Another NY Times article about alleged gender imbalance at colleges

Yet another NY Times article on this subject.

The NY Times has historically shown little or no concern over the fact that the vast majority of students at engineering schools are men. But suddenly it’s a big problem that liberal arts colleges are 60% women and 40% men.

The overall gender imbalance among all colleges is predominately at community colleges and open admissions state schools, with a lot of the surplus women being older women, either married or divorced. I’m fairly certain that the overall male/female ratio among traditional college-aged students attending schools you wouldn’t be embarrassed to put on your resume is pretty close to even. And there is also a preponderance of men at bogus schools like DeVry Tech (the one in Queens has 977 men and only 455 men, worse than the 60/40 ratio at UNC Chapel Hill profiled in the NY Times article).

Comments

[Cody]

If you can imagine the intelligence distributions of the two sexes overlapped on the same graph, there is no surprise. Women will dominate most of the disciplines while men will be over represented in nerdy disciplines, like computer science and mathematics.

[Alex]

"attending schools you wouldn’t be embarrassed to put on your resume"

I think there are some decent schools like Caltech that have more men than women and are also pretty good.

[OneSTDV]

"The NY Times has historically shown little or no concern over the fact that the vast majority of students at engineering schools are men."

I'm quite skeptical of this claim. The media can't stop complaining about the dearth of NAMs (called URM's in college admissions speak) and women in engineering and the sciences.

So I can't imagine the Times being any different. Perhaps they're an outlier in coverage of this disparity? What was their response to Larry Summers?

[ironrailsironweights.wordpress.com]

The female surplus may be greater among older students, but AFAIK it exists among traditional-age students too. Do you know of any statistics limited to the traditional-age group?

My guess is that nursing or education cancel out engineering in skewed-gender-ratio terms.

Peter

[Gorilla]

I don't think there's a lot of ambiguity in the data that more young women than men are applying colleges and especially to good ones. But those good schools have large enough pools of very qualified applicants that they can take the men at a higher rate and not end up with a noticeably dumber male student population.

State schools and less prestigious LACs generally take the majority of applicants and have feeder agreements with community colleges, so they have less scope to even out the gender ratios.

I've personally heard no end to the concern that there aren't enough women in engineering programs and science departments, and whenever young people in science are profiled in the media, you'd get the oppression that science/engineering programs were 90% female.

[HS: It was expressed as a concern that women were being denied opportunities. But when there are more women at a college, it's expressed as a concern that women don't have any boyfriends. The NY Times only sees the downside for women in anything.]

[TAS]

I love it how the NYT takes an article about the fact that fewer men are going to college and turns it into a "womyn are the victims" piece. There's also plenty of male-bashing too:

"And college men — not usually known for their debonair ways — can be particularly unmannerly when the numbers are in their favor."

Yeah, because everyone knows college girls are so mannerly and virtuous. Half of them dress in a manner that would make an early 1900s prostitute look like a high-class lady.

Also, the women lamenting the fact that they are at a disadvantage are laughable. For a long time, men have had to compete to get a girlfriend and there were no articles in the NYT. Now that women are the ones who have to compete, we get to read about their sob-stories in the Newspaper of Record. On the plus side, this article is slightly better than Maureen Dowd's rants about how 50 year old men prefer to date 20 year old women.

[Turambar]

Chapel Hill *is* a good school.

Is amazing who the Times manages to find the angle where men a being big meanies in a story where men are at a disadvantage. The majority focus of that piece was how hard it was for women to find and keep dates- somehow when its a hand wringing story about women in IT they dont point out how easy it is for women and they have all the advantages.

[Sheila Tone]

HS wrote: "The overall gender balance among all colleges is predominately at community colleges and open admissions state schools, with a lot of the surplus women being older women, either married or divorced. I’m fairly certain that the overall male/female ratio among traditional college-aged students attending schools you wouldn’t be embarrassed to put on your resume is pretty close to even."

But Half, the article even listed NYU as being imbalanced. Has NYU taken a huge dive? And Chapel Hill isn't an open-admission state school. (It puts "University" BEFORE the state's name, always a tip-off of the higher-tier public schools.) And those girls featured in the story are attractive young *sorority* girls. That's what throws me -- I thought people in the Greek system had the best social pickings.

