02 February 2007

University gender gap

Men are becoming an endangered species on university campuses, education officials warned yesterday. Latest figures show that women made up a remarkable 57 per cent of all first time graduates in 2006. They are outnumbering men in every subject including engineering and mathematics.

The trend has prompted fears that the men are being left behind as education plays to strengths associated with women such as diligence and attentiveness. Girls outscore boys in GCSEs and A-levels. The Higher Education Funding Council for England, which distributes cash to universities, warns that young men may struggle to get on in the workplace. David Eastwood, the quango’s chief executive, says employers increasingly favour graduates. ‘The wider worry is that if we are not careful we are going to arrive at a position where young lads are alienated, they are underskilled,’ he added.

Professor Alan Smithers, an education expert from Buckingham University, said: ‘The performance of girls has outstripped that of boys, first of all in GCSE, but since 2000, at A-level as well. ‘Boys may do better with the big bang terminal examination approach, whereas girls more often have patience and persistence to put in coursework.’ The proportion of men at university declined steadily throughout the 20th century. By the early 1990s, female graduates were outnumbering males for the first time. (Daily Mail, 31 January 2007)
My comments

It is already the case that boys of school leaving age are alienated. They are often what I would call demoralised criminals, which is what the educational system is aiming at producing. The whole object of the modern ideology is to destroy the individual, which means what I call centralised psychology (see my book Advice to Clever Children). Boys and men were more likely to be associated with some kind of centralised psychology -- albeit expressed in the form of very crude ideals -- so they have been particularly under attack in the modern world.

‘Girls more often have patience and persistence to put in coursework’. Girls were supposed to be interested in social interactions and be less achievement orientated, so it is not too surprising that they are better able to tolerate boring and pointless group activities, and boring and pointless work set by hostile (?) teachers.

If people are forced to undergo periods of supervised preparation for any exam they wish to take to obtain a qualification, it is inevitable, even if not deliberately planned, that the system will discriminate against types of people that school and university teachers dislike, such as those with high IQs and/or a lot of drive of their own, rather than an obsessional interest in other people and in using social structures to gain power over them.