Wednesday, September 21, 2016

The degree gap

Why isn't it an urgent problem requiring redress that men are now less educated than women?
Women earned more doctoral degrees than men in 2015 – the seventh year in a row this has occurred. They also earned more master's degrees and outnumber men in graduate school.

Politicians who like to mislead on the gender wage gap (more accurately referred to as an "earnings" gap due to choices men and women make in their careers) will point out that women are earning more degrees but still earning less pay. To look at the charts compiled by American Enterprise Institute Scholar Mark Perry, one would see part of the reason.

Women earned more degrees than men, and made up a majority of degrees in seven out of 11 different fields. But the fields where men outnumbered women are some of the highest-paid ones, including business, engineering, mathematics and physical sciences. Women outnumbered men in majors such as arts and humanities, education and social sciences.

One potentially high-paying field where women outnumbered men was health sciences, but one would have to look at what careers men and women went into upon graduating to see whether there was truly pay discrimination. For example, it might be the case that women in health sciences tend to go into nursing, whereas men tend to become doctors or surgeons.

Perry predicts that modern feminists and the media won't report these new findings, or, if they do, will focus solely on the sex disparity in science, technology, engineering and math fields.

"Additionally, there will be no calls for government studies or increased government funding to address the significant gender disparities favoring women in graduate schools, and nobody will refer to the gender graduate school enrollment and degree gaps favoring women as a problem or a 'crisis,'" Perry wrote.

Perry also posed the question that if female under-representation is supposedly proof of gender discrimination, wouldn't male under-representation also be proof of gender discrimination, but against men?
As Instapundit wryly noted, when these overeducated but low-paid women with useless degrees can't pay back their student loans, it will, of course, be both the fault of those less-educated men and their responsibility to fix it.

26 comments:

Jed Mask said...

Sad deal and people know it.

Society just don't want to face the "ugly truth" of the feminization and emasculation of men in the feminine-primary conditioning of young boys on up in society under the "Feminine Imperative".

This aint' "new news" why this is happening.

People just have to take an "individual approach" to their own problems before a "collective approach" can be materialized.

~ Bro. Jed

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

Advanced Degrees and prison tattoos - separate points on the same spectrum. In a near-permenant state of cognitive dissonance, woman will acquire attributes they find attractive in men. Completely unaware of course that these can often be a net-negative.
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Unknown said...

After obtaining my Ph.D. from a now defunct online college, I believe that anyone receiving their advanced degree with student debt should have their letters rescinded.

Tatooine Sharpshooters' Club said...

Incontrovertible proof you've wasted your life: a degree in art history.

Often unstated in these discussions: the increase of women receiving degrees has also greatly increased the total number of degrees granted, thereby devaluing them simply by dint of the surfeit of credentials circulating in the already moribund "job market".

For example, in 2014, the number of degrees granted was greater than the entire population of Connecticut. While a proportion of those went to already employed persons, there is no way that the limited entry-level positions available are commensurate with what these newly minted "college grads" believe they should earn. Add in the mountains of crushing debt most of these over-indoctrinated unemployables have, and it's clear the current system has no viable future.

While this commodification of college education as the "key to a good life" cannot not be wholly laid at the feet of women, this article and others like it demonstrate that they have eagerly mortgaged their futures to the reductionist lie that a "degree", irrespective of field of study, solves all one's future financial problems.

Anonymous said...

This means it's more important to consider the major rather than the simple diploma, and for majors, the sex balance. If the major is a sausage party, it's probably still a relatively good one. If it's mostly estrogen, it could be safely chopped with no harm to society.

After obtaining my Ph.D. from a now defunct online college, I believe that anyone receiving their advanced degree with student debt should have their letters rescinded.

Undergraduates will almost certainly end up with debt these days. But because of research and teaching assistantships, any competent PhD student in any decent field should be able to pay down, or even pay off, his debt. Master's degrees in useful fields should be a wash debt-wise.

Retrenched said...

Every gap that favors men is an injustice in need of correction, while every gap that favors women is a sign of progress to be celebrated.

