A Few(er) Good Men
October 1, 2021
Each of the following trends, in isolation, is perplexing. In concert, they are disturbing:
I’ve mentioned this topic before, highlighting an emerging crisis among young men, and it elicits a range of emotions and responses — especially in the reductionist world of social media.
Thanks, Roxane.
Neither the sex lives of young American men nor their relative rate of college attendance is that striking by itself. Except to the men involved. What should trouble all of us is what these statistics portend.
Family Matters
Families are the foundational element of society, and most successful families are the product of an intimate relationship between two adults. The most important decision most of us make in life is whether and whom to marry, and the most important person in our adult lives is our mate. Married people are 77% wealthier than single people, and their net worth typically increases 16% each year they’re together. Married people live longer and are happier than single people. Higher marriage rates are correlated with greater GDP per capita, greater economic mobility, and a reduction in child poverty of as much as 80%.
The path to forging these relationships typically involves sex. If a young adult hasn’t had sex in the past year, it’s unlikely that person is on the path toward a long-term bond with someone. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that it is any one group’s responsibility to sexually “service” another. What we need to be thoughtful about is how our policies and attitudes ensure that the most people have the opportunity and motivation to pursue long-term, productive relationships.
Meet Up (Online)
We used to meet potential mates at school, at work, through friends, and out in the world. No longer.
And online dating … shares flaws with other technologies that scale our instincts. Algorithms are indifferent to social interests, and that, coupled with human nature, gave us January 6 and QAnon.
Dating apps sort potential partners into a tiny group of haves and a titanic group of have-nots. On Hinge, the top 10% of men receive nearly 60% of the “likes” — the comparable figure for women is 45%. The bottom 80% of male Tinder users, based on percentage of likes received, are competing for the bottom 22% of women. If it were a country, Tinder would be among the most unequal in the world.
What is driving this division? As with so much else online, dating apps don’t change human nature, they focus it — like a kid with a magnifying glass melting ants. Regardless of how we meet potential mates, we sort them in large part based on looks and earning potential. Algorithms magnify that effect.
Women are particularly concerned with the earning potential of future mates, across cultures and over time. A 1989 study found that in 37 countries and sub-groups, women consistently value the financial capacity of a potential partner more than men do. In the U.S., financial prospects were nearly 30% more important to women than to men. In a 2017 survey, 71% of American women said it’s “very important” for a man to support his family financially. Only 25% of men said the same about a woman. In sum, women mate (socioeconomically) horizontally and up, and men do it horizontally and down.
Winner Take Most
Marriage rates in the U.S. have been on the decline for decades. The group that’s seen the sharpest decline? Poor men. Between 1970 and 2011, the marriage rate for the lowest earning quartile fell by nearly 35%, while that of the highest quartile fell by less than 15%.
The most powerful signal of earning potential, especially for people in their 20s who haven’t yet realized their potential, is a college degree. College-educated men earn a median $900,000 more over their lifetime than those who only graduated from high school. A college degree also increases your chances of getting married by 30%.
The result of fewer men in college? Fewer men that women are interested in.
This is good for nobody. It’s bad for women, who have fewer potential mates. Men at the top of the pyramid have access to near on-demand sexual partners, but that’s a disincentive to forging a long-term relationship, which doesn’t bode well for their long-term happiness — see the previous data about the benefits of marriage.
And then there’s the increasing number of men in the body of the pyramid, who will be left not merely without sex, but without any onramp to the intimate relationships upon which so much of their happiness, and our social capital, is built.
Second-Order Effects
So what? America spent its first 300 years treating women as second-class citizens — what’s wrong with young men getting the short end of the stick for a while? If this were just about fairness or feelings, then fine, let there be churn. But there are several externalities that could have profound effects on our commonwealth and the global community.
First, less partnering and propagation means fewer babies. Declining birth rates are toxic for economic health. For a glimpse at the declining-birth-rate future, look at Japan, where birth and marriage rates have fallen to record lows. There are now just 2.1 working-age Japanese for every retiree, the lowest ratio in the world. In the United States there are 3.9. The world average is 7.
At the Code Conference this week, automaker and future Martian Elon Musk said: “Possibly the single greatest risk to human civilization is the rapidly diminishing birth rate … No babies, no humanity.”
My Pivot cohost, Kara Swisher, likes to claim that lesbians and evangelicals are the only groups having kids, but at less than 5% of the population, gay couples would need to have literally dozens of children to reverse these trends … Your move, Kara.
