Female Supremacy Articles - Page 20

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California commission recently looked at gender imbalances in the nation's largest higher education system and came away astonished. Most startling are the male dropout rates. The state university system's entering class in 2000 was 57% female, and the graduating class in 2005 was 66% female.

So what's happening to men on campus in California and elsewhere? The answer can't be the result of population differences: men make up 51.3% of the state's population between ages 18 and 34. Everyone has a theory: Parents blame toxic culture, teachers blame lax parents, and psychologists say boys are confused over shifting gender roles.

All are plausible, but the primary reason increasingly appears to be a relative lapse in boys' verbal skills. Not to worry, argues a recent report from the Washington think tank Education Sector that has generated considerable attention. This is not bad news about men, the report argues, but rather good news about women. The only gender problem on campuses involves minorities, it says.

It's true that black men lag the most. Three decades ago, black men and women were evenly represented in California's public university systems. By 2004, men had dropped to 36% of the black population enrolled.