"Success" is a relative term
There's a fascinating, completely infuriating article in the weekend New York Times about the "new gender divide" in higher education -- basically, that women are outnumbering men on campus and are making disproportionately better grades and achieving more while the guys are in their rooms playing video games. (Which is pretty much what I remember about my own undergraduate experience as well.)
Cases in point:
Take Jen Smyers, who has been a powerhouse in her three years at American University in Washington.
She has a dean's scholarship, has held four internships and three jobs in her time at American, made the dean's list almost every term and also led the campus women's initiative. And when the rest of her class graduates with bachelor's degrees next year, Ms. Smyers will be finishing her master's.
She says her intense motivation is not so unusual. "The women here are on fire," she said.
vs.
"There was so much freedom when I got here, compared to my very structured high school life, that I kept putting things off," said Greg Williams, who just finished his freshman year. "I wouldn't do much work and I played a lot of Halo. I didn't know how to wake up on time without a mom. I had laundry problems. I shrank all my clothes and had to buy new ones."
But now a lot of schools are getting nervous about the "crisis" in men's education and worrying that the men are underserved and need special attention, and there are all kinds of new recruiting initiatives designed to recruit and retain male students. And I was actually starting to feel bad about the whole thing until I got to the end of the article:
Whether the male advantage will persist even as women's academic achievement soars is an open question. But many young men believe that, once in the work world, they will prevail.
"I think men do better out in the world because they care more about the power, the status, the C.E.O. job," Mr. Kohn said. "And maybe society holds men a little higher."
Sigh. Remind me again why I'm killing myself with all of this work and school.
Cases in point:
Take Jen Smyers, who has been a powerhouse in her three years at American University in Washington.
She has a dean's scholarship, has held four internships and three jobs in her time at American, made the dean's list almost every term and also led the campus women's initiative. And when the rest of her class graduates with bachelor's degrees next year, Ms. Smyers will be finishing her master's.
She says her intense motivation is not so unusual. "The women here are on fire," she said.
vs.
"There was so much freedom when I got here, compared to my very structured high school life, that I kept putting things off," said Greg Williams, who just finished his freshman year. "I wouldn't do much work and I played a lot of Halo. I didn't know how to wake up on time without a mom. I had laundry problems. I shrank all my clothes and had to buy new ones."
But now a lot of schools are getting nervous about the "crisis" in men's education and worrying that the men are underserved and need special attention, and there are all kinds of new recruiting initiatives designed to recruit and retain male students. And I was actually starting to feel bad about the whole thing until I got to the end of the article:
Whether the male advantage will persist even as women's academic achievement soars is an open question. But many young men believe that, once in the work world, they will prevail.
"I think men do better out in the world because they care more about the power, the status, the C.E.O. job," Mr. Kohn said. "And maybe society holds men a little higher."
Sigh. Remind me again why I'm killing myself with all of this work and school.
posted by Madame Defarge at 10:51 AM
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