Education and Immoral Corrals
Colleges are rejecting women at much higher rates than men, according to an article in this week’s U.S. News & World Report. In 1980 males and females attended colleges in approximately equal numbers, in 2006 women made up 57 percent and by 2010 are expected to increase to 60 percent of those attending college. Colleges find that when the percentages between the genders attending their schools get into that sort of disparity, applications start to drop, since both young men and young women want plenty of opposite sex individuals attending school with them. So in an effort to create approximate parity between the sexes, and so many more women apply than men, many colleges must be tougher on them to allow lower quality males in.
How is it that this situation has developed? Now that women are no longer barred from higher education, their numbers have been climbing rapidly and men have not kept up. “From the early grades on up,” says U.S. News, “girls tend to be better students. By the time college admissions come into the picture, many watchers of the ‘boy gap’ agree, it’s too late for the lads to catch up on their own. Indeed, beginning in those formative K-12 years, girls watch less television, spend less time playing sports, and are far less likely to find themselves in detention. They are more likely to participate in drama, art, and music classes — extracurriculars that are catnip for admissions officers. Across the board, girls study more, score better, and are less likely to be placed in special education classes.” More of them graduate from high school and more of them go on for advanced degrees.
Most of the colleges who are having to put a thumb on the scale in favor of the men are the second and third tier highly desired private schools just under the first-ranked schools like Harvard, Duke and Rice. Still, there are apparently enough college slots available for qualified applicants, but those who get the most prestigious colleges often get the most prestigious and influential positions. One could think of this educational selection process as one of the many ways that we punish women for their successes.
College graduates on the whole, however, make more money than non-college graduates. They are also more likely to have managerial and other leadership positions then mere high school graduates, so it is clear that the workplace in the modern world will for the forseeable future have an increasing number of work situations where the boss is female and the little worker bees are male. And it will be seen, by most Americans at least, not only as perfectly normal but as a very good thing. And people who try to maintain philosophical or religious social and intellectual frameworks that force people into nonsensical corrals that do not mesh with God-given gifts and formal training will increasingly be seen as anachronistic and evil. And why would any church want to piss off that growing number of female leaders, money makers, and intellectuals in their communities who are quietly doing the work that God gave them the talent to do?
Mostly these days, those women simply stay away from such corrals, and highly trained and/or capable women who don’t are seen as either stupid or duped. Pastors who will happily take their money but keep them out of the board room will also increasingly be shunned. What will happen to all these corralin’ cowboys when they become the minority? I don’t know, but it isn’t going to be pretty.