Females With Degrees Outnumber Males…Good News?

By Professor Doom

     “Theese eeese pure eediocy!”

--a German professor’s response at a faculty meeting regarding accreditation recommendations to put an outreach program to attract female STEM students inside of an outreach program to attract female STEM students. The previous sentence is typed as intended.

     It’s no secret that females are being courted aggressively in higher education, and I’ve listened to many a (female) administrator bloviate about how females are under-represented in higher education, how yet another program is to be established to attract females, as part of the institution’s mission to make education available to all, regardless of gender.

     Despite the stated good intentions regarding gender equality, I suspect administrative motives. 

      I don’t waste time trying to explain to admin that giving bonuses to one gender over another is actually a violation of principles…there are far better reasons to lose one’s job than simply pointing out an everyday-type hypocrisy in higher education.

     Anyway, I imagine the following headline caused an administrator or two to pump her fist in the air in victory:

For the first time in history, a bigger share of American women than men have college degrees

     I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but…are we sure this is a good thing? One might reason that if more females are getting degrees, more females are going to college, and statistics verify intuition here. 

     Now we have a problem. I’ve documented quite well in this blog what higher education is nowadays, and, again, the data makes it pretty clear that most people that go to college to get degrees are victimized by the experience. Most students drop out without getting a degree, after all, so that headline could just as easily read: “A bigger share of American women than men are victims of college.”

“…the percentage of male students on campus has plunged from 100 percent in 1917 (when it was an all-male institution) to an estimated 41 percent for the graduating class of 2015...”

      What happened to make the most common victim of our current higher education system a female, as opposed to male?

      As is often the case, I can’t help but compare the Poo Bahs that run higher education to tobacco company executives, and, again, the comparison seems valid, as I’ll explain. 

     First, a bit of history. In the 19^th century, most smokers were male. At this point in time, most people that died of lung cancer also were male—other than noting miners seemed to get it more often, there wasn’t much of a connection to smoking until much later (but cigarettes of this era were far less processed than the cigarettes of today, which are deliberately crafted to become more addictive). Females were, socially, discouraged from smoking in this era, and even as late as 1908 a female was arrested in New York for smoking in public.

     As the years progressed, lung cancer became “equal opportunity” and now females get lung cancer at rates very comparable to males. I bet the gentle reader can guess what else increased to parity with males, but allow me to be clear: female smokers.

      What happened to increase female smokers? Well, smoking is a business, and it’s just good business to seek new markets. So, a century or so ago, big tobacco hired marketing experts to make smoking attractive to females.

However, it is questionable whether smoking would have become as popular among women as it did if tobacco companies had not seized on this opportunity in the 1920s and 1930s to exploit ideas of liberation, power, and other important values for women…

     Yes, tobacco executives also promoted cigarette smoking to females as a way to increase their sexual attractiveness (hard to believe, in retrospect), but note the targeting of “liberation, power and other important values for women.”

     I’ve often compared our Poo Bahs in higher education to tobacco executives, although in the past those comparisons are mostly how both seem to target the young and vulnerable, and take advantage of the innocence of our young to trap them into lifetimes of cigarette addiction or student loan debt.

      Allow me to make that comparison even stronger, by noting that, much as tobacco executives ruthlessly exploited women’s desires to trap them into cigarette addiction, higher education administrators suckered females into college loan debt, by promoting how “education can increase independence” and such. Could it be that women are getting extra encouragement to go to college?

     It takes little effort to find many, many scholarships that are targeted strictly for women; while I’m sure there are such for men, they sure don’t see to get advertised much.

     Now, this is just basic business, much as a drug dealer gives the first dose for free to “just try it and see if you like it,” higher education gives females scholarships to “get their foot in the door.” One might think that this means females end up with less debt than males, but all the extra scholarships don’t seem to help:

AAUW's findings tell us that women are disproportionately likely to take out loans; among 2007-2008 graduates, 68 percent of women borrowed money for college compared to 63 percent of men.

     So, much like tobacco companies created the “smoking culture” of the US military by giving free cigarettes to soldiers during WW2, creating a bunch of addicts once the war ended, our “leaders” in higher education have suckered females into the student debt trap, indebting them forever despite the scholarships. Once again, the questionable tactics of our tobacco company executives far too aptly compare to our self-appointed elite “leaders” in higher education. 

