Turning girls into geeky boys
Great, now that boys are no longer bothering to go to college, the admissions office at select schools is trying to turn girls into geeky boys. I hope this is just a fad. Kenneth Anderson at the Volokh Conspiracy interviewed someone close to the admissions process at a reasonably select school and here is what they said:
How many girls really fit into this category? And what kinds of boys are "cool" to the admissions office? Since when did being "cool" become a main qualification for getting into college? Is college just the new junior high? If so, yuck, and I hope people bypass it.
Selective schools are not interested these days in girls who like English and history, like to read and are able to write clearly and well. Those skills fill the bell curve for smart girls ... Selective schools have absorbed the folk myths of bobo culture. So cool girls are math smart, genetically destined to be hackers, risk takers, and into competitive sports. Cool girls for selective schools prefer engineering over history, math over English, computer science over political science, and economics over psychology. A touch of Asperger's isn't a bad thing for a girl, either. Actually, it's a great thing. It will be a long time before being able to write well, disconnected from technical skills in math or science, will be a valued skill for its own sake in admissions.
How many girls really fit into this category? And what kinds of boys are "cool" to the admissions office? Since when did being "cool" become a main qualification for getting into college? Is college just the new junior high? If so, yuck, and I hope people bypass it.
posted by Helen at 8:11 AM
46 Comments:
College admissions universities--especially at "elite" universities"--have been granted considerable power over American society.
Who *are* these people? What do they value? Why did they choose this particular specialty rather than a more substantive academic path or a role in the business world? What did their own SAT scores, GREs, etc look like? To what extent are their decisions and methodologies subject to oversight?
There's an interesting book in this for somebody.
I like math, science and computer programming, and am pretty good at competitive sports. I'm glad nobody pigeonholed me into the "girl" category and forced me to major in English and psychology while in college of which I am ill-suited. Let's just let everyone excel where they feel comfortable and leave it at that.
There are already too many girls who take these majors. A great many of them are just going to end up "majoring in MRS" because there are few options for women with English, Psychology, History or Political Science bachelor's degrees. No one is doing any service to those majors by flooding them with a lot of girls who little academic interest in them or who just don't know what else to choose for a major.
I think it's important that, if they have the talent, drive, industriousness and ambition for it, both boys and girls should go into maths and the sciences. Not all of them will become world-class researchers, but they'll pick up a lot of marketable skills and get into potentially interesting jobs. One of the problems with education in the US is that children in general are not getting good science education and being exposed to science in a way that will peak interest and cultivate any potential latent talents.
The problem isn't with geeky girls - there are many in my acquaintance, in science research, and they show the needed intelligence and focus; I'm glad there are geeky girls out there who, if they have the skills for sciences, don't feel the need to stick to English and history (which in higher education has sadly often become a joke, even though there are still some older professors who teach amazing literature and history courses). The problem is with boys being marginalized. I don't understand why it was to be one at the expense of the other!
Why on Earth do these educators and admissions officials have to focus on gender? Either you're a good scientist/mathematician or you're not. End of story. If your talents lie more in humanities, whether you're a boy or a girl, go more towards a humanities-oriented career (but with an eye for useful jobs too).
And everyone can benefit from better writing skills... you'd be amazed how many boys and girls show up at college with only rudimentary writing skills (they write the same way they chat online).
As for the comment above, that should be "pique" rather than "peak" interest.
(Gets off the soapbox about good writing.)
College has become to "feminine" for men; hence the reason they are not going to college. Now we are trying to turn females into male stereotypes....which isn't all bad since we need to become more competitive in math and science.
Since when did being "cool" become a main qualification for getting into college?
I think that "cool" in this context just means "likely to be admitted". I'm as opposed to identity-based college admissions as anybody, but I don't think that the admissions officials are looking for girl who are popular, physically attractive, or anything of that sort.
"Cool" can mean "fashionable," and I expect there are many college admissions officers who want to be sure that they conform their opinions and actions to those of the other "best people."
