There’s been a new cycle of conversations about young American men “giving up” on college following a Wall Street Journal article on the subject two days ago.
The WSJ article documents that the gap between men and women pursuing 4-year undergraduate degrees accelerated notably during the covid-19 pandemic but also that this gap has been growing steadily for some years now. It also notes that white working class and lower middle-class men are particularly disappearing from the population of college applicants.
It’s one of those trends that most people in higher education are aware of but don’t really talk about a great deal. There’s a variety of reasons for that. For one, many institutions with selective admissions are quietly putting a thumb on the scale to ensure that their incoming classes are as close to 50-50 in terms of gender ratio as possible, but would generally prefer not to talk about this practice in relationship to ongoing concerns with gender and racial imbalances in many academic disciplines and in terms of disparities in life outcomes in terms of income, professional achievement, etc.
I think more potently, we don’t really have a strong working theory about what exactly is happening to produce this trend. Is this a consequence of some structure or practice in K-12 education? Is it something about how higher education looks or feels to young men when they contemplate applying? Is is a sign that despite lots of hand-wringing about how careers of the future will require advanced training, there’s actually still a very viable career path through various trades like plumbing or construction that many young men find more appealing than pursuing a bachelor’s degree? Is this trend a result of ideological attacks on education and meritocracy influencing the decision-making of young men?
Or is it the other way round--that young men deciding for some other reason to not go to college are fueling those attacks among political leaders and right-wing media because they hope to mobilize or appeal to those men? It’s hard to get away from the thought that efforts to defund and denigrate higher education happen to coincide with applicants skewing notably towards women. Or is this simply one more manifestation of white male ressentiment: that if they can’t have something on a privileged basis, they won’t have it at all? That if they’re not given an advantage, they’ll just go off and sulk?
The difference between those various hypotheses is important for higher education’s future (and many of them are not exclusive) and for how higher education relates to American society more broadly. It feels to me like this trend is a part of many related issues but it’s entirely possible that something else altogether is going on here. I’m particularly wondering if there’s something different in K-12 education over the last two decades that’s playing a role--some managerial attention to disciplining masculinity or some kind of cultural messaging or stereotype threat that pushes boys away from academic study, maybe of the kind that’s been visible in some athletic subcultures for much longer.
Thoughts, readers? I understand if the proposition that solicitous attention to men and masculinity feels a bit exasperating when there is so much inequality still to be dealt with--but it feels at least as if we have to take some interest in this trend.
Image credit: "Lost Boys graffiti, Trellick Tower" by duncan is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
I wish I had an answer for you, Tim, but I don’t. A sad part of me wonders if it’s as simple as young men watching young women find their feet in school and covertly disliking it. I have sometimes sat or stood in front of a classroom (like yesterday, in fact) and wondered who these amazing young women are going to find to go out with if this is representative of what’s on offer for those who are cis-gendered. Sigh. Maybe they need to look to each other.
Short Answer: coding bootcamps. My students hear rumor and see proof at their Oregon frats of brothers making bank via tech, hedge funds, and sometimes via cryptocurrencies. They look at the cost of a four year college degree (as opposed for example to Europe) and scoff. Every “entry-level job” requires an internship (and tech companies pay very well), or a CPA or some other specialized skillset or ‘in’. They read books like Boy Kings, written by a phd in English who couldnt find a job in academia, opting to ghostwrite Zuckerberg’s memos. They tend to inherit their parents’ attitudes and dislike the domineering, ‘box-checkig’ attitude of peers in the AP courses who out-compete them for slots to Stanford, Harvard and schools likenSwarthmore (which they’ve rarely if ever heard of) which don’t even accept their Portland Community College college credits. It’s hard to blame 17 year old boys and girls for opting for two years at a community college that can guarantee a six figure income at an intel fab or 3 years up at UW in-state which guarantees Amazon inc. stock and the sheer ability to afford a house in today’s insane marketplace of talent and societally determines metrics of self-worth.