Ug...they even got Vox.
A well written and charty-goodness post, but he still considers the education/college degree gap a "real" gap.
There are two brief points I shall make as I'm trying to knock out a chapter per 4 days of my book:
1. Women earn the majority of EASY DEGREES. When it comes to engineering and anything that requires significant math men beat them at a ratio of 4:1. When it comes to Masters in Farting Unicorns and Doctorates in Feelings with Minors in Oprah, yes, women dominate. But for the stuff that matters in the world, men by far outcompete women.
2. Women are NOT going to be ahead in the world for this. It is NOT a good thing for women that they are earning the majority of degrees because they are buying into a bubble. It's like having women purchasing 70% of the housing in early 2007 and citing that as an example of some kind of performance gap.
Post post - Vox repsonds.
Academia, from the undergraduate to the PhD level, is one of the biggest pyramid schemes of modern history. Perhaps the biggest.
ReplyDeleteEven STEM fields are now lowering their standards to allow more women. There is also probably more emphasis on plugging in numbers in formulae these days, which is not what math or science in general is about. But hey, more graduates = more government/grant money.
"Women are NOT going to be ahead in the world for this."
That depends on how you look at it. In my country (the Netherlands) women are twice as likely to get hired as men. Their employment is also more stable. Not surpringly, there is widespread institutionalized feminism here, and in Europe as a whole. Openly speaking against it is a bad idea if you, as a male, aim for employment.
The establishment here in the EU actually seems to believe that disincentivizing men from economic engagement is a good idea, and if enough women populate the higher echelons of government and business, they will reverse the tanking economies. Well, I wish them all the luck.
"Masters in Farting Unicorns and Doctorates in Feelings with Minors in Oprah"
ReplyDeleteGold. Absolute gold.
Exactly right. There is a major college bubble going on right now. Graduates are coming away with skills that are far inferior to individuals who have learned by doing. I predict we'll see a return to widespread, multi-industry apprenticeship within your lifetime.
ReplyDeleteNah. I've learned from reading his blog since 2005 that when it appears he is missing something obvious I need to read more carefully. He's just a step ahead of what we are conditioned to expecting from a column. The unsustainable nature of the situation is lost on the average journalist, but for him it is too obvious to bother explaining.
ReplyDeleteThe last sentence dispels any notion that he thinks the gap is "real".
I have an online PhD in Farting.
ReplyDeleteHaving gone through computer science, I want to point out that although there may be 20% women, at least 90% of those women are foreign students, usually from China or India.
ReplyDeleteThere were never more than a couple of white girls, and I never saw a black woman.
I would expect the same to be true in engineering.
Give Vox a break. He is in the the current reality. He has kids, and you do not. You have the luxury of detachment.
ReplyDeleteHe's just looking out for them.