Here it Is! The Solution to the Problem of Falling Male College Enrollment
November 5th, 2009 by Robert Franklin, Esq.I suppose it had to happen, but I certainly didn't see it coming. This article informs us that a number of colleges in the Northwest are restarting football programs, not because their teams had much success in the past or because current students particularly want them, but in the hopes of attracting male enrollees (The Oregonian, 11/3/09). A couple of the schools the article refers to have under 40% male enrollment at the undergraduate level, and apparently that's cause for concern, at least to some. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Pacific University cautiously offered this:
"It's necessary to change the gender balance to be more representative of society," says John Hayes, dean of Pacific's college of arts and sciences. "At more than 60 percent female, there is a different classroom dynamic, and I don't think the discourse is as rich."
I'm all for, er, rich discourse, but I wonder if adding a football team is the right way to go about it. There's a great deal of information to the effect that classrooms, particularly college classrooms, are not exactly friendly environments to males. At many liberal arts institutions, anti-male pedagogy is the order of the day. Consider this quotation from Nathanson and Young's Spreading Misandry:
"Using postmodernism as their front [feminists] have colonized fields as diverse as the humanities, the law and the social sciences. It is primarily because of this revolution at the upper levels of academia, propagated not only in countless classrooms but also in countless chatrooms on the Internet, that our society is becoming just as gynocentric as the androcentric one that feminists were supposed to correct in the name of equality of the sexes."
To say the least, that is not a collegiate situation that adding a football team will do much to address. But the fact of plummeting male college enrollments begins far earlier than the first day of freshman year. My guess is that it begins sometime around cradle days and continues indefinitely, kind of like death and taxes.
On this blog alone, we've read about a British writer who was appalled at the casual misandry in the most popular children's books he found himself reading to his son. We've heard from feminist icon Doris Lessing who, on visiting a primary school classroom was enraged at the denigration of boys there. From Christina Hoff Sommers we've learned that, over the past few decades education itself has turned away from how boys learn in favor of a more "progressive" style that favors girls. As more than one experiment in pedagogy has taught us, when that is changed, boys' performance changes for the better. But those experiments are almost uniformly ignored when education policy is made.
If you don't believe me, just read the article. Imagine yourself to be a 17-year-old male who's due to graduate high school in May and start college next September. Listen to what this student says.
It's comfortable having classes that are mostly women. It avoids the problem of guys being guys." says Jenny Rodriquez, a junior at Pacific.
Or this professor:
Others don't see why it's an issue to have twice as many female as male students.
"So what?" asks Martha Rampton, a professor of history at Pacific who opposed re-introducing football. "Show me why it's a problem."
Here's a student who says she wants "more boys" on campus.
Pacific sophomore Brandi Palmer says she has a writing class that's all female students.
"We're mostly feminists, and everyone agrees about things," she says. "Having more boys would encourage a clash of ideas."
Sound inviting? The most positive one, Brandi Palmer, admits that everyone in her class is female and most of them are feminists.
I like football as well as the next guy, and better than many, but let's get serious here. The drastic decline in male education in this country doesn't have anything to do with which sports are played at which schools. It has to do with a culture that, for longer than many of these young men have been alive, has itself made a sport of denigrating men. It's an experiment that has had disastrous results and those results will continue as long as we degrade everything masculine.
Teach boys from the cradle that they're second-rate human beings at best and you'll have college classrooms that are mostly girls. If that's what you want, just keep doing what you're doing.
Thanks to Rod and Susan for the heads-up.
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November 5th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
I am embarrassed to say that I attended the same liberal arts school which threw that Loyola New Orleans professor under the bus for having a seminar in which he dared claim that the wage gap is nonexistant. While the hostility wasn't as intense for me (I was a science student), it still existed in many subtle ways.
And the remark about 'guys being guy's in the classroom is pure rubbish. College age men no longer leer and hoot in the classroom. They are just as eager to study (or sleep) as anyone else.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Early every morning on my way into work, we stop at a popular place to grab coffee. I mean early -- 6:00 am. The most startling aspect of this daily stop each and every day is the number of men, mostly young men, who do the same thing. Based on their vehicles, most are young men on their way to a service job. Virtually no women, ever, but large numbers of men. Now please note that at my law firm, we have several women attorneys who stroll in at 9:30 am or so.
