Are Colleges Discriminating Against Female Applicants?

When colleges now accept 58% girls and just 42% boys, admissions committees are — once again — trying to level the playing field. Hmm. It’s beginning to sound a bit like Affirmative Action…

Forty years ago, girls were underrepresented in college enrollment because colleges thought that they only went to college to get their Mrs. degrees (to find an eligible bachelor with the potential to make big bucks).

Middle and high school teachers downplayed the importance for girls to do well in math and science. With Women’s Liberation movements making strides in the ’60s and ’70s, this changed. Remember burning bras, and yes, hairy legs?

To level the playing field, the US Dept of Justice implemented Title IX — a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity. So the ratio of boys vs girls became closer to 50/50 in the admissions arena.

But Title IX couldn’t be the only reason for the increase in girls going to college because women started enrolling in colleges all over the world without Title IX.  So why the change in trends?

Claudia Golden, an economist at Harvard, claims that this surge in girls entering college is all about the birth control pill. With young ladies having the opportunity to plan their lives: marriage, children, and careers, they could go to college and invest in careers before starting families.  While this makes sense, it still doesn’t explain why the girls-to-boys ratio is now 58% to 42%.

Here’s my theory: We all know that girls mature faster than boys. Right?  Remember in 2nd grade when girls flirted with boys who only wanted to play with boys at recess? Then in high school, girls wanted steady relationships when boys were just being, well, immature and really clueless about commitments? Oh, those painful years for girls while they waited for the boys to catch up with them.

Now look at this from a different perspective: girls have always been better organizers and could get their homework done on time, study for tests, and still have time to complete their college applications than boys. And, girls are less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and get into trouble with the law. Painful, but it’s true. So maybe this is why girls get into college at a faster rate than boys do.

Now that the tables are turned and there are more girls getting into college than boys, college admissions committees are doing a sort of behind-the-scenes affirmative action for boys. Check out the numbers.  At Brown, the acceptance rate for boys is 11 percent; for girls it’s just 7 percent. At Vassar, it’s 34% for boys and 19% for girls. Once again, that pendulum is swinging but this time in the opposite direction. 

Looks like boys need a handicap to even the score board…