     There’s a sinister side effect to the gender bias of higher education, however. It’s a trivial matter to look around in higher education and see signs that women are welcome, and men…not so much. Should I even bother to mention how a male might find Women’s Studies type courses a bit intimidating? What of all the anti-male “take back the night” festivities? I digress, but it’s curious nobody speaks of the many macro-aggressions against males on campus.

     So, is it a good thing that women now have more degrees than men? Only if a college degree is really worthwhile, and, bottom line, we’re finally starting to question if education, particularly as education is defined today, is worth today’s extremely high prices. Seeing as higher education is now creating prostitutes to get degrees, and prostitutes after the females get the degrees, I’m pretty hard pressed to believe so.

     Next time around I’ll look some more general answers to the question of whether the people going to college even think it’s worth it.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Study: Students Don’t Like Female Professors

By Professor Doom

     Professors across the country are heavily rated by Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs)…surveys filled out by students on how well they like the teacher.

    Yes, these things are obviously biased towards things that have nothing to do with education, and a professor who wants good evaluations merely needs to be an easy grader. Administration has long since abandoned their job (if they ever held it) of working to make our institutions of higher education better, and so they use SETs as a beating-stick on faculty. It doesn’t matter if you have 20 students saying how great you are, if one student is upset because he failed…then it’s off to the Dean’s office to explain yourself. Seeing as the only students that get upset are failing students, faculty quickly learn to grade generously.

I once sat through a sort of norming session in which an associate dean handed out copies of student evaluation summaries (numbers, no comments), anonymously attributed to a "standout" faculty member. This was to be a model of what is expected at the university. When I raised my hand to ask whether the "average expected grade" should also be an A-, as reported on the summary, she laughed awkwardly and noted that it's just a guideline.

--I too have sat through meetings where praise was heaped on faculty that obviously were doing nothing for the students beyond awarding grades. Admin loves these kinds of faculty—all happy customers, at least until they find out GPA is worthless now.

      Heck, everyone in higher education has seen this…it’s why the average grade on campus is A- now…it’s the only way to keep those SETs high. I’ve already cited many studies about how SETs are of minimal worth, despite the fact that admin often makes them central to keeping one’s job—they’re worthless for determining quality education, but quite valuable for helping admin beat on faculty to keep the students happy.

      A recent study had a surprising (if statistically weak) result: students rate female professors poorly. Yes, I know, statistical studies have serious issues nowadays--honest, statistics done properly can say some useful things, but the sad fact is statistics done improperly can yield some nice paychecks, so the latter is how it’s done in today’s incredibly corrupt world. Despite all that, some aspects of the study lead me to believe they’re on to something:

…students in an online course on technology and society gave better evaluations to the teaching assistants they thought were male, even when the two instructors -- one male and one female -- had switched their identities. They both used both identities, which made it possible to compare what happened when each was apparently female…

     As always, I find myself laughing at the hypocrisy here. In the deeply failed “Student as Customer” paradigm that rules our campuses, every aspect of integrity and standards has been destroyed, just to keep those customers happy. Someone whispers “Students want rock climbing walls” and across the country, rock climbing walls go up. Someone suggests “Students want higher grades” and across the country, grades go up. A survey shows “Students want fake courses” and…well, you get the idea.

     So, here’s the study that says “Students want male professors” and what is the result?

“…onus should be on universities that rely on SET for employment decisions to provide convincing affirmative evidence that such reliance does not have disparate impact on women, underrepresented minorities, or other protected groups,…”

--emphasis added

     That’s right, you can still use SETs to bash in the heads of white male professors, but you shouldn’t do that to bash protected genders/minorities because, hey, the SETs are biased. My head hurts just considering this level of cognitive disconnect. I don’t know how people live with themselves, thinking like this.

     Now the study has its detractors, who have some valid issues with the results and significance of the study—and, truth be told, I agree the study is not particularly strong. Considering the incredibly capricious nature of SETs, I’d be amazed if any study showed SETs were good for much besides kindling.

     I really suspect the detractors of the study have an agenda, however:

Given the onslaught of negative articles published recently about SET (e.g., Asher, 2013; Berrett, 2015; Mulhere, 2014; Wieman, 2015; Zimmerman, 2014) we pause to ask why?

      Seriously, “why?” Uh, when you see study after study across the planet saying the same thing about the uselessness of the SETs, when faculty everywhere complain (anonymously, of course) about how SETs are being used unfairly…maybe it’s because SETs are useless and are being used unfairly? The detractors seem unwilling to consider this possibility, for some reason. 

