentage of students who were men (again, this would happen with just one woman if it had been 1005 male), we turned on a dime and announced that men couldn’t learn this way. They weren’t designed for school. What changed? Nothing…except the presence of women in the statistics of those with college degrees.

When you look at the panic that rises nearly every time they publish the statistics, and when you really drill deep into the numbers, one thing becomes clear. The real crisis is not that the number of men going to college is declining; it’s that the number of women educated exceeds that of men. If we had half this outrage when women were barely above zero, we could have opened those doors sooner, but it was judged just and right that women couldn’t go to college. This is the only reason we are screaming about the numbers of men, since their numbers (and percents) are not going down, at least not when you compare it historically. They are going up. The only percentage going down is their proportion in relationship to women. That number went down (though imperceptibly) the day the first woman matriculated.

These numbers do not speak to a deep inequality, especially not one that disadvantages men. On the whole, men still make more than women. Men still get the top jobs in many cases. Women have been breaking the barriers for nearly a decade now, and we do see women CEOs, but the bulk of the top management positions go to men. Women make up just over a quarter of the members of Congress. Twelve women serve as governors – of fifty states. If you are math challenged, that is 24% - and it is a historical high. Just under 11% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are females. Seems the college inequality might be seeking a reason to be distraught about men in the face of those numbers.

Perhaps women just aren’t as good as men? Perhaps. Preliminary research suggests otherwise.  For instance, when resumes are sent out as experiments, the exact same resumes but with different names, the one with the male name will have a much higher chance of getting a call back than the one with the female names. Remove the names and evaluate them blind? The numbers even out.

When writing contests are judged blind, women have a fair chance of getting half the winning entries. When symphonies do blind auditions, women will generate about half the call backs and half the positions. When it is not blind, when the search teams know the sex, the woman is less likely to be considered. Even when they are given the job, they often pull a lower salary than a man with an identical resume. I know; I’ve been there.

I have also noticed that there seems to be a screaming fit whenever any field is found to be fewer men than women – including gynecology. I actually read one young woman medical student bemoan the lack of men in gynecology, because it is important to get the men’s perspective. My only response to that was WTF? Why? When you talk about medical issues, it is very rarely that the perspective of the other sex…or of an out group, if you prefer…is needed. Is the woman pregnant? Gee, I don’t know. I can tell you once I get a man’s perspective. Does she have a prolapsed uterus? Let me call you back once I’ve gotten a man’s perspective. And how often do we see anyone bemoaning the fact that women are rare in proctology? All of the time? How about, I’ve never seen anyone worry about that. Why? Because as long as the men outnumber the women, things are fine.

If you harbored any suspicion that misogyny is dead, that sexism has been sent to the guillotine, kill those suspicions. Drown them, strangle them, shoot them, burn them out. They are simply not accurate, and are more often than not based on incomplete information. Women, put on your running shoes. We still have a long way to go.