Friends, I'm an advocate for college. Always have been. I went to school for seven years beyond high school and I believe in education. But lately I've been thinking the following: I know electricians and plumbers making more than some attorneys. They certainly seem happier. The "learned" professions are overcrowded since women started flooding them, but the world can always use a good plumber, and women have essentially zero interest in doing that or anything similar Maybe, just maybe, the boys are onto something while we assume they're withdrawing because they've been defeated by feminism.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
"Maybe, just maybe, the boys are onto something while we assume they're withdrawing because they've been defeated by feminism."
This is a very good point. However, there's no dobut that many Universities are incredibly hostile places for males, and very much biased towards females.
Undoubtedly many males have seen far better methods of making a living and thus aren't studying just for the sake of it. However, it's also clear that such an anti-male environment is bound to be excluding many males who would actually like to be there - opting out of university needs to be a choice rather than something people are forced into.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
What i see in this is also the start of the "why cant we find good men as husbands" rant that has been common in some of the Fem blogs. When decently educated men (i.e College) see the shrews they will have as choices when they are in class here they look elsewhere for partners so they wont have to hear the same feminist idealism they were exposed to when they were students.
I know college educated women who profess to be feminists and they just dont get why the girl who isnt as "successful" as they are have no problem finding a husband while no one will touch them with a 10ft pole.
Welcome to equality Ladies. You got what you wanted. Now you cant stand it.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
John K. -- I agree. I also think that young women are pressured by enlightened feminist thinking into believing they must go to college -- and study any inane thing, including inane Womyn's Studies -- in order to be independent of men. Then when they get there, they quickly learn to bellyache -- because there aren't enough men. When they get out and outearn their male peers in big cities (that's a fact), they don't celebrate the fact that the wage gap has been turned on its head, they continue to bellyache that they can't find educated male peers to date and marry. No matter what, women are taught they must be the victim of some nefarious male plot or other.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I think many of the young females in college will "say" they are just about anything if it suits them. Situational feminists. We men, as a group, are getting punk'd.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
And Robert BTW the only real reason that they want those teams back is for the $$$ they
generate that fund womens teams. When is the last time you saw 35000 people go to a womens lacrosse match or a softball game?
They are reaping the reward of pushing those mens teams out. Schools are having to stop funding womens athletics because WITHOUT the money that mens sports brings in it is almost impossible for womens to be self sufficient. I think they will see it is much harder to start a thing then to stop it. it takes YEARS to develop a mens team that will be competitive enough to bring in the cash. I hope male athletes avoid these schools like the plauge.
The Other Mike D
November 5th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
sorry off topic
alert...alert..
woman found guilty i can not beleve it?
Michelle Kehoe found guilty of murdering 7 year old son!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/05/iowa.michelle.kehoe.verdict/index.html
November 5th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
She cries like a wet baby.. yes guilty as charged... I can not believe it...
November 5th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Not all males are being attacked equally on college campuses.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Money money money.
Keep cranking the liberal arts grads through the mill. Don't worry about whether those degrees are worth a thing. America's future work force: highly qualified for jobs that don't exist... with crushing debt loads... working at starbuck's. Cheap labor, compelled to work.
Remember all those companies built on phony mortgage debt?
These schools are opening sports programs not because sports matter... but because it reaps tuition. Look at it this way: a student sees sports as their main goal... but wants to add a psychology degree. You need to pick a school that combines the 2. From the school's perspective- opening a sports program sets them apart and is smart marketing to attract those students. Reverse the low male enrollement.
I can't discuss my personal connection here... but there is a notable institution based in san francisco that has exploded in the past decade or 2, enrollment/property ownership/profit-wise.
It is a for-profit school with 100% enrollment (no achievement standards to get in) that charges pretty high tuition.
Of course having so many attendees paying to go there, entitles them to get lots of grants and buy lots of property.
Being for-profit means they can expand as much as the market can bear. Until the city of SF made a special law banning them from buying so much property.
They are also unique in being the only art school that has started a sports program.
Let me pull some choice quotes from this alt-weekly's article about it:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-08-27/news/going-for-gold/
"Running a sports program is a marvelously efficient way to squander money. Recent NCAA statistics reveal that, among schools operating Division II programs without a football team, 93 percent lose money, with the average annual shortfall roughly $1.4 million. Incidentally, 93 percent of Division II programs with football also lose money, with the average deficit at $1.77 million. The academy, however, doesn't write off the millions it has sunk into athletics as a mere expenditure. It's an investment.
"athletics is usually the greatest marketer of an institution"
"They've raped and cannibalized the city's housing stock," bemoans John Bardis, a former San Francisco supervisor and one of the academy's most outspoken critics.
