I don’t buy it. As a college guy I loved the classes I was in where the women outnumbered the men. I seeked those out and actively signed up for them. It was a great way to meet people (before dating apps took over) and in one of those classes I met my longterm girlfriend. I remember my guy friends being excited when a class had a high female to male ratio.
Yep. It's probably rooted in our psychology as primates. I'm not saying this is good, but psychology is often ugly.
Men want to compete for status against other men. If women are present, it's not quite seen as a venue for male intrasexual competition in the same way. It's also possible that the greatest status in society can be found where males compete (unless you're dealing with a matriarchal society).
I also suspect men prefer to compete on status-ladder games of their peers. Younger men don't tend to care that much about old games played by old men. Older men sometimes care about trying to compete at new games (influencer, recent sports or recently rediscovered).
Although sometimes new status-ladders are emergent: surfing is the one I notice because of the type of people I see that say they want to surf.
What I would like to see here is a discussion of whether this is a bad thing or not. I mean, I went to college (got a PhD) and I eventually quit and did something different in life that didn't even require a degree... I mean, is this a bad thing or not?
Note: I'm not saying that it ISN'T a bad thing. Just thinking that any discussion about boys not applying to college also needs to answer whether it's really a bad thing for them. I'm just genuinely curious if this shift has ALSO implied a shift of worse economic outcomes for men.
(And we need to be subtle and careful here, too. Because technically I make much less money than before I quit my "degree job" but I'm also a lot happier, too.)
A college credential is a gatekeeping device for access to "good" jobs, those considered high status.
Young women looking for partners are complaining that there are no "good" men, those with (among other attributes) high-paying jobs that can support them while they take time off for motherhood, and that men in general lack motivation. This (they say) largely explains why young people are not getting married[1] and therefore not having children.[2]
If Davis is right, male college enrolment collapses, then this will be seen as making a bad situation worse.
2. The female dilemma: women want equal pay with men, but each woman wants a man who earns more than she does.
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Edit: downvoted? parent says he would like to see a debate, and I make remarks in hope of having that debate, but someone prefers to just downvote rather than marshal their thoughts and contribute. That's disappointing.
> Edit: downvoted? parent says he would like to see a debate, and I make remarks in hope of having that debate, but someone prefers to just downvote rather than marshal their thoughts and contribute. That's disappointing.
It's sad that you got a downvote (I didn't do it) but there is a definite bias in these forums towards even sound arguments if they cause too much cognitive dissonance...
I upvoted, I'm just one person though, and I have no doubt the malign people or more likely bots, will do the same to this response as well.
Personally, I would be in favor of a public listing of who downvoted what with an ability to flag accounts that do so abusively, in a way that prevents them from voting for a time in a non-transparent way. They need to have cost imposed on their actions.
I find an aberrant amount of downvotes in specific subjects like this one, where instead of seeking actual discussion, calls for discussion are used as a prop to induce response so they can then use the karma system structure as torture through Maoist forms. The majority displayed sentiment that isn't downvoted conveniently seems to follows socialist/leftist/communist sentiment (and I'm sure the silent majority of rational people out there would never follow destructive delusions like that).
Lower your karma to make what you say disappear to distort the sentiment, once invisible, have bots respond caustically, they squelch you to by extension isolate (a required component). Make you fear posting anything that is not deemed the collective narrative since downvotes and negative karma ban your account at a point.
Its all quite surreal, and at the same time vile, since it actively promotes the delusional overriding reasoning and critical thinking. Very destructive towards society as a whole since it drives people to go off the rails based on what they see.
There are many problems with the gatekeeping going on. As for your comment about young women, torture induces maladaptive behavior, and the definition of torture today does not require physical duress. Without a doubt the issues women face today are a result of their own psychology working against them that is very gender specific. I could go deep on this (as I've researched quite a bit), but needless to say its fairly obvious that the brittle coercive systems we have to interact with today have burnt bridges, and destroyed the subtle environment needed for us to propagate. There is benefit in national adversaries targeting children of the following generation so they destroy themselves.
