Blog 7

I read an article in last Sunday's Journal-Gazzette about the dearth of young men in area colleges and universities. It appears that there were almost 50 percent more females than males enrolled in Allen County (IN) colleges in 2006 ( http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071007/LOCAL/710070352/-1/LOCAL07 ). It's a phenomenon that I have noticed in my own classes. Early on in my college career, some 6 long years ago, my classes seemed pretty evenly divided between men and women. But lately, I have noticed that the young men in classes are dropping off. Just this semester I have one class with 3 men and another with just one lonely young man (it IS Women's Studies, but still, 1 guy?) While I can't help but rejoice that young women are entering college at such a high rate, I can't help but be concerned about what is happening to our area's young men. And, it turns out that this is a national problem.

In this little corner of the world, many of the jobs available are in industrial settings, as they have been for years. Unfortunately, many of these jobs are going the way of the dinosaur. We are seeing more outsourcing, automation, and companies just picking up and moving elsewhere, places like Mexico where the labor is cheaper. While in the past you could get a great paying job right out of high school in these industrial jobs, now it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find a factory job that pays more than $8.00 an hour to start. So, it goes to follow that in order to make a better living, you are going to need more than the high school diploma that use to get you a foundry job. College is becoming more important, but less men seem to be making that decision.

So, why aren't our young men entering higher education? And, what can we do to turn the tide? I wonder if some of the efforts that have been made in the past to encourage girls to attend college have had an adverse effect on boys. Have they gotten the impression that society deems it more important for girls to attend college? I hypothesize that we need just as many programs to encourage boys to seek higher education as we have for girls. And, boys should be steered towards what are traditionally thought of as "female" majors, like nursing and education; in the same way that for the past decade girls have been encouraged to enter male dominated fields like engineering. And most importantly, those of us who are raising boys now, the women who have benefitted from the programs that encouraged girls to attend college, should be sure that we are instilling in our sons the desire to obtain a higher education.