Boys being left behind as university gender gap widens
The number of girls seeking a university place this year is more than a third larger than that of boys, who university chiefs say are becoming “a disadvantaged group”
By James Kirkup, The Telegraph, January 31, 2014
Young men are becoming “a disadvantaged group” as far more young women go to university, higher education chiefs have warned.
The number of girls seeking a university place this year is more than a third larger than that of boys.
The growing divide is becoming a more pressing issue than the number of applicants from poorer homes, said the chief executive of Ucas, the universities admissions service. “There remains a stubborn gap between male and female applicants which, on current trends, could eclipse the gap between rich and poor within a decade,” Mary Curnock Cook said.
“Young men are becoming a disadvantaged group in terms of going to university and this underperformance needs urgent focus across the education sector.”
Ucas said that 580,000 people have applied for places at British institutions this year. Around 333,700 of them were women, almost 58 per cent. Only 246,300 men applied, a difference of 87,000, which was up 7,000 on last year. In the 2010-11 academic year, women made up 55 per cent of applicants.
Politicians seem to be happy with policy approaches that focus on economics, poverty, some kind of numbers that have currency in the public discourse. We have, indeed, become collectively fixated on the money barometer as our window on political issues. And then, it seems too often we think that throwing money at the problem absolves the political class of responsibility.
This issue of female university applications outstripping male applications in Great Britain by one third trumps the issue of the numbers of applications from poorer homes. Perhaps, finally, some of the more complex reasons for this gap will finally merit some serious public, political and academic attention.
We have needed research on the question of what is happening to boys in most of the countries in the west for some time. It is not sexism to point out these trend lines and there is or must be no aspersions cast in the direction of female applicants. In fact, any public discussion of these numbers and their meaning must focus instead on the reasons behind the drop in male applications and not on blaming the female segment of the university-applicant population for the rise in their numbers.
And, while it is not a competition between males and females in a direct sense, the culture needs to sustain a healthy proportion of male university graduates in order to sustain healthy employment rates, and all that accompanies that gradient for families, and for social services and for balance and good health culturally.
Men must be present with articulate voices at all the "tables" where decisions are taken in all fields including education, economics, technology, science, health and in private corporations. And in order to accomplish that legitimate and long-term objective, we need to pay attention when deficits, like the one being reported in the Telegraph today, appear.
It is, of course, much more glib and simplistic to focus on some benchmarks like a country's GDP, for too long the measure of the economic success of a nation. The value of good produced is both easily calculated and easily translated into a simple version of "good government" in order to provide fodder for politicians seeking re-election. It is the public, in the widest meaning of that word, who needs to be more focused on the many issues that comprise any legitimate yard stick for how healthy a society is, and will be in the foreseeable future.
And one of those benchmarks has to become the ratio of male to female university applications.
Men must not be either encouraged or permitted to withdraw simply because women are "appearing" to outstrip them in some kind of faux competition. And men must not be encouraged or permitted to perceive these numbers as a competition. In fact, removing competition from the equation may be one of the best ways to address the issue.
Schools, from a very early age, need to become sensitized to the issues facing male learners and to address those issues, as legitimate, and not as "deviant" simply because they are different from the issues facing female learners. And that begins in the faculties of education where the archetype of the good student profiles all the natural attributes of female students: compliant, disciplined, polite, enthusiastic, responsible and coachable.
Male students, on the other hand, fail to measure up to the female "standards" on all of these attributes, in many cases, and the approaches to their learning needs have to take those needs into consideration. Perhaps it is time to segregate male and female students in the classroom, in order to achieve a learning environment that generates a better balance of interested, talented and ambitious male and female applications to universities, so that we do not face a society and culture in which men revert to a secondary role, while women dominate. We need both genders playing their full part for the sake of their children and grandchildren and we will not see that balance if these trends continue without being both formally and informally addressed.
Politicians seem to be happy with policy approaches that focus on economics, poverty, some kind of numbers that have currency in the public discourse. We have, indeed, become collectively fixated on the money barometer as our window on political issues. And then, it seems too often we think that throwing money at the problem absolves the political class of responsibility.
This issue of female university applications outstripping male applications in Great Britain by one third trumps the issue of the numbers of applications from poorer homes. Perhaps, finally, some of the more complex reasons for this gap will finally merit some serious public, political and academic attention.
We have needed research on the question of what is happening to boys in most of the countries in the west for some time. It is not sexism to point out these trend lines and there is or must be no aspersions cast in the direction of female applicants. In fact, any public discussion of these numbers and their meaning must focus instead on the reasons behind the drop in male applications and not on blaming the female segment of the university-applicant population for the rise in their numbers.
And, while it is not a competition between males and females in a direct sense, the culture needs to sustain a healthy proportion of male university graduates in order to sustain healthy employment rates, and all that accompanies that gradient for families, and for social services and for balance and good health culturally.
Men must be present with articulate voices at all the "tables" where decisions are taken in all fields including education, economics, technology, science, health and in private corporations. And in order to accomplish that legitimate and long-term objective, we need to pay attention when deficits, like the one being reported in the Telegraph today, appear.
It is, of course, much more glib and simplistic to focus on some benchmarks like a country's GDP, for too long the measure of the economic success of a nation. The value of good produced is both easily calculated and easily translated into a simple version of "good government" in order to provide fodder for politicians seeking re-election. It is the public, in the widest meaning of that word, who needs to be more focused on the many issues that comprise any legitimate yard stick for how healthy a society is, and will be in the foreseeable future.
And one of those benchmarks has to become the ratio of male to female university applications.
Men must not be either encouraged or permitted to withdraw simply because women are "appearing" to outstrip them in some kind of faux competition. And men must not be encouraged or permitted to perceive these numbers as a competition. In fact, removing competition from the equation may be one of the best ways to address the issue.
Schools, from a very early age, need to become sensitized to the issues facing male learners and to address those issues, as legitimate, and not as "deviant" simply because they are different from the issues facing female learners. And that begins in the faculties of education where the archetype of the good student profiles all the natural attributes of female students: compliant, disciplined, polite, enthusiastic, responsible and coachable.
Male students, on the other hand, fail to measure up to the female "standards" on all of these attributes, in many cases, and the approaches to their learning needs have to take those needs into consideration. Perhaps it is time to segregate male and female students in the classroom, in order to achieve a learning environment that generates a better balance of interested, talented and ambitious male and female applications to universities, so that we do not face a society and culture in which men revert to a secondary role, while women dominate. We need both genders playing their full part for the sake of their children and grandchildren and we will not see that balance if these trends continue without being both formally and informally addressed.
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