Men lack motivation because the world today is not objectively driven. They have been lied to repeatedly throughout their life, and deprived of the tools a real education provides which are needed to discern rational truth and take action. They lack agency, and means and are hopelessly dependent on systems that have been failing to ruin progressively.
Boys are being taught maladaptive behavior through media, Girls too. Behaviors that cause friction, interference, disunity, and failure (learned helplessness); poisoning the generational water hole.
There are also malign entities engaging in making these things worse, to make their business model work, while dually performing the same methods that the USDA uses to eradicate certain parasites through sterility and eugenics (without informed consent). This is what the two monopolies that own all the brands of dating apps are doing, they don't match people up based on long-term compatibility; its often the opposite. A forever customer is a customer whose biological clock was run out through false perception.
You need to be able to economically support children. You need to be married to have children. You need to be compatible and pair bond to get married. Anything in this pipeline fails, birthrate drops; for reference a birthrate of 2 is replacement, we are at 1.6 and its dropping significantly.
There are also subtle gender differences in psychology that are being targeted. Men as a demographic trend towards promiscuity in mate selection relative to the amount of options available, women trend the opposite way choosing less partners overall based on the perceived pool of prospective mates. An entire county vs. a Bar, which do you think results in more matches?
The more prospective candidates, the less selections they make. They also don't date down, so everyone chases the 1% they never have a chance at.
They have in effect by becoming degreed, and through other manipulations done on them, eliminated the candidate pools of prospective mates where most will be childless and alone (as happens when the ratio exceeds the other with this as a requirement). Pipelines follow fairly predictable outcomes.
Its sad because its so subtle, and unbelievable as a result of lacking the necessary tools to recognize.
Most women don't even realize its happening in a conscious way. Its just where have all the good men gone, and through deficits in gender psychology; they've mostly all been filtered out, and the prospects worsened on the Men's side.
Its why many end up being involuntarily celibate living alone with their companion animals. Old maids.
Its a silent destruction that naturally accompanies breaches of certain economic truths. Adam Smith wrote about the requirements for producers and consumers (in purchasing power). The first pillar broke in the 1970s, that was wages purchasing power being suppressed so jobs could no longer support a wife, and three children (to risk manage 1 surviving to have children themselves). The second is expected to break between 2025-2030 collapsing the economy to non-market socialism through currency debasement (money printing).
The old as a cohort (those 55+) are and have in a very real way hoarding the resources needed to propagate us forward, and through false belief, and changes they've made towards that first purpose stripping agency (over their lives), ensured the environment for the young is so disadvantaged that there will be a great dying when age finally takes them. This is evident in the political power transition not taking place.
At any one time, 3 generations live side-by-side. Every 20 years political power was transferred, but that didn't happen after the baby boomers took hold of the majority in the 90s with political power, and they still hold the majority (thanks to modern medicine), but are dying in office. Front-of-line blocking any action to course correct driving the ship onto the reef in a storm.
The author should have just come up front and said they're for gender separation to go back to the "Good Ole Days". Instead they hide that in a footnote.
If women don’t need men financially to support them, and young men still want to compete for women, what does college offer them to differentiate in the dating marketplace? The data is robust that a degree is not necessarily a path to high income and wealth, and those are needed (along with status) to compete for a partner.
Like China, there are too many men chasing too few women (except in the case of China, that’s because of nation state demographics policy and in the US it is because of empowered women making different choices than what was historically available).
I read an interesting book called Dateonomics and if it is to be believed (don't have a copy handy, so can't go to its original sources), a sufficient supply of educated men is why many women remain single.
The book also discussed how that impacted college hookup culture, with hookup culture the worst at the most lopsided institutions as the men had a lot of choice.
So if they are motivated by competing for women, it would make sense to go where the women are and be sure to match them in terms of educational attainment. The original article argues the opposite.
> I read an interesting book called Dateonomics and if it is to be believed (don't have a copy handy, so can't go to its original sources), a sufficient supply of educated men is why many women remain single.
I have a copy at hand, and looking through the book, my understanding of the thesis is "Women won't date down." Below is copy paste from the LibGen record, won't link to it here, you can find it easily (md5=CDB645FB7FEC5F4DBD5D97EC7989AE50, ISBN 076118208X, 9780761182085).
