Of the 195 freshmen who enrolled at the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University in fall of 2009, only 74 were men.
There are a number of local factors that might contribute to this imbalance; for example, the liberal arts curriculum of the Clark Honors College has traditionally failed to attract students from certain male-dominated sciences.
The ratio, however, is a microcosm of a larger trend in enrollment at the University and on campuses across the nation. The American Council on Education reports that women account for 57 percent of college enrollments since 2000. On our campus, the numbers appear to be rising to meet the national ratio: The University registrar reports that the entire student body is 51 percent female to 49 percent male, while the entering freshmen class of fall ’09 is 53 to 47.
When I spoke with Sterling Lentz, a senior advertising major, he wasn’t concerned about the matriarchal revolution fomenting in his Honors College classes.
“Honestly, the only time I notice the gender imbalance is when I look at all of the people in the classroom and realize that I could date most of them,” Lentz said.
This spin on the issue was the primary focus of a recent article in the Style section of The New York Times. Reporter Alex Williams quoted students and academics who believe gender imbalance decreases women’s social power by forcing them to “compete for men on men’s terms.”
If a smaller dating pool is the only negative byproduct of the feminine dominance in college classrooms, I’m not worried at all. If I’ve learned anything meaningful from “Sex in the City,” it’s that the plight of the un-wed career woman is a glam party next to the traditional female maladies: workplace discrimination, unfair wages, sexual harassment, unfair hiring practices, housewife monotony, etc. By the numbers, it appears that quite a few ladies agree with me. Let’s worry about the brain now, the boyfriend later, and hope that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
The filter of New York Times Style distorts the big picture; college enrollment is a socio-economic issue. Who goes to college is generally who makes it in this country, and young men appear to be opting out at an alarming rate.
Clark Honors College Dean David Frank calls it “an educational crisis.”
“Because of their better study habits and preparation, young women are more able to compete for better positions in the best schools,” said Frank, who has two teenage sons of his own.
I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for deans and admissions counselors to sit at the receiving end of our broken educational system.
“We can’t do anything about it because we have standards that we have to apply regardless of gender,” Frank said, “and we can only admit students who apply.” Only 40 percent of Clark Honors College applicants are men.
Still, I’m not ready to call this one a crisis. In the bigger picture of college enrollment, more Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 are going to college than ever before, according to a 2009 report by the Pew Research Center. It’s not necessarily that male enrollment is decreasing, but that female enrollment is increasing at a faster rate.
So long as the gender gap doesn’t widen indefinitely, the excitement over higher education among young American women is a good way to counter the material bias that exists in college curriculums.
Lentz notes that “the curriculum of academia has not yet adapted to the fact that there are more women than men. The core ideas — even in the courses that are taught by women — are still very patriarchal.” In other words, when textbooks and tenure tracks are still bent for men, it doesn’t hurt to have an uppity majority of educated women in the student body.
In January, The Economist reported a parallel trend: While only two percent of corporate CEOs are women, women now outnumber men in the American workforce and are “taking a sledgehammer to the remaining glass ceiling.”
It may be a little early to declare victory for the feminist sledgehammer, but I would like to echo The Economist’s celebratory tone. This is a better time to be a woman in America, where, more than ever before, we are judged more on the content of our characters and our brains than on our ability to find a future spouse.
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