David -
Good point. I hadn't thought of that, and there's probably a substantial amount of it going around.
College has been a simple extension of high school for quite some time and high school a mere continuation of middle school. I write articles for middle school testing. You would cry over how far I have to dumb them down. For instance: I wrote one on hot air balloons and described that the envelop was inflated and carried the basket. I was asked to add description of what the envelop was and what the function of the basket was.
To repeat: What the function of the basket was.
For thirteen years olds.
Well, this is the logical conclusion of feminism. Since women cannot be men, might as well make them into boys.
In the immortal words of Marsh Brady, "I don't really want to be a Boy Scout. I just wanted to prove that I could."
I don't know how many. I know one.
My daughter. She always liked working with wrenches and doing math.
EKatz
Why encourage kids to study math, engineering and science?
So they can watch their jobs outsourced to India or China?
Teach your kids to be salesmen. Better still, teach them to be Bernie Madoff. It's a pretty good gig until the roof falls in like it already has for anybody who actually produces useful products or services.
What bitter? Certainly not me.
I spent a few days last week talking to a young man whose parents wanted to him to attend college. He was 21 and did not want to go even though his parents wanted to pay for it. I told him if he didn't want to go not to go, don't waste money, time and effort. This young man was more than qualified to do something else of value. I told him he could join the Peace Corp, he wanted to join the Coast Guard which is also a good idea. He can go to college later or not at all. College shouldn't be mandatory and I'm not sure it teaches good job preparation skills they way college courses are taught. I told him that if he did go to college he should use the experience to get laid as much as possible because one will never get that much sex after they graduate. I said that with a completely straight face too, I meant it.
While I was teaching engineering, I had a number of female engineering students. Most of them were well qualified (with one exception that sticks in mind), and did quite well. Most of that group of students have been out in the working world for 15 to 20 years now, and of the women that I have been able to keep up with, almost all have dropped out to be full-time mothers, or they are only working part-time at most.
The lesson that I see in this is that, by nature, the investment in a technical education will not have a full payoff for a woman. Motherhood will most likely intervene, as it should. I am not in favor of denying women entry into technical fields, but neither am I in favor or really encouraging it. The cost to society (yes, we all make an investment in every kid that goes to a public college), is too high for the return on women.
Dr. D:
I have a degree in science and I am not a scientist. I am female. I didn't become a mother but opted out of the science path. There was good reason I didn't stay. First, I saw the writing on the wall regarding promotion. Back in the early 1980s when I started in my career none of my superiors were women and it was clear to me that at the time there was no way I was going to be promoted ever at my company. Second, I didn't care much for the science environment or my coworkers: They were nerdy men and I wanted excitement and people interaction. So I went into sales, science related sales. I did attend graduate engineering school but I disliked the nerdy male environment there too. Those women that dropped out of the engineering track may not have done it because they became mother. Like me, they just might not have felt comfortable in the environment.
Years later the graduate school I attended admitted that their engineering department was inhospitable to women and made some drastic changes after they tabulated the enormous attrition rate of women in their engineering program. A day late and a dollar short for me.
Cham --
Dr.D talked of women he knew and kept up with whom you nothing about, and yet you postulate that he's wrong as to them becoming mothers.
I'm really tired of people with the attitude that the 'environment' must be altered to accommodate them. Perhaps they need to learn to acclimate.
Not catering != inhospitable.
"While I was teaching engineering, I had a number of female engineering students. Most of them were well qualified (with one exception that sticks in mind), and did quite well. Most of that group of students have been out in the working world for 15 to 20 years now, and of the women that I have been able to keep up with, almost all have dropped out to be full-time mothers, or they are only working part-time at most."
I wonder when you were teaching engineering, and where.
