Hugo Schwyzer reflects on a NYT story on college admissions policies and the implications for both genders.
The New York Times reports today on a new study about changing college admissions policies. The big lede is that both public and private colleges are increasingly likely to admit wealthy applicants who won’t need financial aid, even when those applicants have lower grades and test scores than their competitors.
As troubling (though hardly unexpected, given the dreadful economy) as this news is, another part of the story is in danger of being overlooked: more colleges and universities than ever before are giving preference to male applicants—regardless of race or class. Inside Higher Education (the site that commissioned the study) notes that when it comes to competitive admissions men of all backgrounds are now lumped in the same preferential category as athletes, children of alumni, and offspring of donors. Though rumors have persisted in recent years that some colleges did favor men in admissions to try and achieve a balanced sex-ratio, we’ve never had evidence of just how widespread this practice is until now.
There’s no question that the percentage of women receiving bachelor’s degrees has climbed in recent years—and that at the same time, slightly fewer men are attending or finishing university. There are a host of hotly debated reasons for this shift. Some, like Leonard Sax, argue that boys lack the natural ability to focus that girls possess, and as a result tend to fall behind in school. They may need extra help, a different pedagogical approach – and apparently, preferential treatment in admissions.
But it’s hard to escape the sense that the decision to admit guys with lower grades than their female peers is tied to a panic about the seeming feminization of ambition and success in our culture. In the 1920s, the Ivy League famously initiated quotas to keep down the number of Jewish students, who were considered too bright, too pushy, and too likely to displace the young WASPs in pursuit of their gentlemen’s Cs. In the 1980s, there were widespread rumors that the University of California was taking steps to reduce the very high percentage of Asian students at campuses like Berkeley.
Women, it seems, are the “new Jews” of higher education—forced to be better than everyone else in order to be treated equally.
While affirmative action may make sense for historically disadvantaged groups, it’s absurd to apply less rigorous standards to middle-class white men. To the extent that boys are not as academically successful as their sisters, the blame lies less with the imaginary anti-male bias of the educational system and more with the crude anti-intellectualism of young male culture.
The false belief that “you don’t need an education to be successful” is more rampant than ever among young men of virtually all backgrounds. It is part of a backlash against women’s achievement and the disastrous sense so many young men have that masculine identity requires behaving in ways that women don’t. In this sad calculus, the more women attend college, the more college becomes identified with the feminine—and the less young men want to have anything to do with it. This is not about lack of ability or about different learning styles—it’s about the longing for all-male space.
The culprit isn’t attention deficit disorder in little boys. The culprit isn’t successful girls. The culprit is a Guy Code which prizes as masculine only those things that women cannot or will not do. Rather than punish our daughters and coddle our sons with different admission standards, we need to confront the toxic and worsening anti-intellectualism of young men’s culture.
About Hugo Schwyzer
Vocalyze
This all make me laugh pretty hard. I say you all are making too much of gender qualities. Gender doesn’t have qualities, gender is a personal internal feeling. Everyone expresses gender differently. Society really need to stop enforcing “This is how boys are and this is how girls are,and there are only boys and girls.” Really? Every boy learns better how you were explaining? Every girl learns how you explained? I say allow kids to fricken develop however, you will notice boys might pick up behavior that is ‘girlish’ and girls might pick up ‘boyish’ behavior. The big picture is if the child identifies as a boy their behavior is ‘boyish’ if they identify as a girl their behavior is ‘girlish’. Stop with the identity policing, and do not try to make a child act more the gender they identify as, let them express themselves. You’ll find that having rules based on behavior not ‘gendered’ behavior and deconstructing gender (what a novel idea right?) would do the most for empowering people, NOT genders.
Elisia, I don’t think you comprehended Hugo’s message. It was not about policing gender. It was about preferential treatment in admitting boys to colleges and universities. It was about the value of higher education going down because more women are getting degrees. It was a comparison of the difficulties that Jews, Asians, and women have faced because of their high academic achievements vis-a-vis privileged white Gentile males.
Why is preferential treatment is good when women are the recipients but wrong when men (or boys in this case) are the recipients?
Preferential treatment of any group over another is never okay…
Feminists are heavily in favor of preferential treatment. For girls and women only.
I am curious about the origin of this complaint that education is somehow biased against boys. Education in the Western world was restricted to boys only for approximately 2000 years, and always required, at a minimum, that students sit still, shut up, and pay attention to the teacher.
In more recent centuries, serious education (I am not counting 19th century “Rich Ladies’ Finishing Schools” that taught embroidery, dancing and socially-charming French), was STILL male-only. And to the best of my knowledge, they all continued to require that students (a) sit still, (b) shut up, and (c) listen and pay attention to the teacher.