     I’ve seen administration warp and hurt our students based on the flimsiest, most ridiculous of unproven theories (Hi Common Core! Hello Bloom’s Taxonomy! Howdy Remediation Reform!)…why aren’t they tripping over themselves here to get rid of female professors on campus? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they should based on this study but…the hypocrisy here is typical foul.

     As always, the reader comments brings up issues the media misses:

There may be perfectly rational and fair reason as to why female lecturers receive lower evaluations than their male colleagues. Beginning in the mid-1980s, every Canadian university gave a strong preference to female candidates. More talented men routinely were passed over in favour of women simply on the basis of sex…In the circumstances, it's hardly surprising that women would tend to fare relatively poorly on student evaluations. People not hired on merit often turn out to be relatively untalented. Of course, one of the most pernicious aspects of such policies is dishonesty. Females were hired simply on the basis of sex, but once they were in place, everyone was expected to pretend that all hiring was done on merit. Are we to now blame some students for seeing the truth of the matter?

     I’ve written before of the grotesque gender and racial bias going on in higher education today, and it’s hardly restricted to the United States. With administration in control of hiring, education and academics have long since been tossed in favor of identity politics. Could this be a factor in why students seem to rate male faculty higher? At the risk of sounding boastful, only the better white males can survive in this increasingly hostile environment, Maybe I’m wrong about that, but because these demented and insulting policies exist on our campuses, it degrades the people being hired based on their gender and skin color…and doesn’t do the students any favors.

blaher •

 

Here's a revolutionary idea, maybe the female instructors in the study actually WERE less effective than the male instructors like the evaluations say.

     You better believe the above poster used a pseudonym for that. I don’t agree, mind you, but this is what higher education is today: hypocrisy and fear.

     And that, ultimately, is the takeaway from yet another study on how useless student evaluations of teaching are.

www.professorconfess.blogspotcom

More Bad News For Female Teachers

By Professor Doom

     I post in forums, and it’s so weird when politicized topics come up. For example, I mentioned how Google modifies its search engine to steer searches away from information detrimental to Hillary Clinton (this was during the last election, although what Amazon is doing with Hillary’s book today is no different). I’m called a conspiracy theorist and a  liar, so I provide a link, detailing how you can just type searches into Google and get results completely different (and more favorable to Hillary) than if you use any other search engine.

       My link is attacked, and I’m called more names for using such a terrible source.

      I argue that the name calling is irrelevant, and attacking the source is irrelevant, because you can just type into Google and see it with your own eyes. I  could gamely provide half a dozen other sources, with other examples of Google’s (coincidental, I’m sure) gentle treatment of Hillary-related searches, but I've seen what happens when you do that:

       I'd be dismissed entirely, because I must be insane to obsess so much over this “weird conspiracy theory.” Further attempts to get readers to simply use Google and verify the claims would be pointless, since I’m obviously a nut.

     I’ve seen it time and again, and not just with me: if one source is provided, attack and dismiss the source. If multiple sources are provided, attack and dismiss the provider of the source.

     At least on my own blog I can advance unpopular theories without such issues.

     Some time back I mentioned an interesting study: students don’t like female professors. The study was attacked, of course, and nobody should base much decision-making on a lone statistical analysis. That said, it’s weird how the study was assumed to be all about bias, and the things the study actually said were ignored.

     Let’s talk about some more studies:

Female teachers are 'bossy'. Male teachers are 'awesome'

An interactive tool reviewing date from RateMyProfessors.com exposes gender biases in how students describe their teachers

     And now we have more evidence that male teachers, at the college level, are favored by students. Now, again, the claim of bias could be advanced but…every other decision at the college level, no matter how vile or detrimental to education, is made with the intent to make students happy. Who cares if there’s bias, if it makes students happy? There’s hypocrisy here.

      Why have I never seen a push for more male faculty? Time and again I’ve seen sexist hiring policies favoring females, but never the other way around. I grant that our culture really, really, trashes males. Every day I see or hear at least one representation of “males are stupid and goofy, females are wiser by far.” Even Harry Potter has this effect, with Ron being reduced to useless comic relief, while Hermione was transformed (from the books) into a flawless goddess of supreme ability. You can’t even have female Minions because our society won’t allow it, apparently---Minions are too stupid to be female.