From my experience today, those women who do have kids often work out childcare arrangements that allow them to continue working. Sometimes they go part-time for a few years before returning full time. Other times they don't take off more than the first few weeks after childbirth. It could be that things have changed over time; perhaps there are also demographic and cultural differences.
And this doesn't even factor in those women who don't have kids or have not married (a larger number as the years have gone by).
Additionally, I wonder if there are differences in other branches of the sciences or maths?
There are probably statistics on this somewhere.
Asperger's can be a major plus in academia. The deficits associated with it are primarily social.
Interestingly enough, if you can deal with their different social skills and outlook, they make wonderful friends.
Trey
Women mask their weakness with claims of injustice.
Can't cut it in engineering? It's the "nerdy male environment."
Weak.
It is definitely true that it takes a certain personality type to do the job in engineering and science. A lot of people, men and women, who have sufficiently high IQ to do the work, simply don't want to do it because it does not appeal to them. One of the great things about America, at least up till now, has been that we have been free to choose what we would pursue as a career. It is truly lame to blame "the nerdy male environment" if a woman does not want to be an engineer; it is quite sufficient to say she just does not want to be an engineer and prefers to be a xxxx. Surely in going through a technical education a woman would get some pretty good idea of the sort of men that she would likely be working in that area with when she finished.
I have seen a fair number of young men who say, "I can't sit behind a desk all day," and thus choose to leave engineering, often before they ever really get into it. People make all sorts of choices, some for valid reasons, some for totally false reasons.
It will be a long time before being able to write well, disconnected from technical skills in math or science..
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Jessica
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On occasion I get to do business with my old graduate engineering school, the once that I left. When I walk on campus I go by my old department and can see inside the window of the classrooms. I see a sea of Asian boys in the classrooms and a few, what looks like, Indian boys. There are a couple of white boys in there too and no Blacks, maybe one or 2 girls. So not only has my old engineering school made it inhospitable to girls, they've run out most of the Caucasian boys as well. That place has a miserable competitive classroom environment which doesn't promote camaraderie or a group effort. The Asians seem to thrive in that school, but after years of working with engineers professionally I don't see a majority of Asians working in the engineering disciplines, the engineering workplace is still a bastion for white males.
Now, as I said I am a sales engineer, I've been selling for years. I despise having to use any type of engineer in the sales process. They can often be arrogant, unhelpful, they don't return the client/prospect's phone calls and, if you can believe, many of them don't have a handle on enunciating the English language. I'm not just talking about engineers from foreign countries, engineers from the deep south (I work with a group in Mobile, Alabama) will not make the effort to speak proper English in complete sentences. They also hate writing a letter or email. I make every effort to take as many of the technical training classes offered to our engineers so I have become proficient in the technical aspects of the products and services I sell. This way I have limited interaction with the engineers, but don't tell them that though. Most of the seasoned sales engineers that I work with have done the same. The few engineers that are friendly, speak well and return phone calls are in very high demand with the companies that I represent. They are also the ones that get promoted.
There is something wrong with engineering schools.
Intelligence is not a single entity. People with amazing social intelligence do not necessarily have great math abilities. Some theorists prupose 120 factor models for intelligence, so there is a lot of diversity in intelligence.
I bet there is quite a bit of diversity in engineering schools as well. Cham wrote: " So not only has my old engineering school made it inhospitable to girls, they've run out most of the Caucasian boys as well." A lack of girls present is not the same as an inhospitable environment. My last church had a knitting club that knitted stuff for cancer survivors, there was only one man involved. I would check in on them and they would always invite me in and promise that they would teach me the skills to do the work.
They were warm, kind, and inviting, it was a very hospitable environment. I just did not care to learn to knit or sit and do that.
Cultural, biological, and individual differences account for a lot Cham. I am not aware of any credible biological racial differences other than say skin tone or other cosmetic differences, but there is good science concerning brain differences between men and women. In my graduate programs, I loved the competitive aspects of classes and tried to get the highest grade in most of my classes.