I guess this blows your "woman shortage" theory out of the water, so it's understandable you're resistant.

So where can a young normal-looking woman be reasonably assured of finding a long-term-relationship with an educated man who will be able to make a secure, middle-class living? Clearly guys in computer programming aren't the answer, not judging by the Half Sigma posts on that career.

[HS: NYU doesn't have an engineering program. Throw Stevens Institute, Cooper Union, and Brooklyn PolyTech into the mix, and there isn't as much of a skewed gender ration in the NYC area. But then men, being more practical, are more likely to attend engineering school at SUNY Stonybrook or SUNY Buffalo or other state schools where they can get cheap tuition and not face the tremendous cost of living of Manhattan. The gender ratio of NYU also reflects the fact that parents spend more money on their daughters than on their sons.]

[BrunoBrazil]

attending schools you wouldn’t be embarrassed to put on your resume

In most fields, this doesn´t exist. I worked for several bosses who had degrees in some very questionable institutions and they were my bosses.

Work hard in high school, try your best SAT, tutor to make the highest SAT and gho to the cheapest school within driving range. Better to go to a crap school where you have a much higher SAT than your colleagues, so you can get good scholarships, as long as it is accredited.

College is so ridiculously expensive that it is better to be a smart ass, go to cheap crap commuter college where you are far more qualified than your colleagues and graduate with little debt than go to fancy college and owe US$ 160,000. The difference in quality is not worth the fantastic debt. The things that the bad school won´t teach you and you need to know you can learn on your own.

Law school is different because BIGLAW chooses from top 14 only. But who told someone should go to law school in the first place? It is ridiculously expensive in comparison to the salaries you are going to get.

[nothing]

So more women are getting screwed by Liberal Arts degrees than men? The heck with the "gender imbalance ratio", the true injustice here is people trying to obtain Liberal Arts degrees in a poor economy.

[Richard Hoste www.hbdbooks.com]

Women are worse decision makers.

http://hbdbooks.com/2010/02/women-are-worse-decision-makers/

[Gorilla]

HS, thanks for clarifying the focus on the dating aspect of gender imbalance.

I imagine the concerns are a bit overblown. Betas are going to be shut out or picking up the scraps even if the gender imbalance is 80%-20%, while budding alphas are just cleaning up anymore. A quote:

'"I was talking to a friend at a bar, and this girl just came up out of nowhere, grabbed him by the wrist, spun him around and took him out to the dance floor and started grinding," said Kelly Lynch, a junior at North Carolina, recalling a recent experience.'

That happens to alpha males anyway in venues that aren't the most competitive, and it wouldn't happen to a beta male in either case.

'As for a man’s cheating, “that’s a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,” said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. “If you don’t let it slide, you don’t have a boyfriend.”'

Alphas can cheat already, betas are always on probation anyway.

[ironrailsironweights.wordpress.com]

"So where can a young normal-looking woman be reasonably assured of finding a long-term-relationship with an educated man who will be able to make a secure, middle-class living? Clearly guys in computer programming aren't the answer, not judging by the Half Sigma posts on that career."

My suggestion would be a large university with quality science and engineering programs. I'm guessing that the male engineering students at universities which have good engineering programs but are not explicitly tech schools, places like Texas A&M or Purdue, are less nerdy/introverted/loser-ish than their counterparts at the largely technological places like MIT or Caltech.

Peter

[whiskey]

The key piece in the story was that even with a gender ratio of 60-40, in favor of women, the women found only 20% of the men attractive. Of those 20%, half had boyfriends so the rest SHARED (tolerating infidelities).

THAT my friends is the real news. Women won't adjust downwards, EVEN WITH A MAN SHORTAGE. They will tolerate infidelity and sharing with a top guy rather than have ALL of a lesser guy.

[Sheila Tone]

HS wrote: "But then men, being more practical, are more likely to attend engineering school at SUNY Stonybrook or SUNY Buffalo or other state schools where they can get cheap tuition and not face the tremendous cost of living of Manhattan."