Bardis sums up the Academy of Art as a "facade" fronting a real estate operation that enables the funneling of vast sums of money — much of it from the state and federal government — to the Stephens family. According to the Department of Education, $88,272,468 in federal grants and loans was paid to academy students in the 2006-07 academic year alone. With this in mind, Bardis laughed when asked why the academy might want to compete in NCAA athletics: "They'd rather people talk about sports than how they're screwing over renters. They're scrambling awful fast to show they're legitimate."
""With a sports program, you'll get more people in here. You can't view the academy as a school; you have to view it as a company.""
A standout women's soccer player from Genoa, Nevada, told the Record-Courier, "I saw that they offered interior design and architecture in one degree, so I knew it was perfect for me."
November 5th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Sorry, typo-
"It is a for-profit school with 100% ACCEPTANCE (no achievement standards to get in) that charges pretty high tuition. "
November 6th, 2009 at 12:44 am
this is one issue that has bugged me for years..hey where is the govt help?...i say cut women only govt programs...i'm so sick of hearing about women in the news.......just ask a liberal democrat about this issue if your in the mood for some bull crap response or just plain denial........don't expect obama or biden to lift a finger on this- they are liberal democrats which means they are feminists...........women have about 30 colleges and men have 3 men only colleges.....
November 6th, 2009 at 1:43 am
really john? your comments on here are such filler. Ask a liberal democrat such as the one that commented right before you did.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:35 am
But men still marry western women!
November 6th, 2009 at 5:39 am
Hey don't mess with the liberal democrats. Look at all of the wonderful things they are doing and have done for the world in general.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:45 am
hmmm international men's day, 3 billion men 'forget' to get out of bed....
November 6th, 2009 at 5:49 am
The only way for men to get listern to is to go on strike!
Plus TV on the sidewalk, cancelled that newspaper, dump the radio, listern to mens rights podcats on I-tunes.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Give western women the husband they deserve - NONE
November 6th, 2009 at 5:59 am
Ya like he said
November 6th, 2009 at 7:37 am
When men/boys don’t bother the outcome will affect universities i.e. universities will become an irrelevance. The arts and ology brigades have dominated universities to such a degree that the degree itself has become unimportant and meaningless.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:33 am
A single-sport program is going to have what, 50, 60 students in it? Do high school boys choose a college so they can watch other boys play football?
If schools actually want more male students they should be promoting sports clubs, not sports teams. Had there been a rowing team instead of a rowing club at my school I never would have qualified. I wasn't experienced in the sport and I wasn't particularly gifted. Thankfully it was a club, so anyone who was willing to put in the work could go to the practices.
The troubles males have in colleges are school-wide.Schools like the one in the article don't need a male-ghetto in the stadium.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:13 am
To the extent that men really are being held back in college, I suspect that all it would take to bring down such a house of cards is a single, adequately-funded men's college. Are there not still women-only colleges? If so, the case for abolition of those of creation of at least one men-only college seems overwhelming. Ditto for earlier points in the education system if the problem is rooted there.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:36 am
# Pierre Harlan Says:
November 5th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
"John K. -- I agree. I also think that young women are pressured by enlightened feminist thinking into believing they must go to college -- and study any inane thing, including inane Womyn's Studies -- in order to be independent of men. Then when they get there, they quickly learn to bellyache -- because there aren't enough men. When they get out and outearn their male peers in big cities (that's a fact), they don't celebrate the fact that the wage gap has been turned on its head, they continue to bellyache that they can't find educated male peers to date and marry..."
I would add: so she can get off her hamster wheel, no matter what her husband wants or how negatively it affects him.
What was the point of this "equality" of education if she is only going to "retire" at the age of 29? Scene in this light I would turn that teachers comment on it's head and state that maybe when colleges were 70% male there was no real problem as it can be demonstrably shown that women aren't doing anything with the degrees they're earning now (other than marrying very educated men).
Better to have students that actually use their degree to benefit society for the next 30+ years after graduation.
Several years ago angryharry wrote that an additional burden to health care (and patient wait times) would be the huge horde of female doctors entering the profession who would only work 20-30 hours instead of male doctors 45-55hours per week.
This shifting definition of "equal" is what allows a female member of a law firm working 9am to 4pm to actually have anybody take her seriously that she should be made partner ahead of male lawyers working 6:30am to 9pm who have a much higher win ratio in their cases.
