Women in the UK are now 35% more likely than men to go to university and the gap is widening every year.
A baby girl born in 2016 will be 75% more likely to go to university than a boy, if current trends continue.
The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has published research examining this increasingly polarised gender divide.
And as university remains the gateway to better-paid, more secure jobs, Mary Curnock Cook, head of the Ucas university admissions service, warns that being male could be a new form of disadvantage.
“On current trends, the gap between rich and poor will be eclipsed by the gap between males and females within a decade,” she writes in an introduction to the report.
And she says while there is much focus on social mobility and geographical differences, there is a collective blind spot on the underachievement of young men.
(Hat-tip: Ethan Ralph at The Ralph Retort.)
The important question is, “Why?” Two obvious answers:
- The collapse of the marriage-based family. Boys from fatherless households have a tendency toward substance abuse, criminality and educational failure. In communities where fatherless is commonplace, this creates a vicious cycle in successive generations. In the United States, this pattern is most visible among those euphemistically called “urban youth,” i.e., black teenagers, especially the children of welfare-dependent single mothers. In England, by contrast, the “urban youth” are usually white, although young Muslims (most often the children of immigrants from Pakistan, colloquially called “Asians” in Britain) have recently become part of the UK “urban youth” problem. As social welfare programs replace working fathers as the source of support for children, many boys grow up with a sense of purposelessness. We see this in the street gangs that have turned Chicago into Murder City, U.S.A. (So far this year, 221 people have been murdered in Chicago, and another 1,075 were shot but survived.) Without fathers to provide discipline, guidance and role models for boys, bad things happen. It’s hard to get a college education if you’re strung out on dope or doing time in prison.
- Anti-male bias in schools. This has been a serious problem for decades, and has in recent years become much worse. When I was a child, it seemed to me that the women who became elementary school teachers were drawn to the profession by their hateful resentment of boys, and a penchant for sadistic cruelty was a prerequisite to employment. So far as I could tell, school was a place where boys were sent to be scolded and punished by mean old ladies. “McCain, you were just a troublemaker,” says the skeptical reader. “Besides, haven’t Progress and Equality changed all that?” Yes, but not for the better. Nowadays, the mischief-filled boy is no longer subjected to the humiliation of paddling as punishment for his excess energy. Instead, the boy who misbehaves is prescribed drugs that turn him into zombie. The mean old ladies who run the schools have always viewed boys’ natural restless energy as a problem to be solved. How convenient (and profitable for major pharmaceutical companies) that being a rambunctious boy is now commonly diagnosed as a psychiatric disorder in need of “treatment.”
The school system is anti-male, which is why most boys are anti-school.
While I can’t speak for the U.K., I know that every attempt to explain these problems in the United States has gone unheeded by the policy-making elite and the progressives who run the educational bureaucracy. The influence of feminism has only aggravated the blatant discrimination against boys in our schools. Today’s young teachers are trained in universities where feminist gender theory prevails, and teachers today are far less likely to have children of their own than were teachers when I was in school in the 1960s and ’70s. If my teachers were mostly mean old ladies who hated me, most of them at least were mothers, and therefore were generally cognizant of the innate differences between boys and girls. Nowadays, the public school curriculum and pedagogy have been so irreparably warped by Third Wave feminist nonsense and other “progressive” theories that it’s a minor miracle if any child makes it through school without succumbing to the prevailing insanity.
Anyone who wants to understand these problems should read Christina Hoff Sommers’ 2001 book The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men. 
Beyond that, remember: Feminists hate your sons. Feminists want your sons to fail in school. Feminists don’t want your sons to go to college. Feminists don’t want your sons to have professional careers. Feminism is about achieving “equality” by destroying opportunity for your sons.
It’s a start, but there will never be justice so long as any men are permitted on campuses at all, whether as students, faculty, administrators, or custodial staff. Wymynz can’t be expected to learn important things if there are men silently raping them with their eyes and thoughts, and oppressing them with their existence.
You know who else had men and women attending the same schools? The Nazis, that’s who. You can look it up.
My theory is that many degrees are not really challenging to earn and are mere “credentialism” as others call it. So men either 1) have a more refined B.S. mechanism than women (at least in this area) and can detect the fraud or 2) the women know it just as well but are more likely to go along with a prescribed system if it benefits them without going their own way.
Another theory is that too many people are in college anyway. And only a subset of guys have the personalities and the abilities for scholarship. Intelligence isn’t the only factor, so there are plenty of men who are smart that don’t like college.
This in addition to the other factors you mention.