Wait, wait, you JUST SAID state schools were places people would be embarrassed to put on their resume. But when men go there, it's "practical?" You also suggested state schools were big culprits in the female imbalance ... so are those engineering state schools guys fighting off a deluge of desperate pussy?

You know, at my open-admissions state school, we had an engineering department. I can't remember ever knowing one engineering major. Where the hell were those guys? Maybe they were all ESL or something.

[Rain And]

I'm quite skeptical of this claim. The media can't stop complaining about the dearth of NAMs (called URM's in college admissions speak) and women in engineering and the sciences.

I'm pretty sure Sigma's point was that the media shows little concern FOR THE MEN over the engineering gender imbalance.

[Wilbur Simonson]

If females don’t like the gender ratio on campus, all they need to do is walk a few feet to off campus, where the ratio of never married males to never married females in 2008 was:
age 18-19: 107:100
age 20-24: 113:100

Yet, even those highly skewed in favor of female ratios would not make females happy because they are hypergamous, as admitted by the grumbling Jayne Dallas in the article, “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider.”

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0057.pdf

[Holla!]

"Now that women are the ones who have to compete, we get to read about their sob-stories in the Newspaper of Record."

You said it TAS. There was some chic in this article complaining about guys not having to buy girls drinks to get them to flirt with them. Who's the entitled group here?

The NY Times doesn't seem to like college aged men. I remember an article they did a couple years back painting them as video game obsessed losers while all the women in the article were high achieving students who hoped to make a difference with their altrusitic majors.

[sabril]

"The gender ratio of NYU also reflects the fact that parents spend more money on their daughters than on their sons."

That and the fact that girls really really like Manhattan.

"So where can a young normal-looking woman be reasonably assured of finding a long-term-relationship with an educated man who will be able to make a secure, middle-class living?"

Nowhere as far as I know. There is a huge shortage of straight, single, educated men who are financially secure and marriage-minded.

[superdestroyer]

BrunoBrazil,

Many of the people who take your path end up dropping out, picking thier major based upon the idea of getting a job, and do not enjoy going to college. That second or third tier university that is cheap have very low graduation rate (and that is with all universities lying about their numbers) and are the type of environment that will bore students to death. Driving to school, going to a class or two, and then driving home after class is a sign that you will not finish.

At least if you attend a third tier university, directional state, or urban commuter school the women do not have to worry about boyfriends because there is no social life at such universities. Do you really think that a group of women students hit the bars together at Temple, George Mason, VCU, Georgia State, Memphis, Middle Tennesse, Houston, UT-Arlington, Charlotte, South Florida?

[Kevin K]

"There is a huge shortage of straight, single, educated men who are financially secure and marriage-minded."

Especially ones who aren't fat, bald, old, short and/or social retards. The sensible women looking for that sort of guy have "acceptable ranges" for those 5 criteria that limits the pool even further.

[Kevin K]

"That and the fact that girls really really like Manhattan."

I like Manhattan, too, but no way were my parents going to give me money to live there.

[Rain And]

"“Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.

Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field"

Given the previous sentence, this should read "Needless to say, this puts about ****half to a quarter of guys*** in a position to play the field" while the other half couldn't get laid if they were the only male to wash ashore a lost island of Amazons.

[BrunoBrazil]

Driving to school, going to a class or two, and then driving home after class is a sign that you will not finish

I did exactly that and finished.

Who said that because most people drop out that you must individually drop out? Be determined and outperform the averages.

Here in Brazil schools hardly ever have dorms. That´s too costly. If you want to leave home you have to rent a place in the city as a normal tenant.

The high drop out rate doesn´t mean that you will drop out. It means that most students who go to such colleges come from proles and lower classes.
Usually the middle class that goes to fancy schools and end up owing US$ 200,000.

I told you to be smarter than average. Go to a school that is cheap in the first place, get a SAT score where you are overqualified (so you can get scholarships). Be aggressive about price. If you can stand your parents, live with them and you will be a 24 year old with little debt.

It is beyong my comprehension that Americans go to school, stay at expensive dorms, party all the time and end up owing 200,000 just for a degree.

Give me a break! Do a wise decision that is outside the mainstream culture and by 30 you will be in a position to get a mortgage in a suburban house in a responsible loan (you know, the ones with 20% down), when your friends partied, left home early and are crushed with debt and nothing to show when they are 30.