I got one B in grad school, in a class where you selected the grade you wanted and then did the required work to earn that grade. What a joke! The teacher told me that I was the first person to select a B in her years of teaching the class, and I was quite proud of that.
A friend of mine left the program because it was not competitive enough. She wanted more research classes. It was not a question of hospitality, but of matching between student needs and the program approach.
To me, the point of an engineering department is to turn out great engineers. Making the program hospitable to women or men or bisexuals or Muslim's is ridiculous and off ask. The engineers I know are far to results oriented to get confused with that type of folderal.
Trey
I hope it will be a long time before a single incomplete sentence with idiosyncratic punctuation is considered 'good writing' in math, science or anywhere else.
Campy, I write as I talk when I post. It is indeed idiosyncratic, but works once you get it.
Trey
Cham, the fact that the engineers don't want to deal with the customers is why you have a job. If the engineers wanted to do that, there would be no place for you (but then who would do the engineering?). Engineers are the way they are because they are engineers (yes, I know that is circular), they like dealing with machines and equipment rather than with people in most cases. For many of them, a good sentence has as the main verb an = sign meaning "is."
As to the changing demographics of our engineering schools, that is due in large part to the offshoring of engineering jobs. Many bring young Americans that would have gone into engineering in a previous generation do not do so now because the jobs are in SE Asia, India, and Latin America and they wish to remain in the US. So too many of them go in to law, and begin to sue everyone or become crooked politicians. These are the profitable careers in today's America for a smart young person.
Engineers are the way they are not because they are engineers but because engineering schools seek out the loners and maladjusted for their programs and then don't make any effort to instill people skills in their students. They teach kids to be highly individualistic and obsessively competitive with each other. This does not make quality employees, nor does it attract quality well-rounded students.
I'm not buying the "they're just engineers and don't know any better" excuse. I've mentored more than a few and have been able to successfully teach them to take the piercing out of their tongue before the meeting, and to wear shoes instead of flip flops. I can teach them to look people in the eye, to have a firm handshake and remember the client's name as well. It's tough, but some young engineers can overcome the hurdles and become the team players that can make them a success in the business world.
DrD..."Cham, the fact that the engineers don't want to deal with the customers is why you have a job"
Disagree. The task of designing a product--say, a machine tool or an industrial robotics system or a locomotive--is quite different from the task of fitting that product to these needs of a particular customer. It doesn't make sense to have the same person do both at the same time, and this would be true even if all your design engineers were friendly, effervescent people with perfect social skills.
Let's talk about those Asians. My old engineer school is private and very expensive. I haven't inquired but I do find it a bit interesting to see so many Asians in the engineering program. The school is about 150 years old and its mission is to educate engineers. At the schools inception nobody thought to add the caveat that the engineers that it educated had to be American.
My gut is telling me these engineering students come from China and India. The kid's families are paying their tuition cash on the barrelhead since the students most likely wouldn't be eligible for financial aid. The out-of-country students would be a profit center for the university because the school doesn't have to fork over any financial hardship scholarships for them. So the school is probably trying to admit as many of them as possible.
"Engineers are the way they are not because they are engineers but because engineering schools seek out the loners and maladjusted for their programs and then don't make any effort to instill people skills in their students."
Do you have any evidence for this conspiracy theory?
Trey
Cham,
"I despise having to use any type of engineer in the sales process"
we get that already, as well as the fact that you didn't care much for your geeky male coworkers or the science environment. I suspect the engineers detect how much you despise them, and respond accordingly.
But to your point about Asian students...the way that works is that students come from all over the world to study here. The reason? The engineering schools are actually doing something right. They are very competitive as a product in competition with schools elsewhere. What happens next Cham is that many of these students go home...to the countries that are building the things we buy. Engineers work where the next generation of electronic/computer based products are being researched and developed. In other words, not in North America.
