According to Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the Obama administration may (or may not, it’s hard to tell for sure) be backing off its ambitious plan to arm-twist universities into goals of male/female proportionality in math, science, engineering and technology courses [Real Clear Politics]. We’ve covered the controversy here, here, and here.
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Hopefully common sense will prevail, but I am not very sanguine. Since the administration can’t force women to major in science and engineering (or can they?), the only way that they can guarantee proportionality is by preventing men from majoring in those fields. Since colleges now are about 60% women, this solution will truly be procrustean. Do these gender equality zealots really thing that the US will be competitive in the world when we no longer have any scientists and engineers? Do they care?
Why not force woman to major in science and engineering? This can be accomplished by only extending student visas to women college students who are majoring in science and engineering. You can play with the visa numbers and make this work easily. The alternative is running out of scientist and engineers.
Maybe they don’t really want any more engineers, because engineers make stuff that emits nasty pollution, like CO2, or stuff that is dangerous, like sharp knives that can be (mis)-used by children, or generally stuff that makes life easier for people. They don’t want people to live an easier life – it is better for their political purposes for people to suffer, so that the politicians can save them from suffering, by giving them someone else’s money. They won’t be able to buy anything, but maybe they will be so grateful to the politicians that the people will give the money to the politicians to help them get re-elected.
No, we really don’t need any more engineers – lawyers, maybe, but certainly not engineers. Or scientists, because science is all settled.
Is this backing off for real, or is it “backing off” in the Obama administration sense of declaring firmly you’re against something before proceeding to do it?
Sure extend title IX to academics – just make sure to extend it to ALL academics. After all, it’s blatant discrimination that causes the performing arts, or art history, or literature, or womens studies to be heavily female dominated. Snark fully on for that, by the way.
What a great time to be a young teenage girl with above average competence in math or science! Universities will pay you to become a science or math major. This is better than being a scholarship athlete, because you won’t have to sweat every day to get a full scholarship plus perks. You probably will be able to get bonus payments for enrolling in three or more science classes per term.
Obama, the end product of educational affirmative action, would probably support such idiotic legislation. However, you don’t notice anyone trying to establish a 1:1 female to male ratios in nursing or teaching. Hasn’t the bias against men in the caring and teaching professions gone on long enough? Shouldn’t we amend the proposed legislation to help redress these imbalances?
I got my undergraduate degree in mathematics 26 years ago. There were no women in any of the classes after the first semester of calculus, and there was one girl who started a statistics course and then dropped out.
I hope they don’t have to water down math curriculum so our future Sarah Palins and Shiela Jackson-Lees (to cite examples from both sides of the aisle) can get through the courses .
And if they find that the numbers of women actually graduating are smaller than those of men (hypothetically speaking), expect to see the bar lowered if you happen to have a pair of ovaries.
I’m a woman who doubled in science and the humanities and I hate title IX. I shudder to think of the day this could be applied to academics. I want qualified professionals and teachers–I don’t care what gender they are.
I see this being used to limit male enrollment and hiring, similar to how some men’s sports are limited because there aren’t equivalent female teams.
They can encourage women in the sciences all they want but they can’t force women to major in these fields if they don’t want to.
And I second the point about men being discriminated against in female dominated fields. Would you feel comfortable with a male preschool teacher? Why do we think grown men who like kids must be pervs?