Careers: The great college gender gap

An exclusive preview from the latest issue of The Week magazine If you have trouble viewing this email, [read the online version](. NEWS In this issue of The Week --------------------------------------------------------------- Dear newsletter reader, We thought you'd appreciate this special preview from the latest issue of The Week magazine, where you'll find everything you need to know about the most important stories in news, business, technology, and culture. Today's preview comes from the "Making money" section. If you like what you read you can [try 6 Risk-Free issues of The Week](. Careers: The great college gender gap With women now making up nearly 60 percent of the total college enrollment last year, colleges are wondering what's happened to the men, said Douglas Belkin at The Wall Street Journal. An education gap that "holds at both two-year and four-year colleges has been slowly widening for 40 years." The gulf has become impossible to ignore on campuses, where, if the trend continues over the next few years, "two women will earn a college degree for every man." In interviews around the U.S., young men said they "didn't see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense." Daniel Briles, an 18-year-old in Minnesota, took a landscaping job instead of entering college and "earns income from creating and selling music" and investing in cryptocurrencies. The pandemic and online classes motivated Jack Bartholomew's decision to ditch Bowling Green State University last year. But now, packing boxes at an Amazon warehouse, he says, "I just feel lost." Some Amazingly, these numbers are almost exactly the inverse of those that colleges saw half a century ago, said USA Today in an editorial. "Sexist policies and social mores are what kept women on the sidelines then." We must determine what's happening now. College graduates still "earn on average 56 percent more than high school grads." Some schools are even starting to discriminate against women in admissions to tip back the gender balance, because they know fewer males on campus will eventually lead to a decrease in female applications, too. While women understand that the "path to independence and empowerment flows through school," said Derek Thompson at The Atlantic, men are "adrift." But we can't sustain a strong labor market if "the male identity is seen as being at odds with education," said policy analyst Richard Reeves. Already, we are seeing gender polarization has cultural and political ramifications: Women and college graduates, for example, "strongly favor Democrats, while men and people without degrees lean Republican." Women surged into college "because they had to," said Kevin Carey at The New York Times. There are far fewer well-paying jobs for women without a college degree. But even when women do earn degrees, they still earn less than men, leaving them seemingly "stuck in place." Men are actually more likely to go to college today than they were in 1970, and they still dominate in fields like technology, finance, and engineering. Men also dominate MBA programs, said Jeff Green at Bloomberg Businessweek. Unfortunately, "the same societal pressures that can derail the career of a working mother can be a roadblock for an MBA." Millions of women left the workforce last year to care for children, while men secured 60 percent of MBA spots — "the surest route to the corner office." [Try 6 Risk-Free issues of The Week]( [The week Logo] Copyright © 2021 The Week Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.. You’re receiving this because you subscribe to or signed up to receive emails from The Week. To unsubscribe from these emails, click [here](. The Week Publications, Inc. Registered address: 155 E 44th St Fl 22, New York, NY, 10017-4100. Further information about how we use your data can be found in our [Privacy Policy](.