[Peter A]

Women won't adjust downwards, EVEN WITH A MAN SHORTAGE.

No shit, whiskey. Why do you think polygamy is so common in human societies? Hell, women will go dyke before they settle for second rate sperm. This is why, as thinkers like Roissy and Michel Houllebecq have pointed out, "sexually repressive" moralistic societies like the 19th century US/Europe are much better for beta males than a sexual free market.

[sabril]

"Especially ones who aren't fat, bald, old, short and/or social retards. The sensible women looking for that sort of guy have "acceptable ranges" for those 5 criteria that limits the pool even further. "

I think there is probably some truth to that. It's human nature to be too picky with guys/girls while at the same time complaining that there aren't enough of them.

Still, one could put together a set of basic criteria to make somebody a decent marriage prospect for men and women (within the educated classes)

For men, it might be something like this:

(1) Not in the bottom 5-10% of looks;

(2) straight;

(3) interested in getting married;

(4) finacially secure or with decent prospects of being financially secure; and

(5) not a complete psycho.

For women, the criteria might be something like this:

(1) not in the bottom 10-15% of looks;

(2) straight;

(3) interested in getting married;

(4) in a fertile age-range

(5) not a complete psycho.

Most of these criteria eliminate more men than women. For example, a much higher percentage of men is gay than women are lesbians. A significantly higher percentage of women are interested in getting married.

The real killer, of course, is that to be a decent marriage prospect a man must have decent job prospects. This is counterbalanced to some extent by the fact that womens' attractiveness is compressed into a narrower age range than that of men.

But all in all, applying the criteria I listed above, I would say that there are probably more women who are decent marriage prospects than men. Just shooting from the hip.

Ironically, it seems that feminism is partly to blame for this problem. Since promoting equal employment for women necessarily hurts mens' job prospects.

[RollandHal]

BrunoBrazil

Speaking as a successful older alumni of an Ivy, I can say that you are 90% correct when you advise young men to live at home with parents and go to an inexpensive school. But there are assumptions.

First of all, if your parents have a net worth over $3 million, they can afford to treat you to a college experience that is the "most fun"

I can tell you that the most fun college experience is a traditional high prestige private college with a high female / male ratio. Take a look at Vassar. Great male / female ratio, relatively smart fellow students, interesting curriculum. There are relatively few "natural born alphas" at Vassar and thus guys that are mid level betas in high school can live the lifestyle of an alpha at Vassar. If your parents can afford it, have them buy you four years there, and enjoy yourself.

On another note, if your IQ and SAT scores put you at a level where you can earn "A" grades at an ivy, and you intend to go in to a high paying field, you should go to an ivy. Even if it means taking on $200,000 in debt. If you earn "A" grades at an ivy you have a good shot at getting on the track in investment banking, or some other field that is lucrative enough to make paying off the debt easy.

If you don't fall in to either of the above categories, then go to an inexpensive school and live at home with your parents

Bruno, sometimes only an outside has the courage to say that "the emperor has no clothes" You are that outsider, and your comments, while simple and repetitive, have more truth than the ones of most of the commentators here

[superdestroyer]

BrunoBrazil,

If you go to a commuter university or a directional state and live at home, it limits you for a variety of reasons.

1. It is almost impossible to resume build at a commuter school or directional state. Thus, no internships, second tier graduate school, and limits on medical/law/b-school.

2. Second, being the smartest person in the class is a sign that you (the plural you) made a bad decision. You will not be pushed and thus not learn as much or work as hard. Thus you get a lower LSAT/GRE/MCAT etc score and your prospect go down further.

3. Going to the cheap school means limit your career fields. Just like no undergraduate at Yale will ever be a nurse, no undergraduate at Central Connecticut will be at Wharton, or Georgetown school of Foreign Service or Econ at Chicago.

A smart person is better being around other smart people and being pushed. That is part of the costs of being at a tier one school. And those students are usually to driven to party that much.

