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September 14, 2010

Math Still Hard. Teaching and Nursing Still Easy

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CARPE DIEM: 142 Women Enrolled in Grad School Per 100 Men, and Women Outnumber Men in 7 Out Of 11 Fields
This is more evidence that men have become the second sex in higher education. And here's a prediction: The fact that men are underrepresented in graduate school enrollment overall (100 men for every 142 women), and underrepresented in 7 out of 11 graduate fields of study will get almost no media attention at all. Additionally, there will be no calls for government studies, or increased government funding to address the problem, and nobody will refer to this gender graduate school enrollment gap as a "crisis." But what will get media attention is the fact that women are underrepresented in four of the 11 fields of graduate study like engineering and computer science, which can likely be traced to some kind of overt or unexamined gender discrimination.

Posted by Vanderleun at September 14, 2010 8:51 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

I blame Bush.

Posted by: raincityjazz at September 14, 2010 11:50 AM

I blame Cheney. I heard a rumor that he's been going around shooting male nursing students in the face.

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at September 14, 2010 1:25 PM

I blame the Liberals.

Posted by: Cilla Mitchell, Galveston Texas at September 14, 2010 1:32 PM

When women don't fit into the world, the world must be changed. When men don't fit into the world, the men must be punished.

National decline is a feature, not a bug, of the liberal operating system.

Posted by: Scott M at September 14, 2010 1:36 PM

Perhaps men are also going to work instead of going for the advanced degrees.
How this will translate to jobs remains to be seen, as college grads continue to avoid flipping burgers whilst pocketing 'funemployment'.

Posted by: Uncle Jefe at September 14, 2010 3:14 PM

This from a comment in response to Confessions Of A Regretful Gender Studies Student at a female-oriented blog "the Frisky": "We read something like 10 different books {in the Race and Nation in Latin Am class) that semester, ranging from the evolution of dance styles, to Mexican art, to Peruvian highland/coastal tensions, and Brazilian "blackness". It was captivating and I learned a lot about race relations and nationality and how those relate to Latin American politics and culture, as well as how that relates to our own race relations here in states. It was an invaluable class, that did require a lot of writing, analytical thinking, and research."

Simply stunning! A quick glance at the list of fields will reveal that the "softest" have the highest percentage of women graduates. Now combine that with the ever growing chorus of news stories revealing the trials and tribulations of college graduates who have gone deeply into debt. The data I have seen clearly indicates that the incomes of those graduating from these non-practical degrees are much inferior to those obtained by graduates of the male-dominated fields. I think it is safe to predict that the education bubble, fueled by debt much as that of the subprime crisis in 2008 and that males are really not interested in "gender studies" degrees, will lead eventually to a massive restructuring of the high school and college education industry. The faster the better, of course, but the bubble will pop.

Posted by: boqueronman at September 14, 2010 5:26 PM

This is longish, but well worth the read: from the Onion's Point/Counterpoint:

Nigeria May be a developing Nation, but it is rich in Culture - by Zach Spence, Univ. of Vermont -Junior

Ever since taking West African History 201, I've been fascinated by the rich cultural tapestry that is Nigeria. Professor Olson really opened my eyes to Nigerian accomplishments in art, music, and literature. What an incredibly cool place!

It's sad how the media always dwell on the negative aspects of African society. Granted, Nigeria faces some economic challenges (the result of centuries of colonialist exploitation), but I'm sure Nigerians don't concern themselves with thoughts of shallow materialism when they are surrounded every day by such stirring, dynamic expressions of the human spirit.

Nigerians don't need money for stereos or CDs: They make their own music! Along with a huge variety of drums, traditional instruments include many kinds of flutes, xylophones, and wooden clappers. Music permeates all aspects of life there, including public assemblies, festivals, weddings, funerals, and storytelling sessions. In fact, in Nigeria, music literally is a language: Giant slit drums are used to relay messages between villages situated along river systems. (At first, I figured it was like Morse Code, but I learned in class that it's actually an extremely sophisticated tonal language system!) There's a West African djembe–a large, goblet-shaped drum–at this store on University Avenue for $450 that I totally want to get.

