Beneath this rosy picture, however, lies a sobering reality. Among other studies, a 2004 report by Statistics Canada called “Where the Boys Are” reveals that in terms of high-school reading skills, educational engagement, and university enrolment, young men are lagging significantly behind similarly aged females. Although men sometimes outpace women in enrolment growth, for two decades the percentage of males versus females entering university has dropped steadily, and men now represent just 42 percent of total enrolments. Moreover, their higher dropout rate means that they will represent an even lower proportion of graduates. It appears that in terms of higher education it is women who are flourishing; by comparison, young men seem to be on autopilot.
In undergraduate streams, females are more likely to complete their degrees; there are now more females than males enrolled in master’s programs; and, whereas ten years ago over 60 percent of doctoral students were men, today the numbers are approaching parity. In ever-increasing numbers women are finding success at Canadian professional schools. Two decades ago, women represented less than 40 percent of lawschool graduates. By 2003, nearly 50 percent more females than males graduated from Canadian law schools. Last spring, at the University of Toronto and Queen’s University law-school convocations, female students won the gold, silver, and bronze medals. At the University of Calgary females took home the top two law awards. In medicine, there are similar trends. While in the mid-1980s, roughly one-third of Canadian med students were women, in each year since 2001 more females than males have graduated from Canadian medical schools. This year, 57 percent of first-year students at the University of British Columbia medical school are female, as are 60 percent at the University of Toronto, and over 75 percent at the University of Montreal.
“What is going wrong with men at universities?” a father and lawyer asked us. He was distraught and demanded anonymity. His daughter is soaring in a professional program at a prestigious university while her dropout brother languishes in the basement, he explained. Theories abound about male underachievement, but part of the answer is that universities themselves have changed. With students paying more to get in, large numbers of dedicated older students on campus, more overseas students (roughly 7 percent), and higher numbers of graduate students, there is a level of seriousness to university life that was less obvious in the past. Young men, it appears, are less acclimatized to this new environment and less prepared to compete within it. More to the point, perhaps, the women’s movement, combined with special attention paid to female success and learning styles at the elementary- and high-school levels, is paying dividends. Large numbers of independent-minded females believe that their earning power will be significantly enhanced by obtaining university degrees with stellar grades attached. They are staying in school longer and delaying other life choices.
Superior high-school grades and a stronger societal expectation that they attend post-secondary school are the most obvious reasons for the surge in female enrolments. But some observers believe that this trend will self-correct over time. In 1969, before the rapid growth of the Canadian university system, women represented only 36 percent of the undergraduate population (and less than 15 percent of university professors were women). This disproportion favouring males began to change in the 1970s, and, as society became more integrated, the male domination of university enrolments was destined to diminish. By 1981, females constituted 47 percent of undergraduate enrolment.
Today, while that integration is far from complete, certain shibboleths of the past have fallen by the wayside. For one, the notion of man-as-provider has largely given way to two-earner families and an even greater degree of independence on the part of young women. The result is that women, long underrepresented in many fields of study, are pursuing higher education in general and areas of specialization with social cachet in particular. The questions are, has the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and will the numbers even out?
Could it be that young men are aware that women continue to drop out of male-dominated professions when they decide to start having families (or to have another child), and, as such, that they do not try as hard now in order to succeed later? Or is it just that the later maturation of male adolescents has begun—now that the expectations for young women to attend university are more manifest—to translate into higher rates of female participation, and that male adolescents fall behind and fail to catch up? Or is it something else?
One thing is certain: we live in a highly competitive society where skills need to be constantly upgraded. Here, there are trends on campus disturbing some registrars and professors, and not just in Canada. In numbers significantly greater than men, young women are honing their skills by taking advantage of remedial programs. A 2005 University of California, Los Angeles study noted that female students surveyed reported “more frequent interaction with faculty and teaching assistants [and] higher levels of academic engagement.” The same report stresses that female students take greater advantage of university services. Echoing sentiments expressed by others, Marion Hannaford, the associate registrar at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, says, “When workshops or seminars on study skills, time management, exam-taking and the like are offered, it is rare to see a male student sign up voluntarily, and even fewer attend.” To their obvious detriment, it could be that young men are hard-wired not to accept help from others.
Some observers speculate that female students are being driven to succeed by the growing number of women on campus in positions of responsibility. Whereas women were once seen in large numbers only in administrative jobs, the number of full-time female professors has risen to roughly 30 percent, and today there are more and more women leading the charge. The dean of the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business is a woman, as are the deans at the University of Toronto’s faculties of law, medicine, and applied science and engineering, to cite just two schools. While there remain wage differentials favouring male professors, greater numbers of strong and learned female role models in key positions on campus are sure to be having a formative influence on a new generation of younger women.
