4 ms·

I went to a local college few days back and I noticed that there were more girls than boys. I think part of the reason is due to high college debt many young me

by rajeshp1986 5y ago

I went to a local college few days back and I noticed that there were more girls than boys. I think part of the reason is due to high college debt many young men are choosing to take jobs and skipping college all together. This will translate to less men in the knowledge based/corporate jobs.

justinpombrio 5y ago
There have been more women than men in college in the US since the 80s. It varies from college to college and from subject to subject (e.g. STEM is much more male, MIT more male, humanities-focused colleges more female). A graph from a random internet search result: https://educationalpolicy.org/hello-world/ https://educationalpolicy.org/hello-world/
- urthor 5y ago
  There's a huge body of education research about this, this has been the case for of years. There's even data from the pre-1900s, especially in the primary school years. Only recently have we stripped away a lot of the sexism however, providing a successful transition to higher education. It all boils down to: Girls are more likely to do their damn homework when the teacher tells them. Therefore they out-perform in formal education.
  - scarmig 5y ago
    Teachers also give boys lower grades and girls higher grades when their gender is evident; anonymous grading greatly reduces the gender gap in primary and secondary school.
    - diordiderot 5y ago
      Do you have a link to a study etc? V interested
      - scarmig 5y ago
        For example, https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2016.07-Terrier.pdf https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents... https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v48y2013i1p236-264.html https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v48y2013i1p236-264.html (Not the exact studies I remember seeing.) It's a common finding and one of the rare effects in the social sciences that are very reproducible.
        urthor 5y ago
        God we need data in education.
        scarmig 5y ago
        A somewhat related study regarding gender biases in education released a few days ago: https://news.yahoo.com/study-teacher-observations-biased-against-150100299.html https://news.yahoo.com/study-teacher-observations-biased-aga... (The actual study is available at https://my.vanderbilt.edu/brendanbartanen/files/2021/10/grissom-bartanen-evaluation-bias.pdf https://my.vanderbilt.edu/brendanbartanen/files/2021/10/gris... ) Black teachers and male teachers are rated lower during teacher observations than white teachers and female teachers, despite comparable or better outcomes for their students in test scores and student attendance. Interestingly, the bias against male teachers is around twice the bias against Black teachers.
        stuckinhell 5y ago
        Wow, didn't not know this. I need get my son into private school that doesn't do that asap.
  - twofornone 5y ago
    >Only recently have we stripped away a lot of the sexism however, providing a successful transition to higher education. Is it really so difficult to consider that career preferences are gendered? That millions of years of sexually dimorphic specialization could lead to statistically significant differences in interests, abilities, and desired life outcomes? The recent popularity of blaming any disparity on {$x}ism really bothers me. Culture and genes influence outcomes at least as much as any external force in the modern world. That goes for gendered differences too. >girls are more likely to do their damn homework Also ironic that the people who are so eager to fight against sexism/racism have no qualms about generalizing their scapegoats. But it sort if proves my point: you are willing to acknowledge that males may have intrinsic negative traits which could cause them to underperform, but of course acknowledging the obvious implication that such groups may have innate advantages is forbidden; maybe because doing so would undermine the very underpinnings of the modern progressive push for equality of outcome. Metrics targeting equal representation among all industries/disciplines are fundamentally flawed. There's no reason to expect such parity if people are truly free to choose their own paths, nordic countries are an example, where gender disparity persists despite an egalitarian culture.