      Now, if I went to my Dean and told her female-preferential hiring practices are (in addition to being of questionable legality) making the students unhappy, she’d blow me off. I could show her the above study, but she’d just tell me the study was weak and of no value, probably without even reading it.

      I wouldn’t press the point. Education isn’t about making students happy, it’s about pushing them to become better. So, it shouldn’t matter what gender the teacher is, what matters is teacher effectiveness. How does the gender of the teacher affect that?

A key reason boys lag behind in the classroom is revealed for the first time - female teachers.

Research shows that boys lower their sights if they think their work is going to be marked by a woman because they believe their results will be worse.

     Now we have a study saying males don’t work as hard when their teachers are female. While the study is pre-college, it’s reasonable to conjecture that it would hold for older males as well.

     Again, we can claim sexism here—the boys don’t work as hard because they don’t think they’re getting a fair shake. But it’s just sexism, right?

It also shows their suspicions are correct - female teachers did, on average, award lower marks to boys than unidentified external examiners

     Once again we have a problem here, as the evidence shows we’re better off with male teachers. That wouldn’t be fair to the females, right?

It also revealed that girls tried harder if they had a male teacher because they believed they would get better marks.

      So…both males and females will work harder with a male teacher. I should point out that, in our elementary and high schools, most teachers are female, by a wide margin. Where are all the programs luring males into getting teaching degrees? I mean, we have evidence that male teachers are better at motivating students to study, shouldn’t that count for something?

     Now, I’m mostly talking about public school here, where it’s very clear that there’s a gender bias in grading—male teachers give boys better grades, while female teachers give girls better grades. I’d like to think there’s no such bias at the college level—I know when I grade a test, the name is the last thing I look at, and I’m too lazy to change a grade after I see the name.

Eliminating the factor of “non-cognitive skills…almost eliminates the estimated gender gap in reading grades,” Cornwell found. He said he found it “surprising” that although boys out-perform girls on math and science test scores, girls out-perform boys on teacher-assigned grades.

      In any event, boys don’t do as well as girls in school, that’s been the conventional wisdom for decades. For centuries, boys were top of the class. These days, girls are scoring higher grades. What changed? Shamefully, it lines up with when females started to be the primary gender of teacher by a wide margin, when school started to be more and more about touchy-feely topics. In fact, when you subtract the gender bias, children of both genders are far closer to being about the same in terms of grades.

The problem of boys’ underachievement in primary and secondary school follows them into their later lives. Research from 2006 has tracked the decline in male academic performance over the same period as the rise of feminist-dominated ideologies in academia and policymaking.

      Males are trapped in our public school system, but once they get to college, they’re walking away by a wide margin compared to females, because it’s more of the same hostile environment for them. I’ve seen education debased and debased and debased again in the name of “retention,” and it’s clear encouraging more male teachers, even at the college level, would help, but in the face of this evidence there are no changes.

      Next big meeting on campus, I’m sure to see yet another program to hire more female faculty, can't recall a time when it didn't happen.

     Sure, I can go to the Dean and show her study after study I’ve linked above, showing that sexist hiring policies, in addition to being legally questionable, are hurting our students…but she’d just label me an obsessive nut and get me fired.

     I really don’t like that higher education is this way, but at least I can still post anonymously about the existence of problems.

     For now.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

     

Study: Students Leave Hard Majors. No Kidding!

By Professor Doom

     I’ve seen it far more times than I can count: a kid walks onto campus, picks a tough STEM major like Engineering, then, after seeing he can’t cut it there, switches over to something less challenging (but still hard) like Chemistry or Pre-Med. Then after flunking those classes, changes major again and again, until finally getting a degree in Theatre or African Studies or Gender Studies or well, something not exactly associated with high difficulty…or pay.

     I suppose this sort of thing has always happened, but I worry that today’s “take a huge loan for a college degree” system of education is creating far more victims of higher education than there used to be. Toss in those endless “if you’re female, we’ll give you extra to go into STEM because males and females are the same” programs and it only adds to the issues here as I’ve seen many females caught in this trap due to those programs.

     Changing your major adds a year, or two, or even three to your degree programs. Even if you don’t fail your classes, your new major probably won’t even accept the old major’s courses except as electives…an extra few years taken to get a degree can easily add up to another $100,000 to the cost of the degree once loans, interest on loans, and lost income are factored in.

