The pandemic is speeding up the mass exodus of men from college
hechingerreport.org
hechingerreport.org
That part of it is sad. Lots of guys haven't really had a shot at finding out what they're capable until life shows them otherwise. My bro-in-law was like that. Graduated from a crappy, unchallenging high-school in the sticks.
He was about 30, and a highly-skilled mechanic with several kids, when he decided to give it a shot. Spent about a half-year at a community college doing remedial math and writing, then applied at a University. Four years later he was handed a degree in chemistry, with honors. As he would say, "Not too shabby."
The post article brings up the point of financial expectations, but I wonder what other factors could might be changing for young men. Alternatively, what factors ARE changing for women, and are not changing for men, specifically minority men.
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2011/...
Understanding what social classes and colleges are most impacted might help determine the root cause, but wouldn't negate the totals.
https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/higher-educatio...
Women more or less dominate almost every field, sometimes to an incredible amount. Only engineering is heavily male dominated, with slight male leads in business, philosophy, history, and religion. But they are a majority in everything else otherwise, sometimes even more than men in engineering.
I'd argue that this is the problem. There has been a weird conservatism about education, with "men are from mars and must go to STEM (but we want girls too) and humanities as well as everything else is for venus." The whole "durr hurr basket weaving major" posturing has kind of dissuaded men who aren't into STEM (and there are a LOT of them, the stereotype that all men are STEM or greasemonkey types is one of the most obnoxious ones out there) to probably not go into those fields.
7x is a big multiple. The article offers some explanations but not enough to get me past the “wow” response. The bigger picture is just that the 60/40 split between college educations has flipped to favour women now, and was the opposite a decade ago, but the short term 7x is still crazy
The 60/40 split was the opposite in the 1960s, not a decade ago. This was a time where women were widely regarded to disenfranchised.
The only thing I think is knowning people from the industry and seeing what cool stuff other people do, but otherwise?
I just graduated with engineering degree that I've done on weekends while working full time as SE and I'd never want to go on normal schelude (where I attend college on work days instead of 4days/month) because it'd be straight up waste of the time, but when they'd additionally require me to pay tens of thousands of usd for this, then holy shit.
The difference would be when it would be top country CS like top1, top2, top3, top(1+some), but below that?
What's the point of paying mad cash for basics of CS? just for the title? just for the diploma?
I don't believe that not obtaining higher edu is a good choice, but there's so many things that sounds poor about it.
Anecdotally, the biggest benefit of a degree for me was just meeting others with similar goals. The meta knowledge about how to get a job, what skills I need, credibility when contacting recruiters, etc. along with the positive peer pressure from being around more successful students. These things are were all “unknown unknowns” before I started. My hometown has no tech industry.
Teaches to write properly. You can't graduate from a BA in history without writing non-trivial papers and having some ability of conveying critical thinking.
> Anecdotally, the biggest benefit of a degree for me was just meeting others with similar goals. The meta knowledge about how to get a job, what skills I need, credibility when contacting recruiters, etc. along with the positive peer pressure from being around more successful students. These things are were all “unknown unknowns” before I started. My hometown has no tech industry.
You nailed it. These are impossible to replicate with online learning.
Then again, as someone who went through a B.S. in engineering, self taught themselves (after reaching out for mentorship of course) my next degree will focus on getting into an in person masters where creating deep networking connections with my cohort is the goal equal to the degree itself. I will say that I am struggling on when and where and how much should I be prepared to spend.
Its expensive, but most of the invaluable things in life are. And its very easy to ignore the large benefits of the connections and certifications if you arent part of the communities that are leveraging those assets to great advantages for themselves and their family.
Education, discipline and connections are the most valuable and risk resistant assets in life.
There is no doubt that many individuals can learn most everything they need on the internet or with a library card, however there is a real advantage to receiving feedback and having an expert to help guide your education. When I was in graduate school I was exposed to areas of study I would have ignored or glossed over. Areas that I thought I knew enough about and understood, but was actually woefully ignorant of.
Mostly Yes. Free education has existed for a very long time through libraries and book shops, and yet the effect to get more women into high paying jobs was significant smaller compared to the mass of men who went into college and universities.
The second major effect of getting diplomas and titles is the perception of investing into that person future. A parent who invest into their child will also push that child into getting a job. Society and culture also put down expectations that a person who studied and heavily invested into a title will also end up with such job rather than settle for less.
The lectures isn't a differentiator. It's the community of like-minded folks, informal discussions, projects, hackathons.
Until the people getting hired think that way, employers won't think that way.
Graduating from college is a clear indicator that someone was able to at least commit and follow through with something and should have at minimal basic knowledge in a given area.
Freakonomics referred to the Sheepskin effect: 80% of the benefits of getting a degree come from the last semester. Someone with 90% of a degree is worth only 20% more of the gain someone with that last 10% is.
I don't think so, seriously, unless it was top3 school in country then I think there can be very huge gap between grads.