Now, in 2011, it seems that certain people suddenly believe that such basic requirements as (a) sit still, (b) shut up, and (c) listen and pay attention to the teacher are somehow oppressive to male students, because female students are very much better at meeting those basic requirements that were established long before female students were even allowed.
I understand that boys need to play and run around, especially when young. But so do girls!
How do you justify the claim that boys are somehow disadvantaged by educational norms?
That’s what I’ve always wondered too. Education back then was more strict than it is now. You could be whipped if you didn’t “sit still, shut up, and pay attention,” even in all-boys schools with purely male teachers.
Now suddenly we have lots of female teachers still carrying on the same standards, albeit the whipping, and now there is suddenly a problem and we’re being oppressive to male students because girls are somehow better at this than boys. This sounds like an ego problem to me that society wants to be PC and pander to the male ego by trying to establish there is nothing wrong with them for not wanting to “sit still, shut up, and pay attention” when males for centuries have had to endure this “sit still, shut up, and pay attention” shtick and have been just fine doing so for those past variable number of hundreds of years.
Aurora, if it were only those three items there would not be much of a problem. However, the situation is more complex than that. We have seen the removal of recess, the removal of competition, and a change in the way classes operate and how students are allowed to participate. We have also seen a change in the methods of teaching, which now favor girls’ learning needs, along with a change in the teaching materials, which favor girls’ interests. There is also tacit animosity towards boys, who tend to get treated as stupid, aloof, or, as Hugo suggests, inherently lazy, which may result from women dominating the education system.
That creates a very real disadvantage for boys. Curiously, boys’ learning problems seem to decrease in all-boy classes and schools. They tend to score higher on tests than boys in co-ed schools, and higher than girls. They also tend to enjoy school more and show more interest in learning.
The old feminist females are superior argument.
I’m inclined to agree with professor Schwyzer on this issue.
I would also like say that a lot of men aren’t internalizing what prosperity means to them & not their friends.
Hugo, a few points –
First, I think that higher education — particularly of the formal variety — is something that should *not* be necessary for financial or social success (which I would describe as lifelong financial stability and access to most social institutions). I think that our constant push toward higher education has led to (1) a devaluation of a bachelor’s in the minds of employers, where it becomes no better than a high school diploma was in 1960, and (2) a real decrease in the rigor of education, as no one wants to completely demolish someone else’s life by flunking them out of school. While I really value people with serious intellectual curiosity, I don’t think that the only legitimate way to satisfy this is attending college…and I don’t think that most people (including those attending college) have this trait. I would like to see our society go back to valuing the trades as respectable professions for all, not just for those who couldn’t go to college. I think there are many (many, many, many) social ills which this will fix. And I think that the long-term detriment to actual knowledge will be fairly minimal.
Second, should I assume that you are, therefore, opposed to all forms of affirmative action? I don’t deny male privilege at all, but your reflex to blame this on particularly male anti-intellectualism (of which, sorry, I just don’t see any evidence) troubles me. Isn’t part of the idea of affirmative action that systemic and cultural factors beyond an individual’s control are responsible for part of their unsuitability for the job/the college/whatever, and that justice requires leveling the playing field? If so, wouldn’t that mean that men deserve a leg up in admission to college? If you’re opposed to affirmative action, forget I said anything.
Third, I really feel like a lot of what you say quickly takes the perceived “woman’s” side of an argument, or speaks with reflexive contempt for the “Guy culture” you perceive. I think it’s a personality trait for those of us who have — in some way — broken with significant portions of our past, upbringing, or circle of friends. The hatred for a certain vile aspect of a culture with which we’re familiar leads to that culture becoming something of a caricature to us. I complain about military culture; you complain about guy culture. I just see no reason to believe that American men, as a whole, are becoming more “anti-intellectual” because smartness is for girls. That would sort of deflate the whole feminist critique that American society want girls to be dumb and compliant, wouldn’t it?
Rick
While I am all for gender equality, this article says that “Though rumors have persisted in recent years that some colleges did favor men in admissions to try and achieve a balanced sex-ratio, we’ve never had evidence of just how widespread this practice is until now.”
There have been many programs and initiatives started (women only scholarships etc.) to try to get more women in post secondary education. If there are now more women than men, like this article implies, isn’t it only fair and equal to promote male admission. Equality has to go both ways.
“Equality has to go both ways.”
It should but feminists don’t see it that way – as this article and many of the comments bear out. In the world of feminism. the waters of equality only flow the female way.
Haha Eric M, you’re really funny.
Why does a site about “Good Men” give the stage to a male hating tool like Hugo? Not a good man. Not a productive discussion. Too polar, ideological.
There’re a lot of things going on in all this, but the one-sided view Hugo presents is all his poisonous fantascy.
