Alix Higgins has a total of three men in her four classes at Sacramento State. The gender imbalance is also apparent in campus libraries, restaurants and social spots where students – mostly women – gather...How is this at all "equitable"? This has been my point for decades--people who claim to want "equity" don't really want equity. They want their people, whoever that may be, to be the ones on top.
While women have outnumbered men on college campuses since the 1980s, the gap has widened significantly over the last 15 years at local four-year public universities. At Sacramento State, nearly 3,400 more women than men are enrolled as undergraduates, a 30 percent difference. At UC Davis, the gender gap is nearly the same...
“I think this is just an exciting time,” (department chairwoman) Bellon said. “I think we are starting to see the real flowering of those seeds that were planted in the ’80s and ’90s, to make education more equitable between the genders.”
Also interesting are the charts at the bottom of the linked article. They show that at both CSUS and UC Davis, our two local universities, women undergraduates have outnumbered men undergraduates every single year since the 1980's. This has been going on for 30 years now, and the charts show the trend is accelerating. Worries about the patriarchy are a bit outdated and perhaps we should move past them, despite the howls of the entrenched interests who would lose power by accepting reality.
2 comments:
I was wondering when you would get to this ... this article infuriated me. It was originally printed, top of the fold, front page, in the Sac Bee.When I read that there was a gender gap expanding, I took that as being a problem that should be addressed. Instead, what I got was an article that celebrated it, with the first quote from a department chair being, "these are exciting times" ...No, they're not. These are times where colleges and universities allow people who are unqualified (demonstrated by the fact that approximately 50% of the people admitted need to take high school level math or English courses) which either overcrowds classes, drives up costs, or eliminates qualified students. I understand that women, at one time, were underrepresented in higher education. But the celebration of 'disproportionately more,' as standards are falling and tuitions are rising is ridiculous. If we had a system where everyone's application was judged based only on performance, and this same gap existed, I'd be okay with it. But saying "Wow this is exciting" while clearly a large percentage of students are demonstrably unqualified, is horrible.
Perhaps the de facto sexism of the California higher education system requires federal intervention?
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