    - urthor 5y ago
      For one thing, I wasn't really addressing career preferences. Matriculating to higher education isn't really preferring one career over another, other than white collar blue collar. But with absolute surety women are going to college. I feel like you've got multiple different hypotheses in your comment, so I'll address the big one at the start. > Is it really so difficult to consider that career preferences are gendered? That millions of years of sexually dimorphic specialization could lead to statistically significant differences in interests, abilities, and desired life outcomes? Consider that 60% of college students are female now, and 0% were a hundred years ago. I strongly feel like there's very little innate attraction to "traditional" gender roles amongst women. If you look at the trajectory of change, it's very clear that every single decade, the change in women's choices marches in a particular direction. Decade on decade, the numbers all point one way. Which makes me think that women themselves feel traditional gender roles are very unattractive. If there was some sort statistically significant difference, clearly it's not changing the direction of the trend, much if at all. And change is basically percolating its way through society, slowly but surely. ------------------------------------------------ Given the above: If women's preferences were genetically or otherwise innately determined, why have they gone for such an enormous, dramatic change in their lifestyles and social situation in the last 50 years? Because women have chosen that for themselves. My deeply held assumption, is that all our "assumptions" about "what women want" are just that, assumptions. If you think from a perspective of geological time, the 50 years since the 1960s are nothing. That's 1 generation or less. And yet the lot of women in society has changed dramatically, and they seem to be happy about it. Given how much change we've had, I think it's fair to say that the attitudes of 100 years ago were not genetically or innately constructed. I assume pretty much everything in society is just a giant social construct. Very, very little sexual dimorphism between girls and boys is down to nature. It's 100% to nurture, not nature.
  - rpmisms 5y ago
    Yes, men typically have less agreeableness. It's borderline bigoted for the school system to favor typical female psychology so much.
  - zizee 5y ago
    Another way to look at it is that educational systems are setup to favour girls over boys. Typically when we see outcome differences between two groups in a system, most people will blame the system... unless they think it's good/natural for one group to do worse than the other.
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      Two very common views people will adopt to demonstrate the above: The gender pay gap: clearly there is no legitimate or natural way that men would make more money than women in a fair system, so the system must be biased against women. The gender academic success gap: boys don't pay attention or do their work so it's only natural for girls to do better. It's clear that for both of these thoughts to exist in someone's head, they must think there's a superior gender.
- scarmig 5y ago
  STEM is (barely) more female than male [0]. It only seems disproportionately male if you take the idea that 60%+ of people in a major should be female as a given, or if you pick very particular subfields in STEM and take them to represent all of STEM. [0] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/gender-gap-in-stem-women-are-majority-of-stem-grad-students-and-they-earn-a-majority-of-stem-bachelors-degrees/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/gender-gap-in-stem-women-are-...
  - justinpombrio 5y ago
    Oh yeah, it really depends on what you count. I was thinking of the fields I was closest to -- CS, physics, math -- but e.g. biology leans female and has a lot of students.
conductr 5y ago
The high paying vocational jobs also tend to be more geared towards males. Eg. plumbing, electrician, etc. So I wonder if college is the best measure here. I think most people just go to college as a means of making money, they aren't actually in it for the love of knowledge.
- ryeights 5y ago
  People go to college because that is what they are told they should do. Everything else is secondary.

