Unintended consequences
The Trump Administration’s war on underrepresented minorities is targeting his base—young white men.
“For years universities and colleges have been trying to keep the number of men and women on campuses evened out at a time when growing numbers of men have been choosing not to go to college. Some schools have tried to attract more men by adding football and other sports, promoting forestry and hunting programs and launching entrepreneurship competitions.
“Nationwide, the number of women on campuses has surpassed the number of men for more than four decades, with nearly 40 percent more women than men enrolled in higher education, federal data show.
“Efforts to admit applicants at higher rates based on gender are legal under a loophole in federal anti-discrimination law, one that’s used to keep the genders balanced on campuses.
“But the Trump administration has consistently included gender among the characteristics it says it does not want schools to consider for admissions or hiring, along with race, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity or religious associations.”
*snip
“The country’s top 50 private colleges and universities have 2 percentage points more male undergraduates than the top 50 flagship public universities, which do not consider gender in admission, according to research by Princeton economist Zachary Bleemer. He said this suggests that at least some are putting a thumb on the scale for male applicants.”
The administrations of American universities are way smarter than Trump Administration appointees, and I’m sure the Administration will turn a blind eye to universities that grant affirmative action to white males. But the irony is certainly rich.
Will Trump’s attacks on DEI hurt white male college admissions?
“For years universities and colleges have been trying to keep the number of men and women on campuses evened out at a time when growing numbers of men have been choosing not to go to college. Some schools have tried to attract more men by adding football and other sports, promoting forestry and hunting programs and launching entrepreneurship competitions.
“Nationwide, the number of women on campuses has surpassed the number of men for more than four decades, with nearly 40 percent more women than men enrolled in higher education, federal data show.
“Efforts to admit applicants at higher rates based on gender are legal under a loophole in federal anti-discrimination law, one that’s used to keep the genders balanced on campuses.
“But the Trump administration has consistently included gender among the characteristics it says it does not want schools to consider for admissions or hiring, along with race, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity or religious associations.”
*snip
“The country’s top 50 private colleges and universities have 2 percentage points more male undergraduates than the top 50 flagship public universities, which do not consider gender in admission, according to research by Princeton economist Zachary Bleemer. He said this suggests that at least some are putting a thumb on the scale for male applicants.”
The administrations of American universities are way smarter than Trump Administration appointees, and I’m sure the Administration will turn a blind eye to universities that grant affirmative action to white males. But the irony is certainly rich.
Will Trump’s attacks on DEI hurt white male college admissions?
I laughed so hard when I first saw that, given my path from Middle-School dropout to Master of Science. I can’t think of a better example of ‘entitlement’ than teaching white bois at a community college ~ a harbinger of what has come
This is a test. The second test. Bill e-mailed overnight asking about the front-end. Looks ok to me, everything is working … although: this entry window is gray where it is usually white and there are no buttons (for italics, bold, link, etc.)
Ten Bears:
Thank you for posting. We were curious as yesterday was rather an empty day for comments. We are getting into the Christmas season and things do have a habit of slowing down at Angry Bear.
The changes you are seeing are probably Word Press upgrades, a change in programing which we had nothing to do about it
Just about the time I get used to something they change it.
Bill
Joel:
It would be interesting to me (maybe not others) to know the backgrounds of the people (males) not going to 4-year college or even a Junior College. The emphasis when I was growing up was to gain a college education. Watching my grade school education dad slave away certainly played a part in influencing us to gain more education.
During the time when I was growing up, the emphasis was on men gaining more education.
@Bill,
I haven’t seen that breakdown, but since a high school diploma is required for college admission, I assume the decline in applications is among high school grads who elect not to go directly to college. I also haven’t seen whether the college drop-out rate among men who are admitted has increased.
To me, the most interesting and puzzling part is why male applications have fallen. What do women know that men don’t?
Joel:
I have been editing this for a post. I think I might just leave it as a long comment. Here is some info:
“Why Men Are Falling Behind in Education, Employment, and Health?”
Edited . . .
The Origins of Disadvantage
As an undergraduate studying public policy at the University of Chicago, Clare Suter, Ph.D. ’28, was studying navigating spaces where men dominate. Women made up just 25 percent of that university’s tenure-track faculty according to a 2010 report. Many of her classmates were headed for high-wage careers such as finance and law, where women struggle to make it to the top. From economics classes, she knew that men work more, earn more, and advance further in their careers. She assumed that was true across the income distribution.
Then, she read a 2016 paper (Raj Chetty and colleagues) about how childhood environments affect boys and girls differently. Among children raised in the poorest households, the researchers found, boys were less likely than girls to work as adults. The gap was wider for boys raised by single parents, and those who grew up in high-poverty and – or high-minority neighborhoods.
“I realized that there was this whole discussion that wasn’t happening—that if you zoom out of the top of the income distribution, by a lot of metrics, the gender gap is totally reversed,” says Suter, now an economics graduate student at Harvard.
Suter was one of many shaken by Chetty’s findings. In 2018, Chetty cofounded the research institute Opportunity Insights. His work showed how childhood poverty and neighborhood disadvantage profoundly shape adult outcomes, Boys appeared to be especially vulnerable to these effects.
Suter: “Boys growing up are super sensitive to their environments. That may explain different outcomes in adulthood.”
What was driving the heighten sensitivity is unclear. Crime may play a role: boys are far more likely than girls to interact with the criminal justice system. Disadvantaged neighborhoods might heighten that risk. But research suggests that boys are more sensitive to their environments even in early childhood. Disadvantaged neighborhoods seeming to harm their kindergarten readiness more than girls’.
Suter: “There’s just not a lot of good evidence for what explains this trend.” Suter adds understanding the trend is key to designing early-childhood interventions to support boys.
For black boys, race compounds economic disadvantage. While black and white girls from similar economic backgrounds achieve comparable incomes as adults, black boys earn far less than their white counterparts, Chetty and colleagues reported in 2018. That means the income inequality between black and white Americans is driven entirely by the outcomes of men and boys. Disparities persist even for boys raised at the top of the income ladder: black men from wealthy households are employed at lower rates than white men raised in poverty. Reeves writes in Of Boys and Men, black men face particular challenges resulting from higher rates of school discipline to higher rates of incarceration“not in spite of their gender, but because of it.”
The income gap between black and white boys remained even when they were raised in families with similar incomes, structures, education levels, and accumulated wealth. That suggests the cause is structural, not based on individual family characteristics. This is another area where further research could provide insight, Suter says, including on a hypothesis called the “role model effect.” In the few neighborhoods where poor black boys did well, many had fathers at home—and the presence of those fathers was a strong predictor of the neighborhood boys’ success regardless of whether their own fathers lived with them.
That means male role models might play a significant role in shaping boys’ trajectories. Whether the models be from fathers, teachers, coaches, or others. This spring, Suter was awarded a fellowship from the AIBM to research questions related to the well-being of boys and men. Among her planned projects is an analysis of male teachers’ influence on boys. She plans to examine immediate effects on factors like grades and attendance. However, she is especially interested in longer-term outcomes:
“Do boys who have a male teacher stay out of the criminal justice system in a way that other boys do not?
@Bill,
Thanks. I have a post ready on this topic for tomorrow morning.
Joel:
I was rewriting this one from the original article. It was not a great write so I started to rewrite it.Look forward to reading yours . . .