Abstract
Since this trend was first noted, educators across the nation have wondered why more and more young men are jumping directly from high school into the work-force, and they are now asking themselves what colleges and universities ought to do about it. At Goucher College, we convened a national conference of education leaders, social psychologists, and demographic experts to bring these very important questions and some possible answers into sharper focus.
Several vivid insights emerged. Daniel Kindlon and Catherine Steiner-Adair, both Harvard University psychologists, pointed to the dearth of adequate male role models in elementary education and popular culture as a lingering influence on the disparity. Kindlon noted, for instance, that a mere 16 percent of all elementary school teachers for the developmentally formative fourth, fifth, and sixth grades are men.
Along similar lines, Steiner-Adair decried the “anti-intellectual and Neanderthal version of masculinity” promoted so often in contemporary film and television. She emphasized that young men need to come to terms with alternative definitions of masculinity, which she believes can be examined most thoroughly in a liberal arts education. If they are not able to do so, broad, unforeseen social consequences will emerge. She cautioned, for example, that the rate of men coping with their anxieties and stresses by means of violence and drinking is not in decline. Education about healthy emotions and behaviors is now built into college student life programs; however, it does not follow equally in the corporate world.
Other speakers at the Goucher conference, such as the MIT economist Lester Thurow, linked the social and developmental understandings of the issue to economic impulses. He argued that the lure of high-paying technology careers requiring little or no post–high school education has led men to question the value of a college education. Many other young men also turn their backs on college to enter more traditional trades; an air conditioning serviceperson, for example, can make over three times the minimum wage and quickly achieve a $17-per-hour rate of pay. And yet, as Steiner-Adair suggested during the conference, these figures obscure the reality for many high school boys that for every dollar invested in education, thirty-six will be made in return within a relatively short time of building his career.
Of all the possible reasons for the widening gulf between the numbers of men and women in college, however, one possibility, proposed by former governor of Georgia Zell Miller, stands out. I think we in higher education must respond to his plain question, “Are we failing to make clear to our young men the abundant benefits of a college education?” Miller put the challenge in precise and colorful terms when he asked, “Why should a young man carry heavy educational loans in order to read Beowulf?” It is a tough question that will not leave us any time soon. I believe, nevertheless, that such a young man deserves some thoughtful answers; otherwise he will be left struggling with Hamlet's question about whether to be or not to be (or more precisely what to be) without ever knowing who Hamlet was.
I do not believe, as some have suggested, that we should return to the “good old days” of male dominance in higher education, but I do believe we need to look at this trend seriously and think cogently about how to embrace men back into the fold. Here are some methods to help convey our message loudly and clearly to young men:
Where we are falling down on the job, I think, is in bringing higher education's mission to the public. A growing number of people think that a college education has its greatest value in skills-based professional training. There are plenty of skeptics who view college as holding less value than on-the-job training because of the never-tiring perception that academic pursuits are hopelessly impractical, abstract, and out of touch with current realities. Meanwhile, young men hear the constant touting of celebrated high-tech pioneers as college dropouts. When you think about the options available to young men after high school in these instantly measurable cost-benefit terms, it is easy to understand why so many of them opt for technical training instead of college. Why should they spend the added time, extra effort, and scarce money on college when they could be in and out of a technical training program—and making decent money—in less than a year?
Rather, it is the depth of broad-based knowledge that students gain in the liberal arts classroom that truly illuminates these off-campus experiences. Understanding why things work the way they do, learning the importance of a conceptual framework in solving a problem, or thinking thoroughly about a complicated cause-and-effect scenario, one will always risk the possibility of pointlessness. But when students begin to make actual applications through some personal experience outside the classroom, the classroom is vivified afresh.
If we are to encourage qualified but elusive young men to come to our campuses, we must reclaim the definition of higher education by demonstrating the very tangible connection between academia and the world of work. Through our experiential learning programs, we must make the case for building that connection on a strong academic foundation.
I suggest that similar programs for young men be instituted or expanded by current college students. Colleges should continue to sponsor tutoring and computer literacy community service projects, but they may also encourage students to volunteer in Boy Scout troops or Big Brother chapters. Put succinctly, mentoring works. It is a means to reach boys growing up in the “at-risk” population, but it also provides a way of inspiring boys at less risk to gain the example of an older counterpart in college.
Civic engagement among men, as indicated by voting data, has declined at a sharper rate than among women during the same time that male attendance in college has dropped. A labor economist at the Goucher conference expressed concern that when the current transition of a goods economy to a service economy combines with an economic downturn, men who have not developed analytical, problem-solving, listening, negotiating, and teamwork abilities will be in serious trouble adapting to new employment situations. These are skills, too, that make community volunteerism healthy and effective.
Further, communities are more than the sum of their productive economic units, for they are constituted of homes formed by marriages, partnerships, and families. A subtext of fewer men attending college that deserves mention too is the potential, though unknown, effect on satisfying and fulfilling relationships. For many double-income couples, relationships are premised on intellectual equality, which is less likely to happen if only one partner has a college degree.
Although a few observers choose to characterize the growing enrollment gap between men and women in college as a sort of battle of the sexes, it is not that. We are all in this together. College is a microcosm of society, a laboratory in which students begin to develop, test, and shape the roles they will play in their careers, families, and communities. It has been important for women during my lifetime, as it must remain for more men, to have a positive college experience so that they will be prepared for the challenge of playing multiple roles in a democratic society.
To young men and women, our colleges and universities must be more than a coin traded in the marketplace of employment, for otherwise we will end up with variations on the theme of vocational training. Instead, our goal for them, as Zell Miller aptly phrased it at Goucher, must be “not to have more but to do more and be more; to be rich, not to get rich.”What and how to be—isn't that the essence of Hamlet's recurring question?