It's time to confront feminists in every venue imaginable and demand truth and fairness, and tell them they can shove their version of equality where the sun doesn't shine.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Reality is that even if it was possible to rid our P-12 systems of their disdain for anything male it would still take nearly two decades to rid the tertiary systems of their gender imbalance without some kind of affirmative action approach. Into the bargain the tertiary sector is even more intense in it's own application of the same disdain.
Doubt we'll ever see parity. The inevitable crumbling of western civilisation, education systems included, will see to that.
History repeats.
Men create. Women invade. Women create atmosphere hostile to men. Men give up in despair. Men leave.
Men create...
November 6th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Using postmodernism as a front is a major issue. That evil system of non-thought has pervaded every level of academia with its Marxist, morally bankrupt garbage.
On another level, what we're beginning to see is that talented young men are flying under the radar instead of 'joining in' with society. A good example is a twenty five year old I spoke to recently. He works for an investment bank, and is a pretty talented commodities trader. His plan is to quit the bank, buy a small farm, and move to the middle of Vermont, where he'll trade own his own. With high-speed internet, computerized trading technology, and talent, I'm sure this guy will make a very nice living.
More and more, men are starting to live this way; becoming day traders and private consultants and such rather than starting businesses and employing people. It's the big 'SCREW YOU,' and you can't blame them. Why should they create things for the 'good of society' when society is only going to screw them over for their efforts?
MGTOW all the way, baby!!
November 6th, 2009 at 10:25 am
It's going to be tougher for women to "marry up" if they're the ones with all the big college degrees and big $$ jobs. Oops.
November 6th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
matt says
"To the extent that men really are being held back in college, I suspect that all it would take to bring down such a house of cards is a single, adequately-funded men's college. Are there not still women-only colleges? If so, the case for abolition of those of creation of at least one men-only college seems overwhelming. Ditto for earlier points in the education system if the problem is rooted there."
MCA says..It's baffling to me why there has not been some wealthy and grateful American fathyers, to stand up and back the mens / fathers rights movement. One of the great things about wealth, is giving it all away to causes that nourish you're soul. Have the wealthy in this country regressed into such myopic selfishness that they would rather see America "slouch into Gomorrah" then give any of their money to the Noble cause of raising healthy children?
November 6th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
The bigger problem for the colleges, is that if they start making Men's teams, title IVD will force them to make the same teams for women, and that where the problem will be. Not enough cash to go around, and if there IS cash, it MUST go to women since they are "protected" and NEED affirmative action.
As for affirmative action for men, the problem is men as a class are not "protected", and therefore nothing can be done to help "us".
November 6th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
So we're criticising the few universities that are:
1. Acknowledging that a problem with gender balance exists in colleges;
2. Taking a step to try to address it.
That's rich. Actually there is evidence that greater sports programming will draw more males into college Robert. I think the criticism here is misguided.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Lisa - Well, if establishing mediocre football programs is your idea of how to improve male college enrollment, then I guess these colleges are doing what you think is best.
For my part, as I said in my post, the problem of boys and men in school has nothing (at least that's been documented) to do with the presence or absence of football. From earliest childhood all the way through graduate school, there are a number of factors that predictably discourage males in academic endeavors. Do you seriously believe that football programs are the answer to any of that? I don't.
Establishing football programs is a pretense. It pretends to do something while in fact doing nothing and spending a fair amount of money in the process. Thanks, but no thanks.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Robert, it's a grass roots approach to increasing the number of males who enroll. I can tell you for sure, that if a college has a football team, more males will go there. What more do you need to know. More males will enroll. Period. And whether its a mediocre team is beside the point! Some (many?) males want to play ball in college, whether its football, baseball etc. A male who is considering college or vocational work or joblessness is more likely to choose college if there is a team there. Heck its a start. Why criticise it when most schools don't even acknowledge that the gender gap is something to even consider. I don't get your misplaced focus.
November 6th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
men send a message to the democratic party and don't vote democratic....they ignore you...maybe then they will take notice
November 6th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
giving men a football is stupid....it doesn't help men with school....it ignores the problems and is nothing but a cheap trick to get men....and it doesn't go against political correctness which makes the feminists and liberal democrats happy
November 6th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
No john, I don't think I will do that.
men send a message to the republican party and don't vote republican.... they ignore you... maybe then they will take notice about male homelessness and poverty, corporate abuse of men at work, the corporate prison system full of men, chivalrous courts...
November 6th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
by the way john, do you say "liberal democrat" because you love "conservative democrats"?
