In Michigan, as we’ve seen in a number of posts here, the ladies are worried about losing their special treatment. But across the country it is less and less clear that affirmative helps women (even aside for the stereotyping that it assumes and reinforces). For example, from Colorado:
The Colorado Commission on Higher Education’s recent report on state college enrollment trends says that in the fall of 2001, 45.4 percent of the students enrolled in public colleges in Colorado were males. By 2005, the proportion declined to 44.4 percent. The gender gap is wider at community colleges, where just 39.3 percent of in-state students last fall were men.
It’s led to what some college counselors call education’s dirty little secret: affirmative action programs for men, no matter their color. Admissions directors at many schools are bypassing girls with better grades and more extracurricular activities in favor of boys who who don’t have similar credentials, just to keep male numbers up.
And, wouldn’t you know it, minority males are disproportionately underrepresented in colleges across the country.
In minority communities, the gaps are even more pronounced. An estimated 58 percent of Hispanic female students graduated from high school, compared with 49 percent of males, and about 59 percent of African-American females graduated, compared with only 48 percent of males, the Manhattan Institute found.
Here’s an idea: if we really have abandoned the principle of treating people equally without regard to race, ethnicity, or sex, then let’s concentrate the preferences we hand out where they’re most needed: let’s limit them to minority males.
Agreed.
I wonder if the gender gap in colleges is actually a result of AA, or rather the effect that AA is having on colleges. Very few males want to put up with the sensitivity courses, the PC atmosphere, the Cornel Wests, etc, that are now common in universities.
I’d like to see some statistics on those associate degrees from specialty schools that are popping up, such as the computer schools. At my last job, we prefered to hire graduates from these schools. They were better educated than college grads, and they knew how to get a job done.
The gender gap may be nothing more than males leaving behind the “emasculated” colleges created by AA, and obtaining instead an associate degree.