Education
Why Don’t Men Go To University Any More?
What will that mean for universities…and for 21st century work?
A while back, I mentioned the strange case of the disappearing university male. In that context I wondered how the educational establishment – in whose eyes a university degree is a primary success metric – are addressing the 58% (female) to 42% (male) disparity blocking male success. But I didn’t get around to asking why it’s happening.
However, here’s a fascinating recent post from American writer Celeste Davis that dives deep, deep down the rabbit hole. The article first references a handful of more mainstream theories seeking to explain the gap, including:
- High tuition costs (which, I guess, just don’t bother women?)
- Boys having weaker academic skills
- Boys being exposed to negative messaging in early grades
- Politically left-friendly campuses that attract more women
- More high-paying career alternatives for men
Davis agrees that those are probably all contributing factors. But she turns her attention to what she feels is the big driver: male flight. Perhaps, goes the argument, young men just don’t see themselves thriving in career fields that appear to be dominated by women. The more women enrolled in last year’s university cohort, the more of this year’s men decide to check out of university altogether.
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Or, as Davis puts it:
“For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied. One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition!”
According to Statistics Canada, overall male enrollment as a proportion of total university populations has dropped by 4.4 percent since 1992. Canada might not be experiencing the same painful overall drops in university enrollments they’re seeing south of the border, but we may not be too far behind.
All this seems to be true of universities in general, but the impact might be more visible in specific programs. In fact, the biggest changes have impacted a handful of university program categories:
- Personal, protective and transportation services – which include law enforcement and fire fighting. Male participation dropped from 85 percent of enrollment in 1992 to just 43 percent in 2021.
- Agriculture, natural resources, and conservation, which saw a decline from 55 percent to 38 percent.
- Physical and life sciences and technologies saw male enrollment drop from 49 percent to 24 percent.
- Social and behavioural sciences and law enrollment fell from 38 percent to 29 percent.
Celeste’s theory is that, rather than external forces driving declines in male participation, it’s the entry of more and more women into academic programs that lies behind the changes.
I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that the solution to the problem is to impose enrollment quotas to limit entry for women. Quotas are evil.
In fact, I’m not 100 percent convinced that this is a problem that even needs solving. That’s partly because I don’t buy the line that university is always the most reliable route to social and economic success. It’s also because I don’t see a down side to relaxing and allowing market forces to work things out for us.
One thing that is worth our attention is the damage these trends might cause the higher education industry over the long term. Upwards of three percent of Canada’s GDP can probably be attributed to the higher education sector. And Canadian universities employ more than 343,000 people – around one of every 80 employed Canadians. You and I may or may not have a direct connection to higher education, but its decline would definitely leave a mark.
It’s worth noting that, for all the chaos those trends might spark within the higher education industry, they appear to be having a surprisingly minor impact on the actual workforce. Employment data from Statistics Canada shows us that the proportion of male workers changed by less than three percentage points between 1987 and 2023 in all but a few of the 18 job categories tracked. The exceptions included:
- Public administration, where the percentage of workers who were male fell from 61 percent in 1987 to 48 percent in 2023.
- Educational services, which saw the number of male teachers and administrators fall ten points from a representation of 42 percent to 32 percent.
- Male participation in the finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing industries actually rose from 41 percent to 47 percent.
But the exceptions were far less interesting than the fields where there was no significant change. Compare the four percent drop in agricultural employment to the 30 percent by which enrollment in agriculture, natural resources and conservation programs fell.
Similarly, the 25 percent drop in male participation in science and technology programs doesn’t seem to play out in the real world: male employment in professional, scientific and technical services is effectively unchanged since 1987.
Those enrollment vs employment designations aren’t perfectly aligned, of course. And employment data does have a far longer built-in lag than university attendance. But the gaping disparity does suggest there are a lot of women signing up for courses but not following up by getting related jobs.
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Education
Saskatchewan school board defends policy to allow boys in girls’ change rooms despite parents’ protests
From LifeSiteNews
The rural Saskatchewan school district’s director of education said ‘it is the right thing to do for our students, staff and school communities’ to allow biological boys to use the same locker room as girls who feel uncomfortable about the situation.
Despite an outcry from concerned parents, a Canadian school board told them it supports allowing gender-confused boys access to girls’ change rooms.
Last week, LifeSiteNews reported about Balgonie Elementary School in rural Saskatchewan where a female seventh grader told her parents she was not comfortable sharing changing rooms for gym class with gender-confused biological males.
