Men a Minority on College Campuses

Tis the season of commencement speeches in America's colleges (well actually it has passed for the most part). There is one thing just about every speaker appearing before college graduating classes had in common. Their audience generally contaned more women than men. Yesterday, USA Today carried an interesting debate regarding the status of young men in higher education. The editors took the position that something must be done, not in college, but earlier when boys begin to fall behind.

Although university officials tend to point to inadequate preparation in high schools, the problems begin far earlier. In preschools, more boys than girls get booted for bad behavior. In elementary schools, boys slip behind girls in reading skills. In middle schools, the gender gap widens. By high school, girls are so far ahead the boys don't feel like playing catch-up. At that age, trying too hard is seen as uncool.

Poor motivation and lackluster academic backgrounds follow many boys into college, where they find a mostly unsupervised living environment. Plenty of time for drinking, chasing girls, staying up all night and playing poker and video games. Not a recipe for academic success.

Many educators, especially feminists, say academic gender gaps don't matter because men end up running things anyway. Some conservatives argue that doing nothing about the gender gaps is better than creating a new class of "victims."

But doing nothing makes no sense for parents looking for answers, employers looking for educated workers or women looking for an educated mate. Until schools at all levels face up to the gender problems, they will only worsen.

So we must do something to help these poor boys get their act together so they can survive in the modern information age. O.K., what exactly? All of the reasoning I am seeing for the poor peformance of young men in college and in elementary and secondary schools cannot be fixed with some sort of goverment program or intervention by the schools. No, the solution is that we must once again ask parents and young people to take responsibility for their own education.

Heather MacDonald, in response worries that we are gearing up for another class of victims in education and society.

The moment is close at hand when the United States will be composed entirely of victim groups.

The news media have been sounding the alarm about a new gender crisis in education: Boys reportedly make up a declining portion of college students. And so the future is clear. Boys are poised to become the newest victim class.

That rustling sound you hear is the migration of university deans and "diversity" consultants to the next big employment bonanza: helping boys succeed!

The requisite bureaucracies are already in place: The professions and academia overflow with committees on the recruitment and retention of minorities and women; they will undoubtedly be only too happy to expand their mandate to boys.

Here's a better suggestion for the alleged gender gap in education: Do nothing. Or rather, do nothing in the name of boys per se. If boys are lagging in undergraduate enrollment, it's up to them to study harder and stay more focused. They don't need the inevitable new consulting boondoggles in order to pull up their own bootstraps.

MacDonald quickly jumps to a "feminized progressive education" as the "clear culprit" for the shortage of young men graduating. Hogwash! Hundreds of thousands of young men graduate from college each year, filling our workforce and graduate schools with bright young men who succeed in college. Why--because they wanted to succeed. It is as simple as that.

The real culprit, as with just about anything have to do with personal matters, is a lack of personal responsibility. Interestingly enough, MacDonald is right on the probability of expansion of the mandate to help young men by diversity committees, which again will only perpetuate the mentality that one is not to blame for their own lot in life, but everyone else is keeping them down.

The one thing that will help boys and girls prepare for college is the one thing that most elementary and secondary schools don't or can't teach--the traits of personal responsiblity, self-reliance and integrity. If such traits were taught in schools and at home, you wouldn't have a gender gap, you would have a class of students far superior in every way to the categorized victim classes we now see.