My dad brought this up last night, to support his belief in the oppression of the white male on college campuses. Which is bullshit, and political correctness on campus is surely not a reason for this trend, but this does seem like a real trend and I'm wondering why it would be happening.

My answer at the time was there tend to be more non-college opportunities for men - trade school, apprenticeships, things like that, which I believe are overwhelmingly male. Also sort of similar to things I've seen about the "reverse gender gap" in Mongolia - men are more likely to take over a family business and will learn the skills they need working in the business, whereas women need to go to college to learn other skills because their future is not so laid out for them. College is not the marker for success it once was, and a lot of men might see more non-college opportunities for them that women don't.

There might also be a mental health aspect - I think women tend to deal with mental health better? Which might lead to them being able to deal with uncertainty and stress these days better than men, leading to more men dropping out. I don't have any statistics there to know if that's even true or not though.

I don't know if any of those answers hold any water, but this does seem like a real trend from what I can tell and I'm wondering why it might be occurring.

      • deadbergeron [he/him,they/them]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        haha I'm there with you. But schools are just there to produce workers and reproduce ideology, so even if a teacher enter with good intentions I think they get pushed towards acting in this way since this is what the school demands of them. Especially if they have not criticized their own ideology. Like the Chomsky quote when he was being interviewed by some journalist, "I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting."

        • FloridaBoi [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          There were news stories (can’t find any now of course) during covid lockdowns about teachers punishing students for violating arbitrary rules during virtual classes (stuff like forced silence, not moving, etc).

          The schools are barely even making functional workers, they’re making future inmates.