In 1966, James Brown told us, “It’s a man’s man’s man’s world” – but more than 50 years later, that is no longer true, at least not on college campuses.
More and more, young men are failing to graduate from college and earn their degrees, either because they drop out or they choose never to attend in the first place.
The statistics show a pervasive gender gap on American campuses. During every year from 2000 to 2015, females aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in college at a greater rate than males of the same age. In 2015, 43 percent of young adult females were enrolled in degree-granting postsecondary institutions, compared to 38 percent of young adult males.
Female students made up 56 percent of total undergraduate enrollment in fall 2015, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Females also made up 58 percent of total post-baccalaureate enrollment that same semester.
The Denver Post reported women now hold nearly 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, and women account for nearly half of students in law, medical and business graduate programs – programs that used to be dominated by men.
According to education expert Dan Riseman, approximately three in 10 young men have dropped out of college during their freshman years over the past decade. Among those who remained, only 38 percent completed their bachelor’s degrees in four years and 58 percent finished within six.
Scott Greer, deputy editor at the Daily Caller and author of “No Campus for White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education into Hateful Indoctrination,” said the dearth of men in college has created negative ripple effects in other areas of society.
“Recent trends in education point to a future where women are vastly overrepresented in college attendance, and these recent findings confirm that,” Greer told WND. “It is very bad for society that men are falling behind in education. It has contributed greatly to the declining marriage rates for the college educated. Fewer college-educated men means fewer marriage options for college-educated women.”
The flight of men from colleges has been partially attributed to the hostility men face on modern campuses. It starts with all the hand-wringing over male students’ roles in “rape culture.” The Denver Post quoted one 24-year-old male community-college dropout as saying: “You definitely get the sense you are the problem. One woman once told me that she could use statistics to determine how many of my friends were rapists.”
Feminists these days urge Americans to “teach men not to rape.” To that end, many colleges have established mandatory workshops to teach freshmen about “sexual respect” and “consent.”
James Shelley, director of the Men’s Resource Center at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio, told the Denver Post date-rape-prevention programs have scared men away from campus because the programs “welcome young men to college by essentially telling them that they are potential rapists.”
On April 4, 2011, the Department of Education issued a letter to colleges and universities across the country requiring administrators to determine the guilt or innocence of students accused of felony sexual assault, and to reach those conclusions independent of what the police and courts decide. The letter led to a wave of lawsuits by young men alleging due process violations over false rape allegations.
In “No Campus for White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education into Hateful Indoctrination,” Greer debunks the common feminist talking point that says one in five women will be sexually assaulted at some point during her college career. He presents government data that paints a different picture: The percentage of female college students who became victims of sexual assault was only 0.61 percent.
What’s more, non-college attending women suffered a higher rate of sexual assault than their collegian peers, and the total number of sexual assaults went down from the late 1990s to the early 2010s.
Some colleges have created programs to help men unlearn “toxic masculinity,” to which they ascribe partial blame for the supposed spate of sexual assaults on campuses.
This is to say nothing of the incessant focus on “privilege” at many colleges – not just male privilege, but also white privilege, heterosexual privilege, able-bodied privilege and various other forms.
Greer said there is no question colleges have become much more hostile to men than to women.
“Colleges right now favor women,” he stated. “Men are less likely to stay in school if all they’re taught is how they need to check their toxic masculinity and their white male privilege. They also don’t want their lives ruined by false rape allegations, a trend that is becoming more prevalent in light of rape culture hysteria.
“Higher education now sees traditional masculinity as a problem, so it’s no surprise that men check out in response.”