Comments (6 comments)
Mika'il: When does issues with children become the fault of the parents instead of schools and popular media. I don't understand this disconnect. If your boy child is lazy and overly competitive in school to the point where he doesn't see the point of working hard. That's not because he's a boy. It's because that's how you, his parents, taught him how to be a boy. I'm not overly competitive. Though I'm not particularly feminine, but I hold more to the "feminine" co-operation learning style. So, I say teach your boys co-operation, sharing work, and thought. Tell your boys they are smart, and to treat people well, and stop using pop culture as a scapegoat. RAISE YOU KIDS! February 16, 2007 15:57 EST
algodees: Under educated and therefore under employed males scare me. Young men are easily led and undereducated young men even more so. If more balance is not achieved in education, we will eventually have an easily manipulated and resentful cadre of young men ready and willing to do anything some charismatic leader spouting some ridiculous and dangerous philosphy cajoles them to do. Nazi Germany is a good example of what happens in these situations. I think a good way to start addressing this situation is to encourage young men to go into the teaching profession and try to get a better gender balance within the profession. We have managed to lift up the female population, at least within academia, and now it is time for a concerted effort to do the same for the males. We must do whatever it takes to rectify this situation before Canadian society becomes even more polarized. Historically, angry young men have been much more dangerous to societies than have angry young women. Beware of ignorant and angry young men as they will cause havoc eventually. February 18, 2007 07:34 EST
juviall: As a professor of psychology who has taught the Psychology of Gender for the past 15 years, I really enjoyed this article. However, it's a shame that the authors wait until more than half way through to specify the nature of the problem, as well as the possible reasons. This isn't a gender problem; it's a gender by race/class problem. Upper-middle class boys are still going to university; it's the lower class boys and, in the US, African-American and Hispanic boys who do not. The question now becomes: why not? Father absence is huge factor. Boys who are not actively involved with their biological fathers — or a father figure — don't do as well at school as boys who live with their dads. We may not be sure why but one thing is clear: this is a family and social problem not a problem with the schools or the media. The solution is to help fathers stay engaged with their sons, perhaps with more enlightened social policies that recognize a father's impact on his children. February 20, 2007 15:36 EST
louise: I really enjoyed this article. While education styles have changed over the years, boys have definite patterns of learning that do not fit the current system. As youth are seen as 'clients' in the education system and not as human beings, then they will be lost as will the females in this system of education. I also agree that gender and class, economic standing allows for boys to attend school with insufficent qualifications and often given work in the family firm or something close to it. Either way, we have bred a generation of males who are well below in many components of life, including being educated enough to survive in this evolving world. And we have a generation of women looking for a decent guy, and few to pick among for a potential peer and mate. How would I know. Mmm. A father and three brothers give me some insight into male behaviour and thinking as well as my women studies specialist work gave me the language to frame the context. And I guess I could say working in a traditionally male field of work, also gives me insight that men, even my peers are struggling to survive in a society where women are in theory to have equal footing as them.
June 07, 2007 16:35 EST
rick lynn: I have been working on this since 1993 when I noticed the leveling off of men entering college and Females surging ahead. My learning theory will show how our individual environments do greatly affect thinking, learning, motivation to learn, and mental/emotional health. This is a brief excerpt from my learing theory on the Growing Male Crisis. The complete paper to all on request at mayfieldga@bellsouth.net
High layers of mental frictions are one reason Males are falling behind in society and even internationally. The nineteenth century belief "Males should be strong" has left open a window of Free Aggression toward Males from birth onward (aggression allowed upon Males that is considered inappropriate toward Females). Such Free Aggression toward Males may have seemed necessary in the nineteenth century where the physical world and its ruthlessness played a greater role in society. However, in the information age, Free Aggression today is having detrimental effects upon the mental, social, emotional, and academic growth of Males. This aggression given Males not only creates high layers of mental frictions it also creates the Male ego or defensive cushion developed from a young age designed to protect Males that aggression they receive. High layers of mental frictions and the Male ego or defensive cushion impedes and even isolates many Males from much valuable, interpersonal and various mental, emotional, and social and other needed supports that over a period of years add up to a large deficiency for Males.
The nineteenth century belief Males should be strong, also held "Females should be protected”. For many Females there is indulgence along with various continuous social supports from society from an early age onward. This indulgence provides an expressway of interaction for accumulation of much mental, emotional, social, and academic support and learning over time. Today, the two influences of Free Aggression toward Males and over-protection for Females along with various supports from society have created collectively high layers of mental frictions for Males and collectively low layers of mental frictions for Females. Males are collectively beginning to fall behind academically and will later fall behind economically. Females are beginning to use society's protection and societal support for greater opportunities of mental and emotional growth. In the future, the glass ceiling for women in business will fall and the Males will be on the outside.
It is incorrect to view the Male Crisis on role models. The lack of role models is the result of the problem, not the cause. If you had a bag full of sand with a hole in the bottom, you would “not” say there is less sand in the bag; you would say there is a hole in the bottom of the bag. Indeed, we should fix the hole in the bag by providing Males with tools to develop long-term, mental/emotional stability so they can better compete mentally and emotionally in the information age. One professional was attempting to find more role models for Male children. He boasted that a Male child’s esteem goes up when they have one positive role model. What he was unknowingly saying was that Males have such little attention that when they do receive that attention, they are very grateful. This creates the large rise in esteem. The fight for attention could be creating misbehavior in Male children.
In society today, men are given love, honor, respect, and support or the essentials of their self-worth based on achievement, money, power, status and image. They must fight through the still present, nineteenth century confrontations allowed by society upon them from an early age to achieve those benefits and feelings of self-worth. Since women are given through overprotection, even indulgence, the benefits of love, honor, respect, and continual support, all of the benefits of self-worth from an early age without qualification (simply because they are girls), they are working with much continual support, attention, and interaction to accumulate more continual mental, emotional, social, and academic knowledge and skills that can be transformed easily into money, power, status, and image. Even after this society’s protection, continued support and view toward beauty and charm continually helps them in the information age.
May 20, 2008 12:08 EST
rick lynn: The above article is only a small part of my overall learning theory that has applications other than explaining the Male Crisis. It provides us with tools to help teachers, students, and parents learn how to approach their lives more delicately and differently to continually improve thinking, learning, motivation, and mental/emotional health. These tools are essential to help end the Male Crisis and also help release everyone from the horrible myth of fixed intellligences which leave effort as the only variable. It will go to all on request. I do not know how much will be accepted in this format. The full article with graph and Figure will go to all on request.
August 14, 2008 17:59 EST