But in democracies where women outnumber and outvote men such double standards are pretty much inevitable.

Anonymous said...

Add in the mountains of crushing debt most of these over-indoctrinated unemployables have, and it's clear the current system has no viable future.

Especially since women, besides tending to get degrees in useless fields, are also by and large far worse with money than men are.

In addition to which, according to the simple law of supply and demand, a woman's student debt disincentivizes marriage. After all, the husband will end up having to pay for it.

dc.sunsets said...

Funny how women are more inclined to volunteer to be robbed by the Higher Ed cartel.

Lest we forget, the Hobbesian state of (women's) nature is one of continually signaling "I'm better than she is" to everyone nearby. Piling up degrees is parallel to "I have the latest Prada handbag."

NAWALT, but most are. I wonder if "feminism" was just a ruse by mentally ill dykes to screw up the world so much that their ability to land new subs increases slightly.

liberranter said...

As Instapundit wryly noted, when these overeducated but low-paid women with useless degrees can't pay back their student loans, it will, of course, be both the fault of those less-educated men and their responsibility to fix it.

In any sane society, it would have long ago reached the point where "woman with advanced degree" = "woman with syphilis/gonorrhea/clamydia/grotesque deformity."

ScottC said...

You know what feminists say about this? They say it's still an unequal outcome when considered in the context of history. In other words, since higher education was a "privilege" enjoyed by men for n millennia, we have to go through another n millennia where women are more educated than men (!) to redress historical inequalities.

Unknown said...

Thanks I will get with the program and register.

Unknown said...

Thanks I will get with the program and register.

MMX2010 said...

There's a great article by The Last Psychiatrist, named "Crotoan", that argues that women always acquire majority representation into powerful institutions right when those institutions become irrelevant.

Anonymous said...

@Scott

The ridiculous thing is today's men and women are equally descended from yesterday's men and women so it is not like the privilege of men going to college hundreds of years ago and not women in any way affects women today. The wealth and social position would have equivalently been handed on to her as well as her brothers.

Amy said...

And yet many successful people, hundreds and tens of years ago, lacked any advanced degrees, but were able to produce works of literature, art, music, and appreciate the contributions of those trained in engineering, architecture, medicine.

A degree is the badge you wear to belong to the cult. Cult of what, I don't know; I am not clever enough to give it a pithy name. I have observed it doesn't make one smarter, but it does usually suffice to increase their insufferable qualities 100 fold, as they feel entitled to expound upon the slightest of matters in a quest for two positions: 1) King of Educated Peers Hill, and 2) Profound Jailer of the Uneducated Slobs, keeping those without "college" prisoner to their enlightened thoughts.

So of course women would not care that men don't have degrees on par with them. I hear mothers talk about how their boys don't have two brain cells to rub together. You'll find sympathy from a minority of women but prepare to get little but callous disregard and outright mockery and cried of "payback!" as Scott C said above.

liberranter said...

A degree is the badge you wear to belong to the cult. Cult of what, I don't know;

The Cult of Conformity. Think of a college degree in this day and age as a voucher for obtaining a thrall collar and a ball and chain.

As for people in times past having accomplished great things without not only college degrees, but without much formal "education" as we know it today, that was a past in which substance prevailed over form and useful achievements were essential to civilization's advancement. Education --the real thing, as in the "3 Rs" and the hard sciences-- was taken seriously, because it had to be.

Today we've reached a sort of civilizational plateau where we've advanced to the point where almost everyone has enough of what they need to survive comfortably, where no one is one meal away from destitution and starvation, so no one needs to really knock themselves out and strive anymore. This is reflected in our higher education system, where very little solid or useful knowledge is imparted and most resources are devoted to frivolous indoctrination in toxic ideologies. Workplaces are devoted mostly to social justice warfare and petty politics rather than productivity.

This will all continue until the social safety net that everyone takes for granted, built on past productivity, collapses. Only then will REAL education become a priority again.

Erynne said...