Second, a large and growing cohort of bored, lonely, poorly educated men is a malevolent force in any society, but it’s a truly terrifying one in a society addicted to social media and awash in coarseness and guns.
Men are already more likely than women to believe in conspiracy theories. Increased frustration about their lack of life choices and greater jealousy stoked by the images of success they see on their screens will push underachieving men further toward conspiracy theories, radicalization, and nihilist politics. I say “will” because I’m focused on the future, but a preview of that future is already here. Of the 620 people charged so far in the January 6 riot, 86% are men.
Global problems, including climate change and more frequent pandemics, require a massive investment of human capital and a renewed respect for intellectualism … and science.
Third, while the forces of technology and social change are taking much from young men, it’s unlikely they will lose their political power. This may be the dark heart of the matter. Politicians will emerge from this class, and many more will pander to them. Donald Trump was not an anomaly — privileged men of wealth rising to power on the message that “this isn’t your fault,” and then demonizing other groups is a greatest hit of nationalism and the facism it often inspires.
Men have characteristics which make it easier for them to accumulate and protect wealth and power. Numerous studies have shown that candidates with deeper voices win more votes. A 25% lower vocal pitch is associated with an increase of $187,000 in annual CEO salary. People who are 6 feet tall earn $166,000 more over a 30-year career than those who are 5 feet 5 inches — even controlling for gender, age, and weight. The explanation, many psychologists believe, is increased confidence. One psychologist explains that the “process of literally ‘looking down on others’ may cause one to be more confident.” Since the advent of mass media, every president has been taller than the average American male, and the winning candidate has been on average 1.5 inches taller than his opponent. Overall, American men are over 5 inches taller than American women.
Women who run for office face substantial opposition on the basis of gender, from sexist remarks to disinformation to physical violence. Trumpism, with or without Trump, is the politics of frustration, alienation, and rage. It will only gain in power if these emotions become more prevalent.
For 40 years, more women have matriculated at colleges, yet only 24% of Congress is female. What we’ve witnessed is an explosion in elected officials who pander to a dangerous, and growing, cohort of men who refuse to embrace science — or even agree that there is “truth.” Without the connective tissue of truth and science, it will be near impossible to address future pandemics, much less climate change. There’s a link between a reduction in opportunities for young men and hundreds of millions of doses of Covid vaccine likely to expire unused by year-end.
Turning the Tide
The increase in opportunities for women (and for people of color) is an important step forward. There is no justification for reversing these hard-fought wins.
However, we must do more.
While men enjoy numerous inherent and societal advantages — from deeper voices to private clubs — there are actually significant obstacles facing boys. It starts early, with small differences. For example, 80% of kindergartener parents expect their girls to attend college, while 77% of parents expect their boys to. But such small differences expand over time. The disparity in parental expectations grows by 10 percentage points by fifth grade. Boys act out more than girls and face harsher discipline, especially in single-parent homes, where boys are 13 percentage points more likely than girls to have been spanked in the past week. Overall, 1 in 4 boys experience at least one school suspension in the eighth grade, compared to 1 in 10 girls. School suspension is predictive of college attendance and college completion, and boys, normalized for behavior, are twice as likely to be suspended. (Black students are also more likely to be disciplined, and black boys face even greater disparities.) Finally, in the nation with the world’s highest incarceration rate, men are imprisoned at 14 times the rate of women. And 70% of prisoners didn’t complete high school.
We must do more at every level, but I’d focus on college, because I believe it’s a transformative experience for most people.
When I applied to UCLA, the acceptance rate was 74%. I had to apply twice. After my initial rejection, I secured a job installing shelving in Ontario, California. Spending the day in closets, getting high with my co-workers after work … it dawned on me, “Maybe this isn’t what I want to do with my life.” So I appealed the decision and got in. That changed my life and set the foundation for me to become a robust citizen.
Today only 12 out of 100 kids get in. Admissions directors no longer have the capacity to reach into the homes of unremarkable kids raised by single immigrant mothers and give them the opportunities my generation enjoyed.
This reflects a conscious decision in America to sequester opportunities to the children of rich people and kids who are freakishly remarkable at 17. This plays on a collective hallucination that all of us are raising remarkable children. I can prove that 99% of our children are not in the top 1%. We managed to scale Facebook from a $63 billion company in 2012 to almost $1 trillion today, but we couldn’t increase the seats at UCLA by more than 6% in that same time?