justinpombrio 5y ago

There have been more women than men in college in the US since the 80s. It varies from college to college and from subject to subject (e.g. STEM is much more male, MIT more male, humanities-focused colleges more female). A graph from a random internet search result: https://educationalpolicy.org/hello-world/ https://educationalpolicy.org/hello-world/

urthor 5y ago
There's a huge body of education research about this, this has been the case for of years. There's even data from the pre-1900s, especially in the primary school years. Only recently have we stripped away a lot of the sexism however, providing a successful transition to higher education. It all boils down to: Girls are more likely to do their damn homework when the teacher tells them. Therefore they out-perform in formal education.
- scarmig 5y ago
  Teachers also give boys lower grades and girls higher grades when their gender is evident; anonymous grading greatly reduces the gender gap in primary and secondary school.
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    Do you have a link to a study etc? V interested
    - scarmig 5y ago
      For example, https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2016.07-Terrier.pdf https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents... https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v48y2013i1p236-264.html https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v48y2013i1p236-264.html (Not the exact studies I remember seeing.) It's a common finding and one of the rare effects in the social sciences that are very reproducible.
      - urthor 5y ago
        God we need data in education.
        scarmig 5y ago
        A somewhat related study regarding gender biases in education released a few days ago: https://news.yahoo.com/study-teacher-observations-biased-against-150100299.html https://news.yahoo.com/study-teacher-observations-biased-aga... (The actual study is available at https://my.vanderbilt.edu/brendanbartanen/files/2021/10/grissom-bartanen-evaluation-bias.pdf https://my.vanderbilt.edu/brendanbartanen/files/2021/10/gris... ) Black teachers and male teachers are rated lower during teacher observations than white teachers and female teachers, despite comparable or better outcomes for their students in test scores and student attendance. Interestingly, the bias against male teachers is around twice the bias against Black teachers.
      - stuckinhell 5y ago
        Wow, didn't not know this. I need get my son into private school that doesn't do that asap.
- twofornone 5y ago
  >Only recently have we stripped away a lot of the sexism however, providing a successful transition to higher education. Is it really so difficult to consider that career preferences are gendered? That millions of years of sexually dimorphic specialization could lead to statistically significant differences in interests, abilities, and desired life outcomes? The recent popularity of blaming any disparity on {$x}ism really bothers me. Culture and genes influence outcomes at least as much as any external force in the modern world. That goes for gendered differences too. >girls are more likely to do their damn homework Also ironic that the people who are so eager to fight against sexism/racism have no qualms about generalizing their scapegoats. But it sort if proves my point: you are willing to acknowledge that males may have intrinsic negative traits which could cause them to underperform, but of course acknowledging the obvious implication that such groups may have innate advantages is forbidden; maybe because doing so would undermine the very underpinnings of the modern progressive push for equality of outcome. Metrics targeting equal representation among all industries/disciplines are fundamentally flawed. There's no reason to expect such parity if people are truly free to choose their own paths, nordic countries are an example, where gender disparity persists despite an egalitarian culture.
  - urthor 5y ago
    For one thing, I wasn't really addressing career preferences. Matriculating to higher education isn't really preferring one career over another, other than white collar blue collar. But with absolute surety women are going to college. I feel like you've got multiple different hypotheses in your comment, so I'll address the big one at the start. > Is it really so difficult to consider that career preferences are gendered? That millions of years of sexually dimorphic specialization could lead to statistically significant differences in interests, abilities, and desired life outcomes? Consider that 60% of college students are female now, and 0% were a hundred years ago. I strongly feel like there's very little innate attraction to "traditional" gender roles amongst women. If you look at the trajectory of change, it's very clear that every single decade, the change in women's choices marches in a particular direction. Decade on decade, the numbers all point one way. Which makes me think that women themselves feel traditional gender roles are very unattractive. If there was some sort statistically significant difference, clearly it's not changing the direction of the trend, much if at all. And change is basically percolating its way through society, slowly but surely. ------------------------------------------------ Given the above: If women's preferences were genetically or otherwise innately determined, why have they gone for such an enormous, dramatic change in their lifestyles and social situation in the last 50 years? Because women have chosen that for themselves. My deeply held assumption, is that all our "assumptions" about "what women want" are just that, assumptions. If you think from a perspective of geological time, the 50 years since the 1960s are nothing. That's 1 generation or less. And yet the lot of women in society has changed dramatically, and they seem to be happy about it. Given how much change we've had, I think it's fair to say that the attitudes of 100 years ago were not genetically or innately constructed. I assume pretty much everything in society is just a giant social construct. Very, very little sexual dimorphism between girls and boys is down to nature. It's 100% to nurture, not nature.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  Yes, men typically have less agreeableness. It's borderline bigoted for the school system to favor typical female psychology so much.
- zizee 5y ago
  Another way to look at it is that educational systems are setup to favour girls over boys. Typically when we see outcome differences between two groups in a system, most people will blame the system... unless they think it's good/natural for one group to do worse than the other.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    Two very common views people will adopt to demonstrate the above: The gender pay gap: clearly there is no legitimate or natural way that men would make more money than women in a fair system, so the system must be biased against women. The gender academic success gap: boys don't pay attention or do their work so it's only natural for girls to do better. It's clear that for both of these thoughts to exist in someone's head, they must think there's a superior gender.
scarmig 5y ago
STEM is (barely) more female than male [0]. It only seems disproportionately male if you take the idea that 60%+ of people in a major should be female as a given, or if you pick very particular subfields in STEM and take them to represent all of STEM. [0] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/gender-gap-in-stem-women-are-majority-of-stem-grad-students-and-they-earn-a-majority-of-stem-bachelors-degrees/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/gender-gap-in-stem-women-are-...
- justinpombrio 5y ago
  Oh yeah, it really depends on what you count. I was thinking of the fields I was closest to -- CS, physics, math -- but e.g. biology leans female and has a lot of students.

conductr 5y ago

The high paying vocational jobs also tend to be more geared towards males. Eg. plumbing, electrician, etc. So I wonder if college is the best measure here. I think most people just go to college as a means of making money, they aren't actually in it for the love of knowledge.

ryeights 5y ago
People go to college because that is what they are told they should do. Everything else is secondary.