      Anyway, I’ve seen students downgrade their degree many times, so I don’t really need a study to tell me what I already know: students who major in African Studies on day 1 of college generally don’t switch over to Engineering nearly as often as the other way around.

       All that said, I want to talk a bit about a study showing the obvious, because it reveals some things less obvious:

Graduates with math degrees fare well on the job market, but a greater share of students leave the major than any other, new federal data show.

      I won’t crow much about my own discipline being the one most likely to chase away students, it’s well known, and I like job security. In several ways, mathematics is actually an easy discipline: you don’t have to write papers, reading assignments are a few pages at most, and you usually don’t even have homework. All you need to do in mathematics is understand…if you don’t understand what’s being said in the courses, you change your major. I always felt bad for my friends in other degree programs, spending hours in lab work or writing extensive papers or other unpleasant things, where all I ever had to do was actually follow the conversations my professors would (attempt to) have with me.

     …students who started out in mathematics and the natural sciences are likelier than others to switch fields,

--seriously, who didn’t know this already?

      Around 33% of all students change their major at least once. It’s more like 52% for those who start in math. What’s funny about this study is the author is puzzled at the bleeding obvious:

What does it mean that math majors are likelier to leave their major than students in other fields? Given the marketplace demand for math majors (and students in other STEM fields), is it a problem that STEM majors are abandoning their majors at a greater rate than other students are?

     It really is sad that we as a people are so ignorant of basic economics that there’s a question of how it can be that the most profitable fields are also the ones people are least likely to be able to do. It’s a pretty big reveal that this question is being asked, because it displays the common ignorance so well.

     An educationist in our government is wheeled in to address this “problem:”

Given employers' strong demand for math majors and other students with strong quantitative skills, and by extension the desire among students to pursue such majors, it's essential that educators seek ways to make those fields less off-putting to students -- and not by reducing rigor, Venit said.

--emphasis added

     It’s so laughable that they can be so puzzled by the concept that “rare skills tend to be more valuable” that they think the issue is the subject matter is, and I chuckled when I read it, “off-putting.”

     Yeah, that’s the problem. They’re probably also puzzled why plumbers make so much, and have no idea working with raw sewage is off-putting, too.

     I reckon everyone who has seen a great pianist or incredible singer perform has thought “gee, I could do that, too, except it’s so off-putting.” Where’s the great push to make courses in singing or piano more accessible?

     Professional basketball players make great money…why is there no push to make the game less “off-putting.” You, gentle reader, need to realize this is how utterly lost our government-sponsored Educationists are when it comes to understanding of how the world works, and should keep this in mind before subjecting your children to government-style education.

       For all my amusement at their confusion and ignorance here, something is said that is very relevant:

Colleges and universities also should strive, Venit said, to create desirable "off-ramps" for students who get waylaid from their original academic goal...

     Our higher education system really does need to be more able to have students change their major, there’s simply too much money involved not to provide better options for students who want to change.

     Thing is, this problem has been well known for decades…and still nothing has been done. It’s basically unsolvable, and allow me to explain why:

     Students are paying ridiculous amounts of money to get their degree, and as long as those dollar signs are there, students are going to go for the degrees most likely to pay back the cost of getting a degree…and they’re always going to want to take the shortest path to get that well-paying degree.

     Let’s take that previous paragraph as axiomatic: just assume it’s all true.

     Any “off-ramp” path, will, obviously, be slower than a student taking a direct path—we already have those off-ramps, that’s how students can put two years into one degree, change degree, and not necessarily be two years behind…a student could optimize their off-ramp path, but any such optimization will mean they’re not taking the shortest possible path.

     Bottom line: if you spend three years studying to be an astrophysicist, and then decide you want to herd goats instead, the only way you won’t have wasted 3 years of your life is if some of those courses you took for astrophysics actually have material equally useful for goatherding…and you wouldn’t take those courses because those courses (eg, Gender Studies) are just as useless for astrophysics…you won’t take such courses because you were taking the shortest possible path to your astrophysics degree.

     The only solution here is to destroy one of the axioms, the part about “ridiculous amounts of money.” There really was a time when higher education was cheap, and that time was before the student loan scam. We need to get rid of that, and then we won’t have people spending the rest of their lives in debt slavery for making a very common mistake when they were 18 years old: picking an inappropriate major.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com