Since many people on here seem so fond of bitching about "special treatment" for women and racial minorities I thought I would post these
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Threats to college-diversity programs pose risks for boys
Fri May 23, 7:15 AM ET Add Op/Ed - USA TODAY to My Yahoo!
As the college counselor at Cincinnati Country Day School, a private co-ed high school, Joe Runge has noticed that more boys than girls are accepted to their first-choice colleges.
Adding the numbers over two years, Runge found that 70% of the school's boys were admitted early to favored schools, compared with 55% of girls. The differences aren't explained by boys' grades, activities or performance on admissions tests. Rather, what Runge came across is a new form of affirmative action quietly used by many colleges: admissions preferences awarded to boys to maintain balance at a time when more girls than boys attend college -- and have stronger academic qualifications.
The admissions preferences allow schools to maintain the diversity that enriches campuses where 56% of all students at four-year colleges are female. By using less-rigorous academic standards for male applicants, colleges keep freshman classes from swinging too far out of balance. They also provide needed recognition that grades and test scores provide an incomplete picture of what boys can contribute to a school.
In fact, colleges routinely manipulate their admissions criteria to attract the students they believe will create the best mix. That's why talented athletes often have lower average grades and test scores than their classmates, and why children of alumni and generous donors get favored treatment.
But affirmative action programs for boys raise legal questions. The preference programs that some colleges use to expand the number of minority students they admit are under review by the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites). Some lawyers say that if the high court bans the practices that colleges use to foster racial diversity, they will use the decision to challenge the legality of admissions preferences for gender balance. That would have important implications for colleges quietly committed to ensuring that males don't become increasingly scarce on college campuses.
Better odds for boys According to USA TODAY research and interviews with both admissions directors and college consultants, private, four-year colleges routinely accept boys over girls who have better applications. The data colleges provide for surveys and guidebooks show male applicants' chances of being accepted are often three to 10 percentage points higher than girls'. At Pomona College in California, for example, 35% of male applicants are accepted, compared with 24% of female applicants, according to U.S. News & World Report data for the class of 2005. At Brown University in Rhode Island, 18% of male applicants get in vs. 15% of females.
Even some public colleges treat boys' applications differently. At Virginia's prestigious College of William & Mary, 42% of male applicants were accepted last year, compared with 32% of female applicants. Karen Cottrell, associate provost for enrollment, says boys' applications don't receive preferential treatment. Girls typically have better high school transcripts, which count most heavily in admissions decisions. But she says male applicants' average SAT scores are higher: 1,347, compared with 1,323 for women.
Most college admissions officers refuse to discuss the special preferences boys' applications receive. An exception is Robert Massa, director of admissions at Pennsylvania's Dickinson College. Massa readily admits tilting the admissions scale toward boys. At Dickinson, the male-female ratio is 45-55. Without preferences for male applicants, the percentage of men would drop as low as 38%, he says.
Another institution that concedes it isn't gender-blind is Hobart and William Smith in Geneva, N.Y. Though it looks like a traditional co-ed college, Hobart-Smith is two colleges: Hobart, which accepts men, and William Smith, which accepts women. Combined, their male-female ratio is nearly 50-50. On average, though, men at Hobart ranked in the top quarter of their high school classes; women at William Smith ranked in the top fifth.
Admissions officers cite good reasons for stretching their standards to find more boys. At many colleges, gender-blind admissions would result in such a heavy concentration of female students that the character of the campuses would be fundamentally altered. ''Diversity in any form -- racial, geographic, economic and, yes, gender -- contributes to the learning environment because it encourages different perspectives and forces confrontation, which enhances learning,'' Dickinson's Massa said.
Useful tool faces challenges If that argument sounds familiar, it should. Several universities use it to defend the practice of awarding minority students admissions priority. This summer, the Supreme Court is expected to decide the constitutionality of racial preferences used at the University of Michigan. The university contends its affirmative action programs are both legal and valuable tools for fostering campus diversity. But opponents, including the Bush administration, argue that the plans amount to a quota system that illegally discriminates against whites.
Both sides expect the high court's decision will clarify the role that diversity can play in decisions made by colleges and broader society. But it could complicate colleges' efforts to attract more boys.
When courts strike down minority-preference programs, they deny colleges an effective way to ensure that their students reflect the diversity of the taxpayers who fund the schools. They also send the troubling message that only objective measures, such as grades and standardized test scores, are legally acceptable admissions criteria.
Strict admissions formulas present problems for many minority applicants -- and boys. African-Americans typically score lower on standardized college admissions tests than their white counterparts, regardless of income. Increasingly, even the most academically talented boys never catch up to girls in high school grade point averages. College admissions officers say the problem begins when they enter high school, a time when many boys struggle.