[Turambar]

NYT "safety school" the Boston Globe published a piece on over-representation of asians today
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/02/08/do_colleges_redline_asian_americans/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed1

"Notably, 1,623 - out of a possible 2,400 - not only separates Asians from other minorities (Hispanics and blacks average 1,364 and 1,276 on the SAT, respectively). The score also puts them ahead of Caucasians, who average 1,581. And the consequences of this are stark.

Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade, who reviewed data from 10 elite colleges, writes in “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal’’ that Asian applicants typically need an extra 140 points to compete with white students."

The problem again- those pesky white students!

[Gamma Man]

" For women, the criteria might be something like this:

(1) not in the bottom 10-15% of looks; "

Make it:"not in the bottom 50%" and I'd agree. Women are less choosy than men when it comes to the opposite sex. I should know.

[Brutus]

Siggie, you should post on this (Ifind it rather shocking):

1000 SAT over the years translated into IQ

1000 SAT pre 1974= 119
" 74-96= 106
" +96= 103

So, the recentered SAT is more than a full standard deviation less
than pre 1974 test

The US government loves its low-IQ populations. Tiny Tim can rest easy

[Brutus]

"So where can a young normal-looking woman be reasonably assured of finding a long-term-relationship with an educated man who will be able to make a secure, middle-class living? Clearly guys in computer programming aren't the answer, not judging by the Half Sigma posts on that career."

1. Few women meet a mate at college.
2. key words above are "educated" (think liberal arts) and "secure living"

Sally therefore needs to go to a bar that caters to people like stockbrokers and insurance salesmen, many of whom will be able to pick up the check as they charm her panties off with tales of Chaucer and Homer. Good luck, Sally

[Mercer]

"It is beyong my comprehension that Americans go to school, stay at expensive dorms, party all the time and end up owing 200,000 just for a degree."

I am an American and I have difficulty understanding why this is considered sensible by anyone. I think it must be people who are obsessed with social status. It is certainly not needed to be successful. There are plenty of high earners who didn't get an Ivy league degree. Someone with a four year degree from any college is in the upper third of the population.

[DaveinHackensack]

Did you even read the article before posting this?

[David Alexander]

""sexually repressive" moralistic societies like the 19th century US/Europe are much better for beta males than a sexual free market."

In a sexual free market, women are less likely to marry beta males and abuse them for their income under the disguise of love, given that women are now capable of earning middle class wages on their own while having sex with alphas. Besides, it's rather silly to argue that beta males are losing out given that under said moralistic society, they'd be forced to hand over their income to a woman and her children in a loveless marriage while receiving lukewarm sex from an unattractive woman as some type of "reward".

[David Alexander]

*Second, being the smartest person in the class is a sign that you (the plural you) made a bad decision.*

Of course, the upside is that you can dominate the other students without much work and effort which is a great boost for one's ego and emotions, and plus you don't have to deal with the embarrassment of being those of a higher social class. Mind you, I tend to give up rather easily, so those that are more competitive may prefer a different environment.

*Going to the cheap school means limit your career fields.*

Let's be honest, if you're white with an IQ of 105, there's no chance that you'd go to Yale or any other respectable college unless you magically stumbled upon some black ancestry or your step-father adopted you and provided a Hispanic surname, and even that would require some degree of effort. I think realistically, for the average white person*, unless you secure a scholarship to a private school, Bruno's advice is rather sensible, and if you're in that above average category, it may have some degree of validity as well if good schools are within commuting distance.

*If you're of similar IQ and black, I'd suggest suicide. Otherwise, don't "overshoot" and prop yourself on Affirmative Action, go to a school where you fit in, find a decent career, and don't have children regardless of your desire to have them even regardless of the race or IQ of the opposite sex. Moving to Canada may be a sensible option in that plan as well...

[Capt. Obvious]

God, I hope this doesn't become an alpha/beta/omega bs thread.

Siggy, is right, though: the gender imbalance is generally worst at state colleges and colleges that have lower admission requirements (like Lib Arts colleges).

[Sheila Tone]

"even with a gender ratio of 60-40, in favor of women, the women found only 20% of the men attractive. Of those 20%, half had boyfriends so the rest SHARED (tolerating infidelities).

THAT my friends is the real news. Women won't adjust downwards, EVEN WITH A MAN SHORTAGE."