> It’s not that he’s just not that into you—it’s that there aren’t enough of him. And the numbers prove it. Using a combination of demographics, statistics, game theory, and number-crunching, Date-onomics tells what every single, college-educated, heterosexual, looking-for-a-partner woman needs to know: The “man deficit” is real. It’s a fascinating, if sobering read, with two critical takeaways: One, it’s not you. Two, knowledge is power, so here’s what to do about it.
> The shortage of college-educated men is not just a big-city phenomenon frustrating women in New York and L.A. Among young college grads, there are four eligible women for every three men nationwide. This unequal ratio explains not only why it’s so hard to find a date, but a host of social issues, from the college hookup culture to the reason Salt Lake City is becoming the breast implant capital of America. Then there’s the math that says that a woman’s good looks can keep men from approaching her—particularly if they feel the odds aren’t in their favor.
> Fortunately, there are also solutions: what college to attend (any with strong sciences or math), where to hang out (in New York, try a fireman’s bar), where to live (Colorado, Seattle, “Man” Jose), and why never to shy away from giving an ultimatum.
Do they know this? To me, that seems like the logical next step, interviewing young men to understand the mental model and potential forward looking paths they believe available in this macro.
> high income and wealth [is] needed (along with status) to compete for a partner.
Only needed if you wish to compete for a high status partner. In my experience, men tend to actually compete against other men, and women compete against women.
Men and women often compete for partners as accessories to enhance their own status: they want a high status partner to show off to their own peer-group.
Also wealth is mostly used as a status measure: status is the game (not wealth per se).
You lament the world we exist in, I am only making observations. Can't change the winds, can only adjust our sails. I am simply a scholar of demographic, social, and economic systems.
(partnered for 20+ years, this is not my problem luckily)
The content of the subject, and the related title don't accurately reflect the answer to the question, while doing the discussion a disservice cloaking it in terms of power dynamics, it neglects the very real reasons why anyone does anything.
Men historically and still today play the role of the protector and bread winner. Its a deep psychological drive that women do not have to the same degree. This is a gender difference.
Colleges today for the majority, are not primarily places of learning.
They are places of torture, the torture of the pipe dream.
They were primarily places of learning at one point in time, but no longer. Corruption has corroded the institutions to the point where they no longer fulfill their primary purpose and instead act as a sieve in irrational varied ways.
There also used to be an economic advantage in those that received degrees, compared to those that don't. Today many who have managed to somehow complete degrees are not rewarded. The promises of benefit for the investment have not paid out.
The sieving actions occur at various levels of academia. For instance, you have the weed-out classes. These have been intentionally structured such that knowing the material is irrelevant to passing the class. It always changes, as the teacher's union representatives issue new guidance fairly regularly, but not for the better.
For example, B.S. Engineering degrees required GE that includes three-sequential course physics, other business related degrees have similar bottlenecks with Economics series. The name of the game in academia is how to create the forever student, and in this regard the related bureacratic corruption, and the parasitic relationship they have with e-learning business has made cost exceed benefit. The bureaucracy hides and by design fails to collect rational metrics that would show the reality (that most fail, and they pay to fail).
Engineering at one point had a notorious modification to exams. You needed to pass a midterm and a final. Each had 3 questions, that were multistep (10-20 steps) for each question, and contained properties that would skew and segment the results towards failure along with an unstated or undisclosed gimmick.
One property was causality, the answer to the third question is dependent on the second, and likewise the 2nd on the 1st. To pass you could only miss the last question on only one of the two exams. The unstated gimmick was in how to handle significant digits to account for error. If you only round on the last question (to prevent error propagation), you fail. If you round at each question, you fail. If you are not part of a group that the professor deems worthy (where they tell you during office hours), then you do not pass. You have been front-of-line blocked, you didn't know the material and failed. Its your fault, or so they would have students unfamiliar with deceit believe. These structures were promoted by representatives of the national teachers union at one point, I know this because I overheard a professor discussing this with another professor in the cafeteria (brazenly).
Male professors tended to favor female students over male students, I wonder why.