Also, if you were to visit my work environment you must realize that for every one of us, there are 2 or 3 engineers elsewhere doing the engineering work (India, Poland, elsewhere). The entry level jobs in engineering are no longer here. So the American college men and women are correctly analyzing their job prospects and looking into other fields.
All of this PC gender work in elementary-high school has simply resulted in transferring the degrees from American men (black, Hispanic, or white) to non-American men.
Taylor
Cham --
"I haven't inquired but I do find it a bit interesting to see so many Asians in the engineering program."
Then inquire. You're working short of facts. Engineers don't typically do that, you know.
"... and then don't make any effort to instill people skills in their students."
Their job is instilling engineering skills.
Cham, you make some interesting points, and I'm very critical about how current Universities operate, but my overwhelming experience is that engineering students sought out that choice.
(I do heavily criticize how colleges of engineering don't emphasize collaboration enough. I'm not talking all the kumbaya emoting bullshit of modern management, but simply how to function as a member of a team from a purely practical perspective.)
"
My gut is telling me these engineering students come from China and India. The kid's families are paying their tuition cash on the barrelhead since the students most likely wouldn't be eligible for financial aid. The out-of-country students would be a profit center for the university because the school doesn't have to fork over any financial hardship scholarships for them. So the school is probably trying to admit as many of them as possible. "
Cham, you have got this part pretty well correct. What is happening is that we are rapidly exporting our knowledge base. This will only last so long, and the schools in the other countries are rapidly moving up. Before too long, they will over take us, and then we will not have these cash customers (students). So while it is very lucrative now, it is also very short sighted.
When I was an engineering undergraduate (late 1950s-early 1960s), we had 3 women in a college of engineering with 3000 men. We could pretty well just ignore the women. I knew men of all sort, personalities, levels of social skills, writing abilities, etc. We had the full spectrum, because we drew from across the entire population of the country. Some of them made great engineers, some of them went into research, some went into sales, some were just ordinary, work-a-day folks. I don't think it is that way today at all. The few Americans that go to engineering today seem to be a much more narrowly selected group as they come in.
The lack of women engineers, scientists, etc. is a result of incorrigible genetic gender difference in variance. Males dominate both the genius level and the idiot level of intelligence in quantitative ability.
While I don't specifically discuss gender differences, I do discuss the related concept of racial intelligence differences at my blog. Almost all the evidence is the same.
Quick Primer to Human Biodiversity
Fascinating how this discussion veered straight out of the path that the article was going down. The article didn't have anything to do with the outlier females who actually enjoy Math, Engineering, and other Tech subjects. It was written about mainstream females who are more Language & Humanities oriented, who some of these Colleges are trying to shift into Science and Tech majors.
We know that there are some girls who prefer Math & Science. There are some boys who prefer Language Arts & Humanities (And sometimes it changes as people age), but they are not the norm.
Again, as I have said before, I wish I could find a link to the show I watched where it chronicled the path a woman took who planned to get a Sex Change operation.
She started taking the male hormones, and they chronicled her physically and mentally. She developed physically far more than the training program she was on would account for, and her mental skills shifted from the more female-stereotypical to the more male-stereotypical. This mental shift was not from conscious choice - she wasn't particularly studying Math & Science, it just became easier to her, and her Language proficiency actually went down slightly. It was about as convincing a demonstration of the sex relationship for such skills as you can get.
As a society, we do a pretty bad job of giving kids a realistic understanding of various career options. TV shows focus on cops/doctors/lawyers (and usually provide a pretty unrealistic view of these fields)...everything else is a mystery or a stereotype.
@ David
You are correct, but it was ever thus. When I was in high school, the guidance people said to me, "Oh, you are good in math, you should be an engineer." It turned out they were right, but for the first several years of college I was pretty sure they were wrong.
