"A lot has changed since 1960. If Connie Francis were to sing “Where the Boys Are” today, she would not likely be talking about Ft. Lauderdale. And she probably wouldn’t be talking about college, either. This is because, in a decades-old phenomenon, boys have increasingly been stumbling academically.
Colleges have taken note of this and, in certain cases (mostly private institutions), have actually been favoring boys in the admissions process. It’s an interesting, albeit unofficial, twist on affirmative action. But this, in turn, has been noted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, inspiring it to investigate whether colleges discriminate against girls by admitting less qualified boys."
It’s tempting to delve into the double standards evident here. When politically favored groups underperform, quotas are virtuous; when other groups do — such as boys — quotas are a vice. There is also Title IX, which has been used to ensure that the number of female student athletes in a school is proportional to girls’ percentage of its student body, despite the fact that far more boys are interested in sports. Yet Big Brother doesn’t apply this principle to other extracurricular activities, most of which are dominated by girls. Even more outrageously, when colleges voluntarily institute something approximating proportionality in the most important sphere, academics (to keep the male/female student ratio fairly close to 50/50), Big Brother investigates them. Yet I don’t want to devote too much ink to this today, because boys don’t really need affirmative action. They need correct action.
Stories about boys’ academic malaise will no doubt surprise some, yet the statistics are staggering. Treating the issue in the Wall Street Journal, Richard Whitmire writes:
Nearly 58% of all those earning bachelor's degrees are women. Graduate programs are headed in the same direction, and the [sex] gaps at community colleges — where 62% of those earning two-year degrees are female — are even wider.
...The numbers are startling. This summer the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University published the results of a study tracking the students who graduated from Boston Public Schools in 2007. Their conclusion: For every 167 females in four-year colleges, there were 100 males.