Whiskey et al: If my own experience at a commuter school is any indication, "downwards" is likely to mean deal-breaking qualities. It's not about one guy having a squarer jaw than the other. It's about men being several years too old for undergrad with nothing to show for it (not pickingon you military guys). It's about men with criminal backgrounds; men who are struggling academically; men with serious drug and/or mental health problems that retard their progress.

I never bothered to check the gender ratio at my school. But I did notice that any guy in the journalism department who was under 24 and seemed capable of a decent career -- a minority --- was easily able to score a girlfriend. None were really handsome, although none who met those standards were ever really ugly either. Many of those guys found their wives in college and are still married.

[Holla!]

"Sally therefore needs to go to a bar that caters to people like stockbrokers and insurance salesmen, many of whom will be able to pick up the check as they charm her panties off with tales of Chaucer and Homer. Good luck, Sally."

Good point Brutus.

[anony1601]

To everyone who says that an Ivy League degree is expensive: You have been deceived by a pack of liars who are trying to prevent you from climbing the social ladder. No one (well, no one who makes under $200,000 a year) pays sticker price at an Ivy. Don't believe me? Check out the figures straight from Yale and Harvard:

http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pageid=icb.page246751

http://www.yale.edu/admit/freshmen/financial_aid/yale_cuts_costs.html

[Slim]

David Alexander seems to be saying that if you have an IQ of 105 you should consider moving to Canada. Can we have some clarification on this one - why is Canada a better place for people with IQ 105 - is it because the government provided healthcare makes sure that even if you earn no money in your job you still get the same healthcare as someone making $90 thousand a year?

What is it about Canada that makes it better

[Jack]

Sheila, fair enough, but your commuter school is not a place like UNC, a top-level public where almost every guy will be of fairly high intelligence and ambition. At UNC, the excess women will still compete over a small subset of the men that are there, and I doubt the competition is mainly over brains and career status.

[Sheila Tone]

Nah, Jack, it sounds similar to UCLA, where my friends had similar problems. They take a lot of transfers from community college. It's not nearly as hard to transfer as it is to get in as an 18-year-old undergrad.

[ironrailsironweights.wordpress.com]

"But I did notice that any guy in the journalism department who was under 24 and seemed capable of a decent career -- a minority --- was easily able to score a girlfriend. None were really handsome, although none who met those standards were ever really ugly either."

To some extent it could be a form of self-selection bias. In other words, the sort of men who study journalism might tend to be outgoing and with reasonable social skills, as opposed to the socially stunted introverts who gravitate toward fields such as engineering and IT. Being more socially adept, the journalism majors will do better with women.

Peter

[superdestroyer]

I have noticed that one of the big causes of the lack of dating is age inequity. A senior guy can date freshmen women. Yet, freshmen guys are more limited. It has always been the case but when colleges were 60% male, it did not matter to the women.

There is also the racial aspects that there are more Asian males who will definitely appeal to sorority types.

[UH Grad]

//Do you really think that a group of women students hit the bars together at Temple, George Mason, VCU, Georgia State, Memphis, Middle Tennesse, Houston, UT-Arlington, Charlotte, South Florida?//

They do at Houston. If a school is big enough, you get mostly commuters but have enough people living on campus for their to be a social scene of sorts. That's the trick, though: You need to live on campus.

[Trumwill]

"I have noticed that one of the big causes of the lack of dating is age inequity. A senior guy can date freshmen women. Yet, freshmen guys are more limited. It has always been the case but when colleges were 60% male, it did not matter to the women."

While true, I think this is less true at college than at a lot of other points in life. People don't really wear their class-level on their sleeve in college like they do in high school. This is particularly true once you reach sophomore level and the fish smell dissipates.

Where guys *really* have it tough is immediately post-college. College girls are wrapped up in the college scene and are dating college guys and you're the low man on the totem poll in the working world.

[Witch Hazel]

I think I read some where that during dysgenic trends (when the less intelligent out-breeds the more inteligent), men's IQ tends to fluctuate downward, and women's IQ tends to remain more stable.

Look at the black community, they practice dysgenics at a much faster rate than whites, and almost all the black professionals are women, and almost all the black men are in jail.