The various ethnic groups of Nigeria all specialize in beautiful dances. The Ishan stilt dancers twist about in the air wearing their multi-colored raffia-palm costumes. The Ubakala people resolve conflicts and mark the seasons of the yam and cocoa-yam harvests with slow, ritualistic stomping while wearing these huge, intricately carved wooden masks. Doesn't that sound amazing?

Of course, I would only be reinforcing racist stereotypes if I just talked about Nigerians playing drums and dancing. Have you ever heard of the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe? He's a Nigerian writer. It's definitely one of the best books I've ever read. Then there's Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright who won the Nobel Prize in 1986. He had to flee the country because the government wanted to kill him. Fela Kuti, the famous musician, is also from Nigeria, and his stuff is really funky. He's, like, the African James Brown.

But for all that culture, the most wonderful thing about Nigeria is the warmth and hospitality of its varied peoples. Whether they speak Yoruba, Edo, Ijo, Igbo, Igala, Idoma, Nupe, Gwari, or a dialect of the Benue-Congo subgroup, all Nigerians will greet a visitor to their homes with a piece of boiled meat and a ceremonial food bowl holding a sauce for dipping. It's this kind of generosity and kindness that I would really love to experience firsthand someday.

As you can see, the rich cultural heritage of Nigeria gives its people the strength to overcome the many challenges that a developing African nation such as itself faces. It must be such an exciting time to be in Nigeria right now. I've got to get over there!

And counterpoint:

Get me out of this God-forsaken Hell-Hole
by Bitek Okoye - Nigerian

Ever since my parents and three brothers died in the gasoline explosion last month, my mind has been dead to the world. Please, God, let me leave this place. I have no hope for my country.

I see it in the glassy-eyed stares of the people on the street. We have nothing. We have been ruled by fat generals who promise elections but steal all the money from the people. The oil money, billions and billions of dollars, it disappears. Millions of us live here in the Lagos slums with no electricity or sewage system. I don't want to smell the garbage rotting in the streets anymore.

No one is safe. The police chase people in the streets and beat them like dogs. This new general, Abubakar, he is no better than the rest before. President Babangida, he stole $12 billion from the Nigerian people. When people ask where the money goes, they are shot. They shoot people every Sunday on Victoria Beach. The bodies always wash up on the sand after they throw them in the ocean.

Last month, thieves broke the oil pipeline to steal fuel. Many people rushed out to scoop up the fuel that spilled out, to use, to sell. Then, everything was in flames. Seven hundred people died. I saw the tractor throwing the burned bodies into a hole in the ground. My family is somewhere in that hole.

The month before that, the soldiers threw my grandmother out a window. The soldiers, they set up roadblocks. They stop anybody trying to drive past, and they take all their money. I see people walking down the street in broad daylight who are attacked by criminals. Men with knives, sticks, broken bottles. They attack you and beat you down.The people sometimes chase a thief who steals a bag. The crowd chases him and throws him down and beats him to death. The streets are very bad. There is so much hatred.

If I could get just a little money, I could try to leave. But I must save my money for food. There is no good food to buy in the streets. There are no doctors. I am still young. I don't want to get sick and starve. I don't want to be killed by the police. Please, God, save me. Shango, Ogun, Ifa, protect me. I don't want to die. I have to get out of here.


Posted by: Jewel at September 14, 2010 6:43 PM

The truth is, the tripling of college graduates in two generations has inevitably dumbed down both education itself, and then its students. But it's hard to dumb down math, science, and engineering, or they would have done it by now.

Women have the greater patience necessary in regurgitating bullshit, so they stay longer at these make-believe places. Their options are also more limited, since they can't jump tall buildings in a single bound, and hate it when their knuckles bleed from changing a spark plug.

Posted by: james wilson at September 14, 2010 9:04 PM

BTW, Jewel, my brother has been to West Africa many times, and if there was somebody there who did not want to get here, he didn't meet him.

