The Bricks know that I regularly pray for young men who will follow Christ with all their heart, soul, and strength. I stress this enough that some might wonder if there is a gender bias in my prayers. But, I’ve sensed what Al Mohler explains here. And, this is part of the reason why I pray for young men in particular.
A visit to your local college or university campus is likely to reveal that a revolution has taken place. On many campuses, young women now outnumber young men, and a gender gap of momentous importance is staring us in the face.
This gender gap has been growing for some time now, as successive generations of young women have entered the world of higher education. Yet, no one seemed to see a gap of this magnitude coming — until it had already happened.
The disparity of enrollment by gender varies by institution, but it is now estimated that almost 60% of all undergraduate students enrolled in American colleges and universities are women. This represents something altogether new in human experience since the rise of the university model as the dominant learning environment for young adults. For the first time, a generation of young women will be markedly more educated than their male generational cohort.
Read more here.
My resident college instructor tells me that during the last 20 years as he taught callege classes at a small liberal arts college and 2 years that he has taught a class for college credit at a local high school his most outstanding students year after year have tended to me women. There are of course exceptions, but he has wondered about this year after year.
I guess I’m missing the connection between college = leadership and college = church. I appreciate Mohler’s concern about biblical manhood, but does he really believe the only way to achieve that is through an undergraduate degree? That seems like a very elitist point of view.
The seeds for Godly men need to be planted at home and among the body of Believers long before our young men are heading off to college.
Jeff, I hope Mohler doesn’t intend to communicate that only men with college degrees can lead. I certainly wouldn’t agree with that.
But, I think it is a legitimate observation that if there are far fewer men in college it may indicate something of an unbalance between the two. That’s what I heard him saying.
As a college instructor, I can say that the statistics in terms of enrollment are very accurate. However, I think Mohler’s argument, while not wrong, is very incomplete. His article is referencing a NYT feature story suggesting that significant female majorities on some campuses cause social problems because women are subjugated to unfair patriarchal relationship standards. Since these standards are often based on sexual power, this is a trend that Christians should be very aware of.
What Mohler forgets to mention are several other reasons for this apparent discrepancy; there are some very good reasons why men are not attending college. For example, several employment opportunities are still not open to women leaving males many more opportunities outside of the traditional-college tract. Additionally, Mohler does not control for a difference in collegiate training and other types of training, with many technical programs still being almost exclusively male. Also, the upper echelons of education including doctoral programs and educational leaders are still overwhelmingly male.
However, while Higher Ed is often used as a measuring stick for how well we are educating our youth at lower levels, it’s not the only one. As Mohler suggests, males are falling behind females in almost every measurable category. There are many theories explaining causation. One theory is that in the 80’s we spent so much time correcting our longstanding unfairness to girls in education, that we forgot about our little boys. Some even argue that such a result is caused by misdirected second wave feminism; that we somehow created a culture of girls vs. boys instead of girls AND boys. Both need very specific types of attention and at the risk of sounding too third-wave, I think we have only scratched the surface of what are true sex-based differences and what are incorrectly assumed gender roles. There is also a very valid postmodernist view that our media-based society has forever altered some of the normal socialization processes, especially with boys. So despite his weak warrant and insufficient data, Mohler’s claim is correct: we should be concerned about our young males.
At the end of the day, I’m not sure education is the right word; knowledge might be. Our focus should be to guide our young men’s acquisition of knowledge from a Christian perspective. We also need to be aware of a growing knowledge gap, and whether our young men receive training in the academy or not, remember that China has more honor students than we have students. As similar trends continue across the globe, ignoring our problems will only allow them to continue.
Thanks Eric. Lots to think about.