Add to this:
It Is Hard Getting A Job Without A College Degree
http://collegeinsurrection.com/2016/05/it-is-hard-getting-a-job-without-a-college-degree/
With so few men of comparable educational or professional standing to match this wave of female graduates, then women should have no problem with “work/life balance” anymore.
Marriage is already a dying institution, especially in Britain, and these credentialed females will certainly not be inclined to marry males of inferior station. So since they probably will not be marrying or having their own offspring, they will unlimited time to focus upon their career achievement and reach those feminist heights!
And with the money they earn, I’m sure they can pay immigrant Pakistani women to act as gestational surrogates and nannies, so as not to impose on their time. No need for maternity leave.
My elder son, who’s now a math and physics major, attended a K-8 parochial school in a class of thirteen boys and only two girls. I recall the wonderful Christian lady who was his second grade teacher telling us how she loved the class. She just adjusted the curriculum to add more readings about stuff the boys loved and “freelanced” recesses when they started to get restless.To this day, every single one of the boys in that class, all of whom are doing quite well in college, cite her as the favorite teacher of 9 years of elementary school. The trick is not to change boys but to use their inherent differences to lead them where you want them to be.
“If my teachers were mostly mean old ladies who hated me, most of them at least were mothers, and therefore were generally cognizant of the innate differences between boys and girls. “
More and more of the women in education (and elsewhere) are electing to be barren. They refer to their dogs as their children, or their students. Too many women start thinking that their husband is like having one more child around to take care of instead of another adult. A look at modern urban Black families tells us that societies without marriage is awful, but many men seem to getting what they want far more than the women. It is in the best interest of men, women, and children for parents to be married. But if women insist on insulting men, men can survive better without marriage.
Any man can always find a dog and a woman to go with him as low as he wants to go.
I’m curious if it isn’t that the expansion of college enrollment hasn’t just been more girls from the working and lower classes than boys — possibly due to family dynamics, but the number of boys from the middle, upper middle classes is not still the same. I ask this based on my personal knowledge/experience, but I honestly do not have one friend, family member, or coworker whose college age children did not go to college whether male or female.
I recall that when King David brought the Tabernacle back to Jerusalem, he was singing and dancing before it. His wife, Saul’s daughter, was laughing at him. Her punishment from on High was to be made barren. Now women elect to be barren as a “choice”.
Knowing the needs and resources of the group is critical to accomplishing “the mission.” It doesn’t matter what the context is. A teacher is a leader and if they don’t know that one basic fact, they will fail. Your son’s second grade teacher understood that. Most do not, and they fail as a result.
Most of the college requirements come as a result of what I call the Duke decision. A black guy did poorly on aptitude tests and could not get beyond his station because of low ability and potential. He sued and won, alas.
The trash about IQ or aptitude tests being culturally based is a hoax. IQ testing has been systematically denuded of cultural bias. Aptitude testing also measures some of what you know to determine if you have the ability to go further. SJWs couldn’t tolerate it, so we all labor under the burden of another SJW hoax.
Too many are taking majors in utterly useless areas. They whine about the debt they incur to qualify them to flip burgers or serve coffee at starbucks. That anyone would take such trash, and pay the money they do, for majors that have use only for political activism, if that, marks a person as an idiot who won’t think for themselves.
There was a really cute chick in my Circuits class who I wished would make her boobs quit staring at my eyes. It was a serious distraction from Kirchoff’s current and voltage laws.
My son went to an elementary school with a lovely old-style school marm as principal. After she retired it was taken over by a boy-hating shrew. Blue Pill as I was, even I knew something was wrong and pulled him out of there half way through the school year.
I was attending UCSD when Alan Bakke was suing the UC system because twice a minority applicant with lower grades and test scores was given admission to the UC Davis Medical School while he was rejected.
He won, was admitted, finished med school and had a career as an MD. At the time of the court case, though, he was the most evil man on Earth. Which I thought more than a bit off, since all the poor guy wanted was to go to med school. And he was better qualified than the students admitted in his stead.
I’ll agree with the useless credentialism. Business degrees are some of this issue.
Of course… Its SUCCESS when women out number men
But PRIVILEGE when men outnumber women…
“patriarchy”…
[…] 2: Well, now that we’re living in a post-gender society maybe the war on boys will come to and end. (I’m being sarcastic, man/boy hate will be a staple of the American […]
She was oppressing you, had you but known it. I wonder if you can file an ex post facto claim of rape?
Give a teary press conference and state that since then every time you see a resistor it’s just like being raped all over again.
I can vouch for the teachers hated boys way back then part. Early 1960’s, my very first day grade 1, within less than five minutes, my teacher told me to stand up, then she decked me with a punch in the face. She kept all the working class boys in the ‘Rabbits’ and all the girls and a few boys from well to do families in the ‘Squirrels’.
