WHERE HAVE ALL THE YOUNG MEN GONE?

The U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights has recently
opened an investigation
into whether some four-year
liberal arts colleges
are accepting lesser qualified
male applicants while
rejecting better qualified
female applicants to
maintain a gender balance
on their campuses.

Nearly four decades
after the passage
of the Title IX legislation
which prohibits gender
discrimination in education
-including school
athletics, for which the
bill is most well known-
more women are entering
college than ever before.
Not only are they attending
college in greater
numbers than men, their
GPA's and graduation
rates are higher.

According to the
U.S. Dept. of Education,
in the 2006-07 school year
women earned 62 percent
of all associate's degrees
awarded, 57 percent of all
bachelors degrees, and
61 percent of all master's
degrees. The trend shows
up at Mercer too. Mercer's
Institutional Profile data
for 2009 reports that of the
students receiving associate's
degrees, 64.4 percent
of recipients were female.

There are many
different opinions concerning
the reason for this
trend, according to Sociology
Professor, Gianna
Durso-Finely. One reason
is that due to gender
income disparities, women
need higher levels of
education in order to earn
the same income as their
male counterparts.

Another possible
reason that women are
out performing men in
college is that due to high
divorce rates and economic
insecurity, women
have learned that they
need to depend on themselves
to earn a living and
support themselves and
their families.

Other reasons
often cited as possible
causes of the problem are
the fact that more boys
than girls are diagnosed
with learning disorders
and that American school
favors skills such as sitting
and being quite that
are nurtured more in girls
than boys.

Some majors in college,
such as nursing and
education, do remain predominantly
female while
others, such as engineering,
remain overwhelmingly
male. At Mercer,
third-year Aviation major
Rajief Jobson said that
his aviation classes were
probably 80 percent male,
possibly more. He is now
finishing his general education
classes, and the
balance has shifted to
about 60 percent female.
He also said that often the
men students don't want
to answer questions even
if they know the answer.

Higher numbers
of girls are applying to
college with better qualifications
and transcripts
than boys and admissions
offices at some schools
may be making decisions
in order to maintain diversity
in their student
body and prevent it from
becoming overwhelmingly
female. If this does
prove to be the case, it
would be a violation of
the Title IX legislation. In
general, this isn't a worry
at Mercer, which has an
open admissions policy,
but some psychologists
suggest that students
don't do as well when
they perceive themselves
to be out numbered by
the opposite gender, a
problem that is becoming
more prevalent at Mercer
each year.