And all of these women won't create jobs. A small percentage of men create jobs, and then when those places grow, women fill up make-work jobs so the place can be in compliance with legal hiring practices. Thankfully, we all know a degree is no substitute for creativity and risk-taking, so men can avoid degrees with impunity, but the female controlled HR environment will destroy any male chance at a regular corporate job because they will be placing greater emphasis on credentials. My older brother has been a victim of this for a long time. He never got a degree, and so he frequently hit the ceiling in restaurants and call centers because of it, passed up on management positions because he didn't have the magical paper key. And, on the other hand, I haven't been able to make any traction with my degree, most likely because female-run HR has crushed my chances of standing out among credentialed females, who are the diversity and gender hires they so desperately need.

Aeoli Pera said...

1. Get more degrees than men
2. Enter HR
3. Block men without degrees from gainful employment
4. Whine about men without gainful employment

Genius.

Aeoli Pera said...

And all of these women won't create jobs. A small percentage of men create jobs, and then when those places grow, women fill up make-work jobs so the place can be in compliance with legal hiring practices

If we break it down into Venkatesh Rao's terminology, 20% of men are Sociopaths, 60% of men are Clueless, and 20% of men are Losers.

Whereas 99% of women are Clueless.

Kat said...

The wife of a friend of mine quit a highly lucrative, prestigious job to go rack up debt in business school in order to take a *lower paying job* in a field she's "passionate" about. Meanwhile my friend literally took her old job and is kicking ass at it. My mother had an absurd collection of advanced degrees and a salary less than one-third of my dad's union job to show for it. I shunned advanced degrees and ended up in Ali Wong's position of paying off my husband's school debts. But that's ok, at least I'll feel like I've earned it when I spend the next half-decade being pregnant. Equality doesn't exist.

MichaelJMaier said...

My mom has a degree in accounting. Could probably pass the CPA exam but "doesn't want to be liable for anything she says".

Works in a grocery store deli. Paying off student debt.

..........................

Tell me she wants to go BACK TO SCHOOL. In her 60s. I didn't even pay enough attention to remember why or for what schooling at that point. It is all just idiotic babbling.

To say she is "rationality-deficient" would be kind.

Arthur Isaac said...

She got her PhD in Not Having Babies.

Whether it was in Physics or Women's Studies the result is the same.

dc.sunsets said...
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dc.sunsets said...

@ Amy, to the extent I can't suppress my empathy I feel pretty bad for the sons of many women. Your description informs me that such women hate their sons, and the sons will know it at some level.

All of this revolves around the perception of unlimited resources. Make-work jobs (for women), useless degrees costing $100-200k, the sense of entitlement....all of it screams "resources are infinite" to me.

I know I'm a broken record, but for 50 years the monetary system moved toward this current absurdity. The ability to enter the marketplace and "buy" is now thoroughly divorced from prior production.

When money is honest, in order to lend money you have to have first produced something and sold it for more than the cost of inputs. That tie was loosened in 1913, the snap-back of loose money/credit of 1920-29 taught "economists" that any tie at all was bad, and so between the 1960's and 1970's the tie was dispensed with altogether.

Fifty years of treating the IOU's of completely unproductive nation-states (no government produces any market good/service) as wealth has taught two generations that production does not precede consumption, and that consumption is entirely a function of (infinite) demand.

The snap-back will be unprecedented when it comes.

rumpole5 said...

Degree numbers actually make perfect sense. The female IQ clusters at the middle of the statistical bell curve. Males have larger numbers at the left, low IQ, and right, high IQ, of the bell curve. There are fewer men at the middle of the bell curve, and therefore, fewer men earning the "middling" sort of degrees in the humanities, education, nursing and the like. The larger number of men in the left, low IQ, side of the bell curve don't go to college and therefore don't earn degrees. When you consider the larger number of mid IQ women you would expect to see that they earn an overall larger number of degrees. On the other hand, the larger number of men than women in the right, high IQ, side of the statistical bell curve results in a larger number of men earning the STEM degrees that require high IQ.

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