My older brother had warned me she hated boys, but I didn’t believe it.
I know, right?
Is there anything it can’t do?
I’m not from the states but if I might reference part of your history this is Pearl Harbor. The question is how many ships have to go down before we stop listening to the radio for a declaration of war. In fact many individuals have made their personal declaration in no uncertain terms and it is remarkable how many of them are teachers. There has got to be a time when when we gather the troops withdraw the ambassadors and set up the war room. What is the point of diplomacy when one side has no intention of even treating you like a human being. Are we really that afraid of being called misogynists. Are we willing to sacrifice our sons so that we can be regarded as gentlemen? The bell rang a long time ago it’s time to get off your stool in the corner because someone is punching you in the face. White flags and promises of fair play are meaningless and are just making people angrier. Time to call this what it is war. Pick a side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO5svxl8Q00
I know teachers who don’t make any secret at all of hating boys. One of those is a male teacher. It’s weird.
And then they hit their 50s and go into shock when they realise what they did to themselves. I see it all over amongst my aging feminist friends.
“The question is how many ships have to go down before we stop listening to the radio for a declaration of war.”
A Culture War is a war of ideas.
In 1996, my wife and I decided to homeschool our children. When people remark on our children’s success, it goes back to that decision 20 years ago. Parents — and young couples considering parenthood — need to know what’s going on in schools. What’s ironic about my experience is that I was an education reporter when it dawned on me that the public schools were a complete disaster. I was covering the schools, and saw first-hand how the curriculum and policies had changed in the 10-15 years since I graduated high school. And I also realized that I, personally, has suffered as a result of bad education policies. So then I began to study the history of the American public education system and realized that there never actually was a “Golden Age.” Going back to the days of Horace Mann, public education had always been controlled by ideas that were alien to the American tradition. Mann famously modeled his ideas after the Prussian system, and this is dangerously significant.
There is a tendency of parents to think public schools are OK so long as “our people” are in charge. Well, “our people” were running the public school system in the 1950s, and this produced the radical generation of the 1960s.
Think about that.
There is a tendency of parents to think public schools are OK so long as “our people” are in charge.
You are certainly correct about Horace Mann’s influence on American education, but there was still a grain of truth to the above statement until the mid 70s. As you recall, Jimmy Carter began the federal takeover of local schools through the Department of Education. At the same time, you began to see the increasing influence of 60s radicals in colleges of Education, not to mention the NEA and other teachers’ unions.
By the early 80s, the conventional wisdom had become that parents and school boards were completely ignorant of “proper” educational techniques and curriculum and thus should be isolated and marginalized. And so, we find ourselves where we do today.
I cannot tell people enough that it is impossible to correct the public system or even protect your own children from its excesses. It doesn’t matter whom you elect to the school board. The administrators and teachers will pursue their own agenda and deliberately hide it from parents and elected supervisors. Parent who complain are marginalized and children’s records and school experience are sabotaged to punish people who won’t go along with the program.
I’ve seen it from the inside and had such admitted to me by educators who thought that in me they had a sympathetic ear. Get your kids out of public schools. Do it today and never look back.
Yes, it was a Macro-Macro-aggression that women routinely commit against men, and then blame it all on us. Rape charges would probably not fly after 36 years. Latches, I’m sure, would get it thrown out, not to mention that the victim has the wrong genitalia.
Yep. I’ve seen a lot of this recently as a product of dating in my late 30s. Suddenly the women are desperate to get married and have kids and single men are the hot commodity.
I can’t complain too much, but it’s kind of a sad sight.
Well, I’m home schooling one of mine next year.
And there’s LOTS of things that you can’t be taught. You’re either born with the gift, or you’re not. Business is one of those things. Leadership is another.
Worse, this same thing happens when hiring for jobs, too. I’ve been forced by HR to hire substandard employees because of their ethnicity, religion (other than Christianity, of course) or sexual preference.
Then, when the known incompetent tanks, or drags down an entire project, program, department, or the company’s financial position, the SJWs running HR say “So?”
Schmucks.
I’m looking for some patriarchy to come paint my house. You’re not busy this weekend, are you? If you refuse, you’re an oppressive misogynist, fyi.
As a matter of fact, I am busy. Those women and minorities aren’t going to oppress themselves, you know!
Good for you. I homeschooled mine, even while I worked a 40 hour week. It wasn’t hard and was a good way to get to know your kids really well. Plus I got to teach a full-on Christian curriculum because there was no one to stop me.
My first run-in with that type was early in my second career as a civilian mariner with the Navy. I was checking out of the office going to my first ship assignment and stopped by the EEO office.