I think perhaps we may see here an application of the old adage, "you get more of what you encourage." In our case, we encourage and glorify as David observes, cops, doctors, and lawyers. Not too many are bright enough to become doctors, but quite a few can become lawyers, and they do. In other societies, notably Japan and Germany, they have honored engineers for many years and they get more engineers. Often the very top executives of a German company will be Herr Doctor Engr. xxx. because they see these as the people who really understand how things work. They also tend to discourage litigation.
What's up cham? You seem to be a bit miffed at your old school and engineers in particular. There are so many great schools in the states, maybe you should have gone elsewhere when the mix didn't appear to be working out. That's what I'd of done, anyway.
If our country is hurting for anything, it is scientists, engineers, and doctors.
I remember being disgusted more than 20 years ago when I was struggling to get a BSEE (I did get that degree, and an MSEE and a JD).
At my Big Ten university, you took "general courses" for the first two years. People who wanted to major in engineering had to also take the math & physics courses (starting in freshman year with calculus - anything below that was considered remedial).
The problem I ran into was that I was immature, kind of a partier, and was struggling with my grade point average.
At the end of those two years, you had to apply to the college you wanted to get your degree in. At the time, a 3.2 GPA was required for electrical engineering for men, ONLY A 2.9 GPA was required for women. Yes, you read that right.
I barely, barely made it in. But I found it a bit disgusting at the time because women didn't have it any harder than I did. You study, you take tests, you get your grades.
I think today they simply disguise it more. But women have always been given an easy way out in engineering.
As far as Cham goes: It's a tough major, Cham. You are in with smart people. If you can't cut it, don't make excuses, just major in communications or something. I found engineering harder than law school.
My experience in real life is that women in engineering don't really want to do it. They go into public relations for the company, or sales, or just become housewives down the road.
Math is hard, said Barbie, and so is engineering.
Br549:
You are right, I made a horrible mistake with that school. I spent 2 years in their night program prior to enrolling full time and loved the night program. Never in a million years would I have expected the 2 programs would be so different. I made the right choice to get out, I realized after I was in the program that I wanted to be around people more than an engineering degree would allow. Live and learn. The sad thing is that I see many other people living and learning around here the same way.
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Recruiting "nerdy" girls is just a way of rendering males truly obsolete and unecessary.
As for engineers, there is a definite shortage. I've seen work sent offshore because there isn't enough local engineering talent. I've seen companies hire absolute *morons* because they had an engineering degree, and they needed *somebody*.
And I've seen way too many talented and qualified engineers leave the field because, as a rule, companies treat engineers like crap. In our current business and economic climate, there are no incentives for anyone with talent to become an engineer, unless they *want* to for personal reasons.
i did some work for a manufacturing company some years ago that couldn`t seem to keep engineers. even headhunters were refusing to send them staff. the last group left wholesale after about six months. they were all brought in from poland.
when i interviewed the directors, a man and his three boys and one of thier wives, i realised that as accountants, the entire directorship mmisunderstood the culture of engineers.
engineers thrill to get results in making things work and fixing problems, whereas accountants manage cost and limit spending and apply cost/benefit formaulas to everything including washroom access.
the new group of engineers complained that they had thier hands tied whenever they got so far with a project because they were ground down by budget restraints that meant that they were virtually asking mom for pocket money.
they were begining to resent what drove the last group out.
the accountants gave me blank looks when i pointed this out and waved me off as not understanding accounting procedures.
this was a small company of 50 or so people making parts for 4x4s when ford gave them a huge contract to make pieces for the windstar van. the company grew 10 fold overnight, and while the windstar kept them going, the culture clash didn`t cause much concern.
when the windstar contract ended the company, like all businesses, looked further afield to keep staff on and keep the merry-go-round turning.
the internal chase for product innovation meant that engineers were vital to the companies survival, yet the accountants could only do what they knew, and couldn`t effectively manage groups of engineers who went elsewhere for strokes.
my recommendation for an experienced automative production manager didn`t go down well. what i wanted to do was suggest the old guy retire and let the sons innovate naturally, but once my initial report was filed, i wasn`t asked back.
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