He assumes some kind of new evil, candescine agenda against women. (“in danger of being overlooked”, rumors have persisted in recent years”).
I’ve never heard the term “feminization of ambition” either.
One way to cut through all the BS here, is to recognize that a system as vast as education can’t underperform dramatically for either sex if we are going to call it equal treatment. Unless you assume one sex is more worthy than the other, or smarter, or what? When girls are down, it’s unfair. Why not boys?
I think another assumption here is that men and women, boys and girls are the same. Or should be. Hence all the justification like “boys should just sit still and listen better”. Title IX is probably another.
This guy code theory… There’s of course some truth here, but the way women assume they are completely not a part of it is ridiculous. There are so many ways women and girls sustain it too. You have to look at that and challenge the guy code too. Accept some empowerment lol.
ok, enough time wasted.
The ‘guy code’ thing is true. While I was in school, the girls I knew compared notes, formed study groups, and worked as a team as much as possible. They were much more social. The guys I knew were solitary creatures, working alone. If there was something one girl couldn’t figure out, one of the others in her group could. If there was something one guy working alone couldn’t figure out, he would be stuck on the problem for hours, spinning his wheels.
The root of all the problems boys and men face currently is the expectation to be strong, to compete, and to be superior to their peers. It’s not an anti-intellectual culture that’s holding us back in school, it’s an anti-social culture that shuns boys for being ‘weak’ if they ask questions or reveal they don’t know something to their peers. There’s a lot of one-upsmanship. If a boy struggles, he’s a pussy. It is the very ‘guy code’ Hugo is talking about that limits the range of behaviors men can acceptably display in public without seeming ‘queer’. I don’t think his solution to boys to ‘man it the fuck up and suck it up’ is going to work. That mentality needs to die off.
The way to solve this problem, as well as heterosexism, sexism between men and women, and the fact that girls are still failing to penetrate some of the more technical careers like engineering, computer science, and physics, is to abolish gender from our culture. In the short term, affirmative action makes sense. Educated boys are more likely to grow past the ‘guy code’ and raise their kids from a more gender neutral perspective.
But a campus that is balanced in terms of men and women is a better place to be socially. College isn’t just about studying. Maybe girls will be better off it there are a decent number of guys in the college. In fact, it might make the college more attractive to the top girls.
A quote from Reddit: http://secondclasssex.blogspot.com/2011/09/hugo-schwyzers-latest-idiocy-women-are.html
“If you measure success in broken homes, the sexualization of children and society, and the tens of other problems brought about by female economic and sexual freedom, not least the alienation of one half of society that are being failed at home and in education (males), then yes, I suppose ‘female ambition and success’ is to be celebrated.”
Traditionalist clown.
Wah Wah, I want the government to legislate me a wife.
Oops, here’s the Reddit link: http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/kqxtf/hugo_schwyzers_latest_idiocy_women_are_the_new/
Hold on,
then why do boys on average have higher iq scores?
and why do girls need to be given a slanted playing field in school?
When men fail it is men’s fault. When women fail, it is men’s fault. In Hugo Schwyzer’s world, everything is men’s fault, so why are we surprised by this latest piece?
For some feminist idealogues like Schwyzer, affirmative action is only good when it benefits women. When it benefits men? Bootstraps instead.
Asshole.
Look at hugo gender policing.
Little ladies need a helping hand.
Nasty boys suck it up!
Two points;
1. hugo has the most convoluted Girl Game imagineable. He really works very hard to manipulate their egoes and make himself attractive to them, such is his hyper-gendered ego.
2. education has been sytematically devalued to get more people through the mill, to raise more revenue, largely supported by debt. The student loan bubble is huge and primed to go off with a very big bang. Also the more of something there is (degrees) and the easier they are to obtain (churn the fees), without a comensurate increase in demand, the lower the value (however defined).
The reductionist and reactionary gendered socio-political shtick is in itself anti-intellectual, nay, a reflection of the dumbed down, self indulgent nature of ‘higher’ education, with its incessant focus on post-modernist personal narrative and relativist posturing. Society has enough lawyers, biz grads and shrinks. Its not helping the USA if the current economic and social climate is any measure. On the other hand, given that USA doesnt really produce anything of much value these days, apart from industrialised warfare and cultural imperialism, maybe naval gazers, analysers, paper shufflers, shrinks, psychotropics and lawyering is a sensible way to transfer wealth, within its borders. Sort of like passing out the anti-depressants, whilst playing musical deck chairs on the titanic.
I really like the “Good Men Project”, but hate 99% of the comments on this site. Such disappointing jerks… Huge shame, cause the articles and contributors are amazing men!
Is that because a large portion of the contributors are women and men like Hugo who blame men for everything even when it is a women who fails.