Surprise—The AAUW Finds that More Girls than Boys in College is No Crisis

Crying "crisis" every time some social scientist notices some differences between groups is very popular nowadays. The implication is that equality should be the status quo and that differences must be the result of malign forces. (Admittedly, sometimes there are malign forces, e.g., Jim Crow laws.) Conservatives now indulge in America's favorite passtime of claiming victimhood and so worry about the "boy crisis" in American education. The logic of a "boy crisis" means that special attention must be paid to boys over girls. Naturally this logic threatens the perks and programs of entrenched victim groups.

That being the case, is anyone shocked that the feminists at the American Association of University Women are promoting a "study" that purports to show that the "boy crisis" is a "myth?" Some researchers don't think it's a myth. And the Washinigton Post did not express any concern over how the study sponsored by an organization devoted to the interests of university women might have been skewed by conflicts of interest. At the end of its story on the AAUW report, the Post did note:

AAUW's study does show female students outperforming male students in some measures. Women have earned 57 percent of bachelor's degrees since 1982 and outperformed boys on high school grade-point averages. In 2005, male students had a GPA of 2.86 and girls, 3.09.

I will also mention that a friend of mine at a prominent university told me recently that he and his colleagues could fill all their graduate program slots with qualified women. However, women will refuse enter programs that have too few men, so his program has instituted affirmative action for men in order to attract women.

In any case, I don't believe that there is a "boy crisis" or a "girl crisis." The real victims are boys and girls who are stuck in our deteriorating government-funded educational system.

Whole Post article here.

Disclosure: As an undergraduate I entered the University of Virginia two years after it co-educated. From my point of view, the male/female ratio was far from optimum.