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.
I would very much discourage anyone from adopting the viewpoint that somehow it's the boys' fault. Unless you are one of those people who believe that the student loan situation is somehow the legal and moral responsibility of its victims.
If I may offer one data point. My wife taught third grade for many, many years and for the last decade or so has been lamenting how the little boys seem to be getting the short end of the stick. They mature more slowly, getting lots of negative (disciplinary) attention as a result, and seem to end up circling the drain rather than spiraling ever higher. There are some needs not being met, that need to be met with something other than Adderall. (BTW, where she taught there were strict rules against promoting drugs for childhood behavioral modification, meds were usually the parents' response to the problem). Of course, most people aren't interested in early childhood development, but as the twig is bent, so grows . . .
A second observation. At the Ivy League school from which I graduated, about 40% of the white male admits to the freshman class are so-called 'Dean's interest' candidates--meaning they are children of wealthy donors, athletes or kids whose applications otherwise given special handling. If you were to back those guys out of the admitted class, your numbers would skew even further in the direction that concerns you. (Caveat, I don't have any idea how many of the 18-year-old girls admitted to a place like Swarthmore are 'special cases', either, and you'd need to adjust for them as well, to get a clear picture of what's going on.)
And finally, there's a terminology issue here--boys/girls vs. men/women. However much we may like to encourage 18-year-olds to act like young women and young men (or however they identify), the fact of the matter is that developmentally they are still children in many, many ways. That's true from whether you're talking about things as trivial as crude practical jokes or as serious as explorations of gender identity. The 14-year-old wrestling with their gender identity is as likely to make a bad choice between playing a video game and studying for their chemistry exam as their firmly cis-gendered counterpart.
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.
I would very much discourage anyone from adopting the viewpoint that somehow it's the boys' fault. Unless you are one of those people who believe that the student loan situation is somehow the legal and moral responsibility of its victims.
If I may offer one data point. My wife taught third grade for many, many years and for the last decade or so has been lamenting how the little boys seem to be getting the short end of the stick. They mature more slowly, getting lots of negative (disciplinary) attention as a result, and seem to end up circling the drain rather than spiraling ever higher. There are some needs not being met, that need to be met with something other than Adderall. (BTW, where she taught there were strict rules against promoting drugs for childhood behavioral modification, meds were usually the parents' response to the problem). Of course, most people aren't interested in early childhood development, but as the twig is bent, so grows . . .
A second observation. At the Ivy League school from which I graduated, about 40% of the white male admits to the freshman class are so-called 'Dean's interest' candidates--meaning they are children of wealthy donors, athletes or kids whose applications otherwise given special handling. If you were to back those guys out of the admitted class, your numbers would skew even further in the direction that concerns you. (Caveat, I don't have any idea how many of the 18-year-old girls admitted to a place like Swarthmore are 'special cases', either, and you'd need to adjust for them as well, to get a clear picture of what's going on.)
And finally, there's a terminology issue here--boys/girls vs. men/women. However much we may like to encourage 18-year-olds to act like young women and young men (or however they identify), the fact of the matter is that developmentally they are still children in many, many ways. That's true from whether you're talking about things as trivial as crude practical jokes or as serious as explorations of gender identity. The 14-year-old wrestling with their gender identity is as likely to make a bad choice between playing a video game and studying for their chemistry exam as their firmly cis-gendered counterpart.