Gender balance in colleges, young men do less to get admitted

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23britz.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
To All the Girls I've Rejected


By JENNIFER DELAHUNTY BRITZ
Published: March 23, 2006


.....We have told today's young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today's most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How's that for an unintended consequence of the women's liberation movement?

The elephant that looms large in the middle of the room is the importance of gender balance. Should it trump the qualifications of talented young female applicants? At those colleges that have reached what the experts call a "tipping point," where 60 percent or more of their enrolled students are female, you'll hear a hint of desperation in the voices of admissions officers.

Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender balance matters in ways both large and small on a residential college campus. Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns out, fewer females find your campus attractive.

What are the consequences of young men discovering that even if they do less, they have more options? And what messages are we sending young women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission to the nation's top colleges? These are questions that admissions officers like me grapple with.
........

[Branjor]

1. That situation is hardly new....

or a consequence of the women's liberation movement. Judging from my male classmates in college in the 1970s, standards were lower for them then too. And when I went to high school in the late 60s, sex discrimination against girls was the rule. For example, the Bronx High School of Science admitted only one girl to every two boys admitted.

[Wetzelbill]

3. that struck me as odd when she said that

It's not a consequence of the women's liberation movement.

So, why can't Universities just a higher percentage of women than men? It's not like it would hurt society anyway. Not in anyway that I can think of.

[Branjor]

4. That's what I think too....

They act like the world is going to end if more women than men get into college.

[Wetzelbill]

5. historically men have had all the opportunity

the world hasn't exactly imploded, not that we haven't screwed up plenty, what the hell is it going to hurt if a college gender ratio is 60-40 with more women? It won't hurt a thing. It'll probably be for the better, in fact. If more women apply for college, in this instance, it works out to admit the most qualified at that ratio. People always piss and moan about lowering standards for racial quotas etc, well that really isn't much of a problem if any. The much bigger problem is lowering standards for a gender quota, in this case, it's punishing more qualified woman so that the student body is evenly split. That's a quota if there ever was one. No rich white guys are complaining about that one. Talk about Bizarro World. The other aspect is look at the rest of society. Especially Congress or institutions like that. Women are underrepresented disproportionately. Maybe by actually admitted more qualified young girls to these colleges it could start making a dent in other areas where there are still inequalities. If women, and especially minority women, apply to college at a higher rate than men. Why not embrace that? It would be foolish not to do so. :)

[SharonAnn]

7. I think it's time that we let women run things. Men have had their

turn and they're still screwing things up.

[Wetzelbill]

2. Radical Feminist Blasphemy!

No, seriously, great post. This is interesting.

I am still reeling from finding out "Hello Kitty" doesn't have a mouth. Just when I thought I've seen it all.... :)

I think one serious problem for women and others interested in feminist causes is that too many people believe we crossed that bridge along time ago. Wage gap? What wage gap? Women are discriminated against? Well, not anymore...

Oh, and here is a great one, "Actually, with affirmitive action and gender discrimination laws, well, white men are the minorities now." That's rich.

Lots of people just don't think inequality exists in this day and age. Despite advances over the years, the fight keeps evolving and is as tough as ever. :)

[dsc]

6. I am deeply suspicious of this

By her own figures the split of applications is slightly above 55 percent women and 45 percent men. According to Kenyon's own website the college is 53 percent female. http://www.kenyon.edu/x1658.xml Assuming students are accepted in the same proportion as they attend and keeping the numbers simple let us assume that 200 people apply and 100 people are accepted. That would give us 110 female applications with 53 accepted and 90 male ones with 47 accepted. (The proportion works the same no matter the numbers). Thus women would have an acceptence rate of 53/110 and men one of 47/90. Women would have an acceptence rate of 0.48181818181818181818181818181818 men would have one of 0.52222222222222222222222222222222 making them 1.0838574423480083857442348049286 times as likely to be admitted.


Yet according to the article the following was true.

Rest assured that admissions officers are not cavalier in making their decisions. Last week, the 10 officers at my college sat around a table, 12 hours every day, deliberating the applications of hundreds of talented young men and women. While gulping down coffee and poring over statistics, we heard about a young woman from Kentucky we were not yet ready to admit outright. She was the leader/president/editor/captain/lead actress in every activity in her school. She had taken six advanced placement courses and had been selected for a prestigious state leadership program. In her free time, this whirlwind of achievement had accumulated more than 300 hours of community service in four different organizations.

Few of us sitting around the table were as talented and as directed at age 17 as this young woman. Unfortunately, her test scores and grade point average placed her in the middle of our pool. We had to have a debate before we decided to swallow the middling scores and write "admit" next to her name.

Had she been a male applicant, there would have been little, if any, hesitation to admit. The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.


end of quote

Sorry, I don't buy this. A student that was on the line as a woman would be admitted without any hesitation as a man? Not with that slight of a differential. Men are very slighly more likely to be admitted according to her own figures. Middling test scores wouldn't become great ones with that slight of a differential. This sounds very much like the complaints lodged against AA programs by whites.