November 6th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Fewer men attend college because they can't afford the country club luxury education of irrelevant and unusable "knowledge" which so many colleges produce which may well be up to a simple majority of them by this year, 2009.
Many men become slaves to various obligations -- like child support -- before they can even attend college, which of course puts them at risk of prison if they don't get real jobs real quick.
Many employers have recognized that the majority of those who graduate college in America have picked up knowledge which they as employers regard as having virtually zero value to them. Writing skills - nil. Computer skills - nil. Sales skills - nil. Reading literature -- useless.
What middle to lower tier colleges do is give people four years of training in "showing up", more or less, which is probably good for some of those who attend, and the rest simply get four more years of "maturing".
Maybe the biggest value of the lower half of colleges to America is that they reduce the reported unemployment rate while those attending are still "students"?
And how many of those graduating wind up working in restaurants, at Walmart, or at any of a number of jobs where their "college education" gave them zero preparation for their actual work responsibilities? Some would say more than half.
Yes America, outside of the top 20% or so of schools, "college" has devolved into one more pandering luxury in America, and when it comes to pandering, nobody enjoys more pandering than America's women.
The shoppers and "child support" spenders of tomorrow.
As America continues its slide into the abyss made by its legislative/judicial power duopoly.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
robert says
Establishing football programs is a pretense. It pretends to do something while in fact doing nothing and spending a fair amount of money in the process. Thanks, but no thanks."
I agree.. Football is crap its just an attempt to pretend like something is being done but if you look at all the REAL problems and read Christina Hoff Sommers book War against boys you will see what I mean.
@ Lisa you really need to start reading some books... I recommend the above The WAR AGAINST BOYS: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men
November 6th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
What a lame brained, ridiculously myopic idea that out of all possibilities to attract men to higher learning, introducing a football program would be a sine qua non to attract them.
This is a new low that supposedly highly educated minds have descended to and I really don't know where to begin to address this unbelievably profound indolence regarding the nature of young men's minds. The fact that men are intelligent human beings fully capable of feeling and perceiving emotions doesn’t seem to carry any significance in such ideas. Given the horrendous intellectual mediocrity (or rather effluent) coming out of the humanities these days, it's believable that (mis)educated minds could be so oblivious.
It's as though they think these guys were, in the midst of deep economic turmoil in this country which has affected men to a much greater degree than women, just hangin' out on the street corner or lounging on some couch waiting for the local college to say "Come hither!! We've got football!!".
That men usually don't go where they are not wanted doesn't matter to the manifest misandrist societal paradigm nurtured within much of university culture, and the resultant marginalization of men there doesn’t bode well for any rush among young men to enroll, football or no.
That, along with the glaring failure of prepatory schools to even consider how men, specifically, learn, is driving young men out of our educational institutions into other endeavors. Believe me, men aren’t stupid or lazy or dolts as many women (do men matter?) have been given to think and they will in time, create a successful alternative for their livelihoods that will harness all the creativity they have. That includes the alternate education they need to achieve their goals.
At that point a university education probably won’t matter. Why should it, if university society continues to enshrine misandrist thought that marginalizes and alienates men?
November 8th, 2009 at 9:32 am
The only way something like that will work is if the real desire is to quickly gain more male presence on college campuses. All of the athletes need to be scholarship students. They should offer the same number of male only acedemic scholarships. Add some science and engineering based on modern developements such as automated manufacturing, green energy technology, auto CAD,etc. They should also be "inclusive" with the tolerance games they like to play. Males white and black or what the hell ever need to be given the same consideration as the precious females.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
The Other Mike D says: "What i see in this is also the start of the "why cant we find good men as husbands" rant that has been common in some of the Fem blogs. When decently educated men (i.e College) see the shrews they will have as choices when they are in class here they look elsewhere for partners so they wont have to hear the same feminist idealism they were exposed to when they were students. "
PK responds: I was born in a demographic group, the X generation, where men still largely outnumbered women on campus due to a huge supply of older baby boomers who married younger women and took them out of the university system or the young women had off-campus Baby Boomer boyfriends. During the 80's, there was a backlash against casual sex due to AIDS and also young women worried that men were taking them up on an offer for "free" love.
Much of the reason for this reversal is that there is now a flood of young women sexually available young women at that. I wonder if today's young men on campus, despite the rampant discrimination, are viewing the situation as a mixed blessing.
Revolution is impossible until it becomes inevitable.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Good point PK.
Oh, and email me...?