> widely respected alternative
If someone ever creates one, it will take off. Meanwhile pretty much all what's on the market right now is snake oil
At the socioeconomic high end that could involve intermediation by sperm banks; it could even be a standard part of your corporate benefits package. More commodification. Women select donors on the basis of style-setting op-ed pieces. "Autists" somewhere on the Internet figure out how to get rich by shorting futures contracts for celebrity semen.
It is also worth remarking that a surprising percentage of women now have never had a sexual experience, even at a surprisingly late age. You could call it a kind of accidental capitalist monasticism, with "startup accelerator" as nunnery (all wrapped in the language of empowerment of course, same as in Xinjiang). With effective branding, commercial sperm could give them the option, as they start to get older, to produce children without having to (belatedly learn how to) form relationships.
This would then also create a market for child care apps, and for nannies to work in the colorful facilities.
The sad part of this comment is that it seems almost inevitable given how much our society has driven the commodification of human relationships. Most of my friends always "hedged" their relationships, that is, having multiple partners waiting in the wings in case their old relationship falls off, or in case something "better" comes along. In this case better is a purely emotionally detached lists of pros and cons, an exchange of what can be gained. I can see women in their early 30s downloading an app and then clicking through a form of what their ideal sperm phenotypes will be. Blue eyes, over 6 feet, college educated etc. Then it gives you a catalogue of men with professional headshots and brief product descriptions listing all their greatest traits for you to select from.
The BBC article [2] is unfortunately just anecdotal.
At [3] they cite the CDC, saying
> between 12-14 percent of adults aged 20-24 have never had sex. This number drops to around five percent for adults aged 25-29, and by age 44, only around 0.3 percent of adults report never having had the type of sex that could end in somebody getting pregnant.
which are much lower numbers than I remember from another survey.
What I remember is that, although on the one hand there is still a bulk trend of decreasing age of sexual debut, on the other hand these average/median statistics hide a large cohort of more-educated women who have never had a sexual partner. But my impression may not be supported by national data, and may involve social selection effects.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-44143003
[3] https://health.howstuffworks.com/relationships/love/how-many...
[4] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Critical thinking time. Is there an established link between female self-esteem and polygamy? Let's suppose there is, does polygamy actually hurt communities? Where's the evidence for that? If women are more well-off, is it a zero-sum game that makes men less well-off? If it is zero-sum, are economically insecure young men any more likely to cause civil unrest than economically insecure young women?
Of course the "reason" is usually something else. Nobody writes 100x"InCel" on a manifesto.
Religious morals, if stripped of the whole superstitious nonsense, leaves behind the "everybody gets a chance" pacifier. For all other forms of society its boils down too some feudal harem dropping a few outdated flowers and one is desperate enough to pick from the outdated left-over men-heap.
This always was and has been a solid basis for civil war, for if all you got is your life,and there is no perspective for it to ever be good, why not put it as bargaining chip into the ultimate equalizing game - which civil war is.
Sorry to say it, but all those nice little social games like ménage à trois are entertainment for those who never came near these problems. And i doubt that a lot of those advocating for this as solution, ever were poor enough, long enough & lonely enough, to not become "clingy and desperate", aka jealousy. While we are at it - may i also point out, that the usual - all female secretary pool at headquarters- suspiciously looks like economic opportunity harems and thus a lot of commentary by company owners will be very tone-deaf by nature.
This simply isn't the case. The vast majority of women genuinely like men. Not as penises to be notched, but as human beings. Many of them want a long-term partner because it makes them feel good. It's nice to have a person they can rely on and develop a life with. It's hard enough to find one person for that, and many are content with finding that one person. For most women that's going to mean finding one man.
And that gets even harder when faced with the sheer number of men who seem to think the way you do, seeing women as commodities on a "super efficient market" to meet their "sexual needs" -- and threatening "antisocial activity" when they're not met. If you ever wonder why women refuse to date you, you can cross off everything you think is at the top of your list -- money, attractiveness, ambition, whatever. Every reason women refuse to date you is in your post here, and none of the others matters even a tiny fraction as much as you think it does.
Your "sexual frustration" has nothing to do with women. If you need an orgasm, go take care of it yourself. If what you want is a trophy of your economic and sexual prowess, don't use a human being for that. If what you want is a partner in life -- including one who takes an interest in your sexuality -- stop talking about them as if that were a commodity to be purchased or a prize to be won. And certainly not as predators looking to use you, because that's precisely how you are appearing to them.
Women are human beings. Seek out a human connection with them, and you'll discover that that's something that they want, too. That doesn't make it easy to find one who is a good match that stands up to years or decades. But that's not the reason you're alone, brooding about how better men are taking up all the women.
My point is that many men would never be seen as marriage material if it wasn't for utility, and these men are going to be left behind.
I believe that if you talk to actual women, instead of "having fun thinking about stuff", you'll find that you have not characterized how women actually go about seeking partners.
The OP didn't make any claims about their personal feelings about women, you added that connection, accusing them of threatening and casting them as a brooding predator.
The points could have been raised by a happily married woman with grandchildren.
