“In May, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education posted the inevitable culmination of a trend: Last year for the first time, women earned more than half the degrees granted statewide in every category, be it associate, bachelor, master, doctoral or professional.
Cause for celebration - or for concern?
Before you answer, consider the perspective of Jim McCorkell, founder of Admission Possible, a St. Paul program to help low-income high school kids prepare for college. Last year, 30% of the students were boys. This fall, that has inched up to 34%, but only because ‘we actually did a little affirmative action,’ McCorkell says. ‘If we had a tie (between a male and a female applicant), we gave it to a boy.’
As women march forward, more boys seem to be falling by the wayside, McCorkell says. Not only do national statistics forecast a continued decline in the percentage of males on college campuses, but the drops are seen in all races, income groups and fields of study, says policy analyst Thomas Mortenson, publisher of the influential Postsecondary Education Opportunity newsletter in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Since 1995, he has been tracking - and sounding the alarm about - the dwindling presence of men in colleges.
College administrators shy away from the term ‘affirmative action,’ a murky concept rooted in redressing historic inequities and loaded with legal implications. Yet the imbalances do trouble some admissions officials.”
More at http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20051020074109990031