If colleges lose the flexibility to consider those factors, they would face an awkward dilemma. They would be free to continue adjusting their admissions standards to accept star athletes, gifted musicians and children of alumni or generous donors. But they would lose the latitude to make admissions decisions that guarantee a rich mixture of students that improves the education process, enhances campus life and better prepares students for today's diverse society.
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Mark Clayton of the Christian Science Monitor Receives
Award for Excellence in Coverage of Higher Education
Washington, D.C. — Mark Clayton, staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor, is this year’s recipient of the Iris Molotsky Award for Excellence in Coverage of Higher Education, given annually by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The winning entry is a two-part series, "The Gender Equation," (
http://csmweb2.emcweb.com/durable/20...11s1-csm.shtml) which appeared in the May 22 and May 29, 2001 issues of the newspaper. The series explores the "affirmative action" practices that some colleges and universities use to increase the number of men in their student populations. The judging committee commended Mark Clayton for his broad investigation of the topic and his probing analysis of the questions he encountered.
"Tipping college admission scales in favor of men to maintain gender balance on campus isn’t yet widely recognized," says Mark Clayton. "But if fewer men apply to college in coming years, more women will ask why Johnny was admitted when his grades and test scores were lower. It wouldn’t surprise me if one day we see the use of gender as a tip factor in admissions debated in court just as race in admissions is being debated today."
During five months of research, the staff of the Christian Science Monitor completed an analysis of three years of admissions data from 1,006 coeducational four-year colleges and universities. Many colleges and universities around the country seemed to be admitting men at consistently higher rates than women. These numerical findings needed an explanation, according to Clayton. He interviewed administrative staff, faculty, and students to learn whether policy or other factors were driving male admissions rates higher.
Clayton learned two things. He discovered that a substantial minority of institutions admitted men year after year at higher rates than women. Many of those schools also had a relatively low percentage of men enrolled in their student bodies- and fewer men than women applying for admission. Clayton also further documented the "gender gap" on campus. The Monitor analysis found that three-quarters of all the schools reported that fewer than half of their first-year class were men. Nearly one-third of all schools reported that fewer than 40 percent of their total undergraduate population were men.
He also learned that at least some of these schools have changed their application evaluation processes to increase the number of male students admitted. Some admissions officers are relying less on academics and more on measures on which men typically excel, including SAT scores and "leadership skills." One school adds a score of .25 to each male applicant’s "student index."
Others simply try to attract more male applicants through marketing. Promotional materials have been redesigned in more "masculine" colors such as burgundy and forest green, and they are now more likely to feature pictures of "energetic young men." Some institutions are giving heavier emphasis to math, science and computer programs and highlighting athletic opportunities. Some college recruiters are more aggressively pursuing interviews with male applicants.
Why is there a gender gap? Clayton’s interviews produced a lot of guesses, but not authoritative answers. Some respondents theorized that young men are attracted to jobs in technology industries that do not require a college degree. Others suggested that a lack of male role models in grade and high school, a K-12 environment that favors girls, or an anti-intellectual culture among boys might be responsible for a small male applicant pool.
Is it wrong to try to balance the genders in a college or university? Many admissions officers believe that gender balance is critical to academic quality, class dynamics, and social life for the students. In the more selective schools, where fewer than 50 percent of the applicants are accepted, some admissions officers believe that the applicant pool is sufficiently large to yield a balanced student body without offering "special" consideration to male applicants. In those schools that do adjust the application evaluation process, admissions officers say that they are identifying potentially successful students without strict adherence to some of the traditional measures. Other interviewees told Clayton that they were concerned that special consideration for male applicants might lower the academic quality of the entering class of students.
Mark Clayton wrote a substantial report on a tough question. The question was new and fresh, and his approach to the material was direct and thorough. Clayton has been with the Christian Science Monitor since 1984, and has been its higher education reporter for the last five years. In that short tenure on the higher education beat, Clayton has written on such disparate subjects as the influence of corporate cash in university research, fraternities’ attempts to curb their own alcohol abuse, the creation of a new engineering college, and conflicts of interest in the federal funding of "new math" programs. . He was a co-winner of an award from the Education Writers’ Association for the latter series.
The Iris Molotsky Award for Excellence in Coverage of Higher Education is given to a reporter for outstanding coverage of higher education exhibiting analytical and investigative reporting and is named for Iris Molotsky who retired last year after nineteen years of service as the AAUP’s Director of Public Information. For more information, please contact Robin Burns at (202) 737-5900, ext. 3013.
The American Association of University Professors is a nonprofit charitable and educational organization that promotes academic freedom by supporting tenure, academic due process, and standards of quality in higher education. The AAUP has more than 45,000 members at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
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