I cited text that, I believe, women would see as red flags. (I'd let women speak for themselves here, but HN is rather a suasage fest, and it shouldn't fall to the few who are here to do all of the work. If they disagree with me we should certainly discuss that.) Regardless of who the OP actually is in real life, that's the way they presented themselves, and I think it's important to HN readers to see how that is interpreted.
I cannot think of any more productive way to show that. I tried to be as polite and specific as I could while saying what I believe a woman would say, if she felt safe enough to do so. (I reiterate, I wouldn't if I thought it likely that a woman would, in this forum. I'm a secondhand substitute.)
Edit: IF there is a problem with how men view women (and vice versa) we need to talk about why that is: the mothers, fathers, and society that raised them to hold those views.
And you're absolutely correct to note that mothers, as well as fathers, are involved, as are wives, girlfriends, female friends, and sisters. The problem is deeply pervasive, and women are just as imbued in this culture as men are.
It's why I wanted to call out the red flags in the post. The OP later said that he's gay, and is approaching this as an abstraction. The abstraction is part of the problem: the model he's swimming in is flawed. The problems with it are so glaring that there's no way to point them out without seeming hostile.
I think there is some truth to both sides. There is a time in the not so distant past where female involvement in the labor pool and earnings was a fraction of what it is now, and men were judged by women and others on their ability to provide for a financially stable family.
Cultural values are evolving, but I personally think this is still on the minds of many, and deeply ingrained in our culture. Female earnings have grown, but the ability to support a family with a single income have diminished. I think that being unemployed or low earning is still an unattractive attribute, but not insurmountable.
Something that the earlier poster failed to cover, that I think could be more significant is the impact of a educational divide on the ability to find common interests and beliefs. The worldview, interests, and exposure to broad ideas that come with education have a profound impact on the ability of individuals to form and maintain relationships.
> Women are human beings. Seek out a human connection with them
We (as "world") have a problem with dating moving completely online. There isn't much human connection to make on Tinder, it is a very artificial and unnatural environment that places enormous value on photos and little else. All the other dimensions of a human being are secondary there.
My experience from the dating world of the late Analog Age (1996-2006) says that things like sense of humor, kindness, quirkiness contribute enormously to total attraction. These qualities are hard to express online.
Tinder's focus on photos is somewhat misleading. A picture is, famously, worth a thousand words. If you treat Tinder as a simple HotOrNot game, you will have problems. But a photo contains a lot of information about a person: what their interests are, what's important to them, even whether they're conscientious enough to seek out a good picture. When you put up a picture of yourself at your hobby, or traveling, or in front of your bookshelf, you say a lot.
My heuristic was this: I examined each photo that caught my eye with a thought about something I could say to them. "Hey, I also visited City X!" "What a great fish tank. What do you raise?" Even "That dress is amazing" is a truthful statement about something that makes me interested in them. If I didn't have anything to say to them based on their photo -- maybe they'd be interesting In Real Life anyway, but at the very least I know that they're not very good at thinking about how they present themselves.
I do wish Tinder had better support for what text it does have. I'm a person of words, and would like to know that they have at least something to say. It's not presented by default and I don't think they push people hard enough to fill something out.
Still... I started several multi-year relationships on Tinder (and Bumble). Humor and kindness are still found there; they start in the chat and quickly move into the real world. (Being a person of words I really liked long involved chats before we met, but apparently a lot of women have experienced being strung along, and there's a push to meet up earlier rather than later. That tends to favor cities, where a lot of people are close by. The worst you lose is the time for a short coffee date.)
There are certainly plenty of difficulties, but I don't think the photo focus is as bad as you'd expect. I found it no more unnatural than other ways of meeting people, which are also often very visual since that's your first impression.
Women don't require men to support them. But many still want life partners -- and for most women, they want those life partners to be men. Many would be thrilled with one who stayed home to care for children. Many would be happy with one who created art, not to support them but because it made for a rich life. Many women, all through history, have made satisfying lives while just scraping by.
Don't think of your dating life as a search for the best woman who will have you at your salary. Search out somebody who is kind, compassionate, funny, or whatever else it is that will make you smile when you come home, or when she comes home to you. You'll need money, and the money you each make is precisely the same shade of green, neither pink nor blue. If you make enough together to get by, you can lead a perfectly happy life.
If some men are unable to adapt to that fact of life, that is surely a problem with those men, not with women. Fixing it starts with not presenting modernity as a conspiracy against them.
When you improve "dating market" efficiency, you're essentially reducing the overall disparity in attractiveness between any given "pair". Believe it or not, even ugly people get together. Sure, there's a lower floor, I suppose some people are simply so hideous as to be unlovable, but money would only have done so much in those cases!
The French Revolution begs to differ.
The French revolution happened in just one country. The entire continent of Europe begs to differ. The vast majority of social reform in Europe has been remarkably peaceful, transforming monarchies into democracies, often overnight. These quiet revolutions improved the stability of their respective societies and were largely driven by an emerging middle class.
The vast majority of social reform in Europe took place after a massive global conflict that left millions dead. World War 1 was a thing....then there was a bunch of violent revolutions that saw dictators put in charge of a bunch of European countries which led to yet another massive conflict that left millions dead.