Posted by: james wilson at September 14, 2010 9:06 PM

Too true, too true. Nobody wrings their hands over the relative lack of men in biology or the social sciences, but somehow the majority of men in math and the hard sciences is a "crisis". No one has ever explained to me why it is a crisis, how all progress in these fields has come to a standstill due to lack of women, or perhaps how the ratio of men to women in math and hard sciences poses a danger to national security or the future of humanity, or how we just barely managed to survive as a species this long when in the past the ratio of men to women was even larger in these fields. They just vaguely imply that there is something terribly wrong, and the reason is that all those horrible, patriarchal, entrenched male mathematicians and scientists just want to keep women barefoot and pregnant.

Posted by: Grizzly at September 14, 2010 10:07 PM

I've met plenty of West Africans who are quite happy to be here. In some cities, like Philly, for example, many Africans are victims of blatant and violent racism...by black Americans, because these Africans come here and work two and three jobs and make the brothas look bad. It is the same in school, where African children prefer to eschew the gangsta thug and bling culture of blacks and tend to study hard in order to get into college.
This isn't surprising at all. Many who come here are quite strong in their Christian faith and have a great deal of optimism about living in America. That doesn't set well with the perpetual victim classes.
I find that many Haitians (I have worked with them as an interpreter and translator) are also like their African brethren. Although we have had a large number of Haitian and African immigrants come here to Lancaster, we seldom have problems with assimilation the way Somalis have in adjusting to life in America....and nowhere near the crime rate, either.

Posted by: Jewel at September 15, 2010 12:30 AM

If this is true, we should be seeing a lot of transgendered math teachers, no?

Posted by: Blastineau at September 15, 2010 4:15 PM

The largest sector of employment growth is government which is also where many of women degrees seem to fit (education, social work, and medicine).

Women are still mainly focused on traditional roles, only have voted themselves good paying jobs to boot.

Government jobs are more appealing to women because women seem good at following the rules of a bureaucracy.


Posted by: Ralph at September 17, 2010 5:40 AM

This is true. I saw it especially in the juvenile court system with social workers and judges.

Posted by: Jewel at September 17, 2010 7:18 AM

Gov't jobs have predictable schedules and benefits, which is ideal for mothers. Period. The irony is that to solve our nation's educational shortcomings, to bring greater math and science achievement into the public schools to make us globally competitive, we'd have to bring more men in education. As long as bleeding hearts are running schools, it will be all about entitlements and teachers unions. Math and science are hard, but I think engineering could use a woman's touch - I don't need a PhD to know that a man who never washed clothes in his life designed my crappy washing machine. Math and science are indeed hard. But for men, so is communication!! I prefer teachers, nurses who can bother to put more than two words together even for the sake of common courtesy. Although I do believe a man naturally has a lot of wisedom to offer, it would help if he were taught to speak in complete sentences and/or have compassion and patience for the student, the patient under his care. (what happened to the art of being gentlemen..??) Nothing surprising in these stats. But I do worry about how fairly my son will be treated in a "feminist's world" just as much as I worry about my daughter being treated fairly in a man's world, especially if it's Sharia friendly. I am a Chris Christie fan, myself. He's giving teacher's unions hell in NJ.

Posted by: Red Carolina at September 17, 2010 8:52 AM

Nursing is not easy. Nor is teaching well.

Posted by: Sarah Rolph at September 18, 2010 5:07 AM

My understanding is that nursing is demanding as a field of study, as well as a profession.

Education, on the other hand, is a joke as a field of study. Paradoxically, it can either be very hard or very easy as a profession if one wants to be a working teacher at the K-12 level, because to get a paycheck that way demands little more than a good immune system (one spends the first year or two sick--constantly). To do it well is very, very demanding.

The question is, how many K-12 teachers take the time or have the talent to do it well? How many even know the difference when they aren't? And will anything happen to them if they don't care or just give up?

There is no reason to artificially inflate the number of scientists or engineers who are women. One hopes that we are past the point of actively discouraging them--which we did a lot of up through the 1970s.

Posted by: Little Miss Attila / Joy McCann at September 19, 2010 4:52 PM

Joy, BINGO. My brother became a teacher late in his life, and you would think school districts would love to hire a man with a boatload of life experiences, but no...he would have been too expensive for them to hire. They go with the dimwitted clucks and dozy bints every time. Of course, not ever woman tenured to teach the tots is a mushwit, but enough of them are that I weep for the future.

Posted by: Jewel at September 20, 2010 12:13 AM

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