The New York Times published an article today titled "At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust" in a new series called "The New Gender Divide."

In it, the article reports that not only do women now make up a startling 58% of students enrolled at 2- and 4-year colleges, but they get better grades and graduate earlier on average. Even at top tier private institutions, like Harvard and Brown, a gap is starting to show. 58% to 42% looks bad enough, but when you consider that this means there are nearly 40% more women going to college than men...

I posted this here because I thought it was interesting and wondered what everyone thinks of it, considering their unique perspectives on the differences between men and women. Because really... can we mark down the difference in attitude and motivation to cultural influences and conditioning, or is the cause deeper... hormonal or biological in nature?  If it is, what on earth should be done, if anything?

From my own experiences, I can definitely see the differences in attitudes in front of my nose, just in the people I interact with. When I was in high school, bragging about how you finished a paper in a matter of hours after wasting weeks or passed a test without opening the book were not uncommon. Or even just seeing how readily some people don't focus and blow off work while others concentrate and study diligently... it makes me wonder. Oh sure, there were hard working and procrastinating people on both sides, but even a casual review of the people I know seems to suggest that there is a bit of a gender tilt there.

I do think that as far as intelligence goes, there isn't really a distinct difference. The biggest problem seems to lie in how well people study and work. For that, I would like to say that it's mostly a cultural thing, influenced by social views of masculinity and ideas such as 'boys will be boys'. But... I don't really think that could explain it all.

Edit: Link Fixed

It would be interesting to know what the demographics are such as age distribution, for instance: are the women in their 20's/30's while the men are in their teens/20's? When I was first in college I was first in college most of the people were significantly older than me: women re-entering the work force, men home from Vietnam and taking advantage of the GI Bill.  Other demographics of interest would be income of origin, race, etc. 

Having just graduated from college 2 months ago, I can definitely say, maybe there are more chicks in college than guys, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're more dedicated. I majored in psychology, which was the top program at my college and reputedly the toughest, and I can't count how many times my classmates and I (90% of psyc majors were female) sat and talked about how many papers we'd left until the last minute, or how many parties we'd been to and procrastinated with homework, etc. I think maybe it's more the whole women's rights thing taking off in the 70s... now I would expect mothers would be more likely to pressure their daughters into going to college, due to all the opportunities, but men aren't receiving the same pressure. Just a thought.

Rafe

Quote from: Rafe on July 11, 2006, 11:22:00 AM
Having just graduated from college 2 months ago, I can definitely say, maybe there are more chicks in college than guys, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're more dedicated. I majored in psychology, which was the top program at my college and reputedly the toughest, and I can't count how many times my classmates and I (90% of psyc majors were female) sat and talked about how many papers we'd left until the last minute, or how many parties we'd been to and procrastinated with homework, etc. I think maybe it's more the whole women's rights thing taking off in the 70s... now I would expect mothers would be more likely to pressure their daughters into going to college, due to all the opportunities, but men aren't receiving the same pressure. Just a thought.

Rafe

Rafe,

My experience as a high school teacher is that, in general, the girls are much more agrssive about their grades and succeeding than the boys.  Maybe its that multi-tasking gene women tend to have that lets them participate in sports, musicals, clubs and still make high honor roll.

Chaunte

I am a college professor.  Women have been the  majority of undergraduates now for the past ten years or more.  Some of these are women who are returning to college to complete their education--at my university about 75% of the "non-traditional" students are women.  But even among "traditional" 18-22 year olds the women now outnumber the men.  Some fields, like engineering, are still predominantly male, and others, like nursing or elementary education are predominantly female, but there is much more gender equity in most professional fields, such as law, medicine and business.

Both men and women can be good students or poor students.  Some of my best students have been women and so have some of my worst students.  Men and women often have different learning styles--women tend to be more verbal and can be very good at cooperative learning.  Men tend to be more visual learners and are often more competitive.  Sometimes in mixed gender classes women will defer to men and take a more passive role in class.