The woman there, in explaining how we must all be constantly vigilant, gave as an example the time she said, on a cold day, that it was “nippy” and was properly called out. At that point my inability to remain silent in the face of stupidity bubbled up and I said “That’s stupid – the word ‘nip’ meaning a bite or cold has no ethnic connotations, it’s a completely different word. That’s like claiming ‘chink in the armor’ is a racial slur.”
Bad move. She went off on me and ranted on for a while until I just walked out. Subsequently when checking out to assignments I just skipped the EEO part of the checklist and nobody ever said anything.
This was before that city employee in DC was fired for remarking that a budget was “niggardly.”
I still have no understanding of how these stupid and incompetent people achieved such power and influence. Did all the smart people go to lunch at the same time one day and the morons took over?
As to your last question, more the reverse. Dumb people usually have enough sense to know they’re not that bright, and not to go playing with the red wire on a bomb. Its the SuperDuperSmaht who think Reality doesn’t apply to them, and then the Unthinking follow them.
“Public education” as we know it today was invented by Bismarck, along with much of the modern welfare state. The point was, of course, to produce good dependable cogs to work the machinery of the State.
There’s “smart,” and there’s “credentialed.”
Most HR and EEO people have university degrees in… HR and EEO. As a result, they know lots of buzz words and pointless theories about nothing important.
What I can’t figure out is how these one dimensional people of limited background and no experience convinced corporations that they were essential to their business.
I figure Math, History, Science, and English, and then stick a fair chunk of the Bible in each subject.
History starts with Creation Week. Math can be figuring out the cubic volume of the Ark. Science will include the Kinds. English with out loud reading of KJV Psalms and Proverbs.
When I was younger, a lot of famous authors would give credit to the KJV for helping form their writing skill.
And there will be Kipling as well.
One way of becoming an ‘expert’ is to create your own ‘field’ by hybridizing two other fields of knowledge. Ignore the real experts in those fields. And then you’re the world expert in Skubbinnism.
Another explanation is the gov’t paid for it. Any time you see people doing objectively stupid stuff for their job, its a distinct possbility that somewhere a ‘crat is tossing out bales of cash.
Another explanation is that these people are the excuse the Powerful use to be Jerks.
You know who else drank beer, the Nazis. Your first paragraph is good, why you tangent of to Nazis…??
Because in the future, everyone gets to be a Nazi for fifteen minutes. “Nazi” is the new “racist.”
Actually, I was satirizing the left’s insistence in Godwinizing every discussion.
And why are you defending those beer drinking Nazis anyway?
Admit it, you stole that last line from a country song, right? If not, then you have the start of one right there. Just work in a truck and you’re set.
Reminds me of the line in the Eagles’ Peaceful Easy Feeling, about how a woman “won’t take you anywhere you don’t already know how to go.”
If there are some dykes who hate men, than thats fine..it is what it is!! But when these angry Dykes get federal pork bloating dollars to funnel out to state law enforcement around the country to persecute hetero-males…thats when they crossed the line!!
femi-nazi…
The gender-feminists are going to be gunning for youre sons nuts!!
Once one moron gets in, he’s like Patient Zero, and hires all the others. It’s like the six degrees of separation.
As for EEO, once, while working on a military/DOD installation, we all had to attend dome dumb EEO thing in an auditorium where they showed a film, then a scold from HR, or whatever it was called, would lecture us about its supposed importance.
I was on vaycay when my department went, so I went later, in a group of totally male noncoms. I was literally the only woman in there. The film was hilarious! It showed this drop dead gorgeous woman, the alleged boss, supposedly “sexually harassing” a male employee by coming on to him, rubbing against him, pressing her boobs against his back, and so on. It was like borderline soft porn. While this was going on, the dude was stammering, acting like he didn’t like it, and was scared of the woman boss. And it was really horrible overacting.
Well, it was briefly quiet in the room, but then these guys, to a man, busted out laughing, and I don’t mean some little giggles or twitters, but roaring with laughter! Of course, I was howling, too. The EEO puke tried to get the room settled down, but that was a no-go, so she finally killed the movie and left without a word. So we all continued to laugh for awhile, then we left, too.
And iirc, that was the last EEO thing we had there while I worked there, which was 10 more years.
But is it any coincidence that College and University education is getting more irrelevant? Companies are going to hire based on actual skills, as more employees are going to be working from home. University education is getting more and more silly as well. Only the truly relevant areas are still dominated by men.
I’d say that Accounting, because of how close it is to the law, has merit as a collegiate subject. Marketing, though, it nothing more than applied (i.e. proveable) psychology. Entrepreneurship, General Management, are ‘Gimme’ majors
I think its lack of self confidence.