Despite the outcry, the Prairie Valley School Division (PVSD) in a recent email sent to parents claimed that the school division’s inclusivity policy trumps the rights of girls from being victimized by gender-confused boys.
“One important part of creating these safe and welcoming spaces is ensuring our schools operate in a way that respects the human rights, dignity and privacy expectations of all students and their families,” PVSD director of education Gord Husband wrote in an email to parents.
Husband said the school division’s policies and procedures are “carefully aligned with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code.”
“We operate according to these documents not only because it is our legal obligation, but also because it is the right thing to do for our students, staff and school communities,” he added.
Husband’s email did not mention the issue at Balgonie Elementary directly but instead claimed it was a “human rights” issue and asked all parents to support “all students.”
The father of the girl, who remains anonymous, said that after his daughter raised the issue of the biological males using the girls’ locker room, saying she “felt uncomfortable,” she was told, “she can change in a different room by herself.”
The issue drew the attention of Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe. He said that his first “order of business” should he be re-elected to lead the province will be to ban gender-confused boys from accessing girls’ change rooms in public schools.
As reported by the Western Standard, the gender-confused boys using the girls’ change rooms are in fact those of Saskatchewan NDP MLA Jared Clarke.
One of the concerned parents noted that learning this fact is “insane.”
“Wow, that’s insane, Sask NDP candidate from the NDP party, but not surprised that someone from that party would do that to a child. The NDP is really pushing that agenda and it’s so disturbing,” said the parent, as reported by the Western Standard.
Saskatchewan’s provincial election will be held October 28.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, LGBT indoctrination targeting kids has been on the rise in Canada and worldwide, leading to Canadians fighting back in protest.
Earlier this week, LifeSiteNews reported that a leading female gender ideology activist, who also worked as a school counselor, has been charged with grievous sexual offenses involving a minor.
Provinces such as Alberta, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan have in recent months proposed legislation that would strengthen parental rights.
Education
Academics, Not Activism, Should be the Priority in School
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
“Resistance to colonialism is not terrorism.”
This quote was shown to more than 5000 Winnipeg School Division (WSD) staff last week at a professional development session that Dr. Chris Emdin from Teachers College, Columbia University delivered. Not surprisingly, many teachers found the quote offensive, with more than a dozen walking out.
The teachers who walked out did the right thing. Whatever one’s political views might be, there is no context where intentionally murdering innocent civilians, which is an act of terrorism, is acceptable.
Even more offensive was the fact that this presentation took place only two days after the first anniversary of Hamas’s brutal attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. More than 1,200 Israelis were murdered that day, with many others wounded or taken hostage.
Considering how often Hamas apologists justify their antisemitism by reframing it as “resistance” to colonialism, it’s not surprising that a quote minimizing the evils of terrorism wouldn’t go over well with many teachers, particularly Jewish educators.
WSD Superintendent Matt Henderson was quick to engage in damage control. Henderson apologized for the quote in a letter to staff and explained that “the speaker’s view does not reflect the views of the WSD in this context.”
However, Henderson shouldn’t be let off the hook so easily. No competent superintendent would organize a division-wide professional development event without carefully vetting a keynote speaker, reviewing the PowerPoint slides, and knowing exactly what message that speaker would deliver to his staff.
The fundamental issue here is how this incident exposes the divide between two different visions of public education. On one side we have the traditional view of education, which emphasizes the importance of knowledge acquisition and skill development in school. On the other side is the progressive view, where teachers engage in social justice activism and seek to liberate students from colonialism and oppression.
This is not a new debate. In her 2000 book, Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform, education historian Diane Ravitch chronicled the long struggle between traditionalists and progressives for control of Teachers College, the most influential teacher training institution in North America.
In the end, the progressives won the power struggle and took effective control of Teachers College, where Emdin currently teaches.
In other words, by inviting a well-known political activist to be the keynote speaker at this WSD event, Superintendent Henderson signaled his desire to take WSD schools in a more progressive direction, where teachers focus more on activism than on traditional academics. This won’t surprise anyone who has read any of Henderson’s many articles over the last decade or so. His left-wing political views are hardly a secret.
Not surprisingly, many parents are uncomfortable with this approach. Most parents send their children to school because they want them to learn basic facts and master essential skills—not to be indoctrinated into an ideology that conflicts with what they are taught at home.
A far better approach would be for all schools to focus on the fundamentals of teaching and learning. Help students become knowledgeable and skillful and leave political activism out of the classroom.
If teachers want to be political, they should do it on their own time. A school division’s focus should be on academics, not on political activism.
Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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