WHERE have all the good men gone? Gone to get jobs in air-conditioning repair, every one. Perhaps not every one, but they're not in college, at any rate. As a result, admissions officials in colleges across the country have become distressed.
Declining numbers of males enrolling in universities have gotten admissions officials thinking about affirmative action - for men. This proposition is ridiculous on a number of levels, and should not be considered as a solution for dropping numbers of men enrolling in higher education.
A recent report released by the Center for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education showed that less than 45 percent of undergraduates in the country are men, down from 57 percent in 1970. Also, in 1997, about 20 percent more women earned bachelor's degrees than men.
These numbers have gotten admissions officials worried that before long colleges will be wall-to-wall women and there will be a huge gap between the numbers of educated women and men in the country. They fear that all sorts of sociological havoc will result, with dire consequences for the future of families and marriage prospects and the like.
In a phone interview, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions John Blackburn said that University admissions are gender-blind, which means "gender is not a consideration in admission." It should stay that way. All the fuss about gender discrepancy seems like a bit of an overreaction. The gender discrepancy is only 5 percent; it's not as if the national proportions are grossly lopsided, like 60-40 or worse. Also, there doesn't seem to be indications that the gap will increase. In fact, at the University, the percentage of men for the current first-year class is 46 percent, which is up from 44 percent for the year before, according to Blackburn. This increase apparently happened at many colleges across the country and was not confined to the University, Blackburn said. It does not seem, then, that things are getting worse.
Even if there were a real cause for concern, the idea of instituting affirmative action for men would go against the underlying logic behind other forms of affirmative action.
Affirmative action usually is instituted because a group has been disadvantaged in the past. This argument can't be made in the case of men. Historically, men are pretty much the only group that has not been disadvantaged. If anything, they have caused other groups to be disadvantaged.
There isn't anything holding men back. The discrepancy between the numbers of men and women in universities is due to women being allowed into universities and proving that they are as academically gifted, if not more so, than men. More women are admitted to college purely because they have worked harder to get in and, in the process, have surpassed men. It's a question of merit on one side, not of disadvantage on the other, so affirmative action cannot be justified in this case.
One of the arguments for male affirmative action is that boys are disadvantaged because girls take school seriously while boys "fool around" more, perhaps because they are late bloomers academically, according to Thomas Mortenson from the Center for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education ("Women Outnumber Men on Campus," May 12, St. Louis Post-Dispatch). Mortenson added that "the world is changing and the guys aren't."
This isn't much of an argument. If girls are more studious than boys, it makes sense that they should be rewarded by gaining admission to better schools. If boys want to keep up, they'll have to adapt.
The last 30 years have brought relative equality to schools and the workplace, and the result is that men aren't just competing with other men anymore. Now, they're also competing with women, and that means that a larger number of people are competing for fewer spots. It's reality, and men have to deal with it.
It also seems that the dire consequences predicted as a result of a higher number of educated women than men stem from an outdated point of view. Who really cares if there are more educated women than men? It didn't seem to be much of a problem when more men were educated than women, because men were the breadwinners.
There shouldn't be a problem if, in the 21st century, more women are breadwinners than men. It will mean that family roles will have to change, perhaps, but that change doesn't seem to be a dire consequence of the kind some school officials are predicting.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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