When you do deceitful things, whether it is at the individual level, or organizationally, eventually people find out because people talk and compare.
The more recent iterations of this have to do with subtle psychological triggers known in pedagogy to fail people, and they've been automated in e-learning platform design. For example, where for every question you answer, correct questions immediately move on to the next question, but incorrect answers force you to acknowledge your failure in red for each question, even when the question answer pair are invalid, irrational, incorrect, and wrong. There is also a delay inserted for each and its a timed test. The questions you get are different from other students (randomized), and those questions themselves are not recorded. You literally need to use OBS to record the entirety to have a chance at the professor investigating. The professor has no signal that a single problem is wrong (as an entire class would fail the question if it contradicted material and they all had the same question, and randomized questions from a pool are the default). Worse, occurs when the teachers don't investigate (as a result of other constraints, or just bad teaching/fraud).
There was an economics professor that managed to somehow be the only professor teaching these courses in economics in the entire county. 32 sections (different colleges), all using the autograder and lecture consisted of references to Khan Academy and mismatched material from Pearson (looks like fraud to me, no action taken despite complaints made to the Chair, Dean, and Board of Trustees, they are all in it together). The guy set up his office hours to overlap virtually in a Zoom room, and there were consistently hundreds of students in that zoom room, only about 8 getting an answer before the hours ended.
Remediation paths offer the illusion that errors get corrected, but in reality the administrators, department heads, are all teachers. There is no obligation to investigate, and just like any government job where you can't easily be fired, social standing and seniority matters more than production, investigations causes a hostile work environment of their peers. There being no investigation and front-of-line blocking guarantees the system progressively causes more abuses over time.
As for these triggers, they follow the same pattern as if you have a professor constantly berating a student taking a test, the student shuts down mentally becoming more frustrated and confused until they throw their hands up in despair and walk out. The claim is they made the choice to do that, but there was no choice; the reaction is unavoidable given the structure.
These are the things being done in academia. Its not about education, its about inspiring learned helplessness and indoctrination through torture and forcing the volunteer to pay for the privilege of undergoing such things. It meets all the classical requirements of torture systems back in the 1950s.
Outcomes matter, when people cannot graduate or progress, and there are similar roadblocks towards any degree, despite knowing the material; Rational people leave.
The sieve that was present for the men isn't as present for many of the women. That easily explains the asymmetry, but the enrollment data isn't being collected because it would show the extent of the problem.
What they would need to collect for this to be visible is first attempt pass/fail rates for each section separated from repeated attempt pass/fail rates for each class. The college doesn't provide information because the numbers are often 0 for the former in these weed out classes, and very low in the latter (where the professor's require academic dishonesty to progress).
These are just a few tools in corrupt academic officials belts. Others include variations in the actual work required for a passing score, in units to hours of work outside the class. The normal scheduling claims it is 3 hours per unit but that it varies, 12 units is full time (36 hour work weeks), Except, the courses vary sometimes by as much as 5-9 hours per unit dependent on the professor. Calculate a full time schedule and you may be looking at 60-120+ hour work weeks for 16 weeks straight. You know anyone capable of that kind of burn-in without causing detrimental health issues for a shot at higher paying jobs that come with a degree?
They have optimized for failure, with a guaranteed funding source in government regardless. The people involved often don't see themselves doing these things largely because they have blinded themselves in isolation fulfilling what generally falls under a discussion of the banality of evil.
I should mention that not 'all' teachers are this way, there are good ones out there, but they are a very rare exception and with that rarity they rarely get properly appreciated or recognized for their excellence, these individuals are not part of the problem. That said, their existence is not changing the general trend and that trend is an aggregate of blind decisions tied to the reality of the outcomes. It will continue to get worse until it cannot, such are the dynamics
When anyone in a trusted position act and behave deceitfully to others loss, even unknowingly, trust in the institution is lost.
People invest in things that provide tangible economic benefit. Unfortunately, the process of education today creates many maladaptive dynamics for those that do make it through and manage to get a degree with rare exception, and they are finding that the economic benefit advertised hasn't resulted in tangible benefit.
