Monday, December 12, 2011

Manipulating numbers: in faculty ratios, and in entry requirements to university...needs reversing

I had the opportunity to discuss the issues faced by male adolescents in Ontario secondary schools this weekend with a retired teacher from an Ottawa high school.
He made two significant points:
  1. When the Ontario Ministry of education began the initiative to level the ratio of faculty numbers between males and females, they instructed the Human Resources departments of the boards of education to comb the personnel files of prospective women, those who were already qualified and those who were working on their qualifications to positions of leadership and responsibility, and phone those likely prospects with a "nudge" of encouragement to inspire their application both to the studies and to the application for such positions. However, as with most government programs, once started, rarely stopped, and when the 50-50 ratio of male and female instructors was achieved, the program continued, until now the ratio is more like 80-20, female to male. As a former Guidance Counsellor, he had observed the spectre of a grade nine boy, attempting to separate from his mother, under the 80-20 ratio, and facing 7 female instructors of his 8 subject teachers.
  2. The second point he made concerned the admission requirements for engineering students in such universities as Queen's. In another attempt to encourage female applicants, the entry requirements were lowered, for example, to a 75% average at graduation for females, while for males the entry requirements remained at 85%. It did not take long for the male students, naturally, to catch on to what they were facing and withdraw from the competition, leaving the classroom spaces to the women, and consequently also the professional graduates.
If such entry requirements were skewed in other faculties like medicine, law, psychology, social work...it is little wonder that the graduate schools are now dominated, in numerical form, by women in all of those faculties.
With respect to #1 above, it is long overdue  that the male-female ratio among secondary school instructors and administrators be re-calibrated, to achieve a ratio much closer to the 50-50 balance that could be considered optimum.
With respect to #2 above, the universities would do everyone, themselves, the culture and the professions a large favour if they were to return to a standard entry requirement for male and female students, in all faculties. Otherwise, we will experience more situations similar to the North York General Hospital who searched for more than two years for a teaching practitioner in family medicine who was male, without success. Many veterinarian clinics are now staffed by women who refuse to make "house calls" to sick large farm animals. That is another professional gap that will likely grow.
In both instances, what may have been an appropriate idea at its inception has now served its purpose, and needs, in both cases, to be rectified. And where is the public push-back to come from?