And UCLA is better than most (the UC system overall wants to add 20,000 seats by 2030). In 2007 the Ivy League schools accepted 22,180 applications. In 2021, they accepted 22,805. That’s a 0.2% annual increase (while tuition increased by more than 4% per year). In 2007, Apple sold 1.4 million iPhones; in 2021 it sold 218 million — a 43% annual increase. We can figure out how to make more than 700 million supercomputers that run all day on a battery and fit in your pocket, but we can’t add thousands of seats to colleges with $40 billion endowments? College has become the enforcer of an emerging caste system, abandoning promising (if not obviously remarkable) young adults. There are so many of them. We must, and we can, give them their shot. We need a grand bargain that, in exchange for additional funding, demands our great public institutions leverage technology to double the number of freshman seats in the next decade.
Extend the benefits of a college education to more women, more people of color, more foreign students, more handicapped kids, more poor kids — and more artists and engineers and poets and biologists. And more men. America is not about exceptionalism, but acceptance.
Life is so rich,
P.S. Nearly everyone I know who works in marketing or branding has the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On on their bookshelf. It was written by Jonah Berger, and now he’s teaching Section4’s next sprint on Viral Growth Sprint. Sign up here.
For more information on why this is happening I recommend these books: Man Interrupted by Philip Zimbardo, The War on Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers, The Boy Crisis by Warren Farrell.
In addition Men without Work by Nicholas Eberstadt goes into how this trend among others may already be harming the country.
The issue is real, the conclusions and solutions somewhat as well, but too simplistic.
What I do agree with is that most girls do have an unrealistically high expectations of their potential partner.
Fortunately, I am quite high in the pyramid and since quite long time off-the-market, so it’s not really my issue, but…
I do remember, and still encounter my female friends to reject based on look/ status guys who from outside perspective should be a quite good fit (before taking the personality into consideration). Then they were waiting for ‘the one’, which happened to be also ‘the one’ for their friends and a bunch of other girls, thus leaving all but one of them disappointed, until when they felt the clock is ticking and they settling on pretty much anyone who was ‘in the reach’
In America, men have little to gain from marriage, and much to lose in divorce court.
And you wonder why there is little interest in getting married?
Gone are the days of social bullying and societal expectations that marriage is something a man had to do to be viewed as success.
What does the high school valedictorians have to do with any of this? Newflash – useless citation of useless statistics doesn’t prove your point, if anything, it weakens it.
The fact that the majority of American women simultaneously expect a man to provide for them while they earn as much if not more than most men underscores the irrationality of the American women. She wants to be taken care of, but only if it is her choice. If its a man’s desire, its the patriarchy. Got to fight the patriarchy!
American men aren’t dating less. They are dating delusional irrational American women less.
Women from other countries are less masculine, are more feminine, look dress and act like, you know, women. In other words, they are less argumentative, less bitchy, and actually pleasant to be around.
Intelligent men know the only way not to lose is not to play the game. Don’t bother with American women and you’ll be just fine.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
You’re the winner! Of the dumbest comment I’ll read today.
Whoa. Are we bitter? Just like not all men are duds, neither are all women. Although , I’m Canadian so my opinion or contribution to any discourse is considered irrelevant by virtue of this same American male arrogance.
Scott does a good job of broadly touching on many reasons that this crisis is emerging.
I’m particularly interested in the effects of Online Dating. Scott is correct that men at the top of the pyramid have almost endless options. I do think that most of these men (when they hit a certain age at least) are very open to settling down. They are just in no hurry and are willing to date/sleep with many different women as they search.
Along with this they are willing to sleep with women and engage in short to mid term relationships that are non-monogamous in nature, while never actually considering these women as potential long term partners. (I realized I did this unintentionally to a few partners in the past and also realize how shitty it was. I thought it was casual and they eventually said they wanted something more. I also realized that having these type of relationships made it really easy to cruise along and not put in the effort to find the right person to settle down with.) The effects that this has on the dating market as a whole are pretty catastrophic.
The % of men who women find desirable enough to date is much lower than the % of women who men find desirable enough to date. (Look at any OLD statistics and this is what the data shows.) This isn’t a bash on either gender it is just how things are.
I think Online Dating apps also give us all unrealistic expectations. I get a daily “Standouts” on Hinge. These are all incredibly attractive women who from their photos look like they live interesting lives. It usually is about 10 profiles a day and I’m pretty sure it is the same 35-50 profiles cycled through over and over again. Swiping through Hinge it seems like there are endless attractive interesting women available to date. But really there isn’t. There are a large number but a low percentage. However, I worry that these people become the standard of what enough singles think they deserve that it is going to stop people from connecting with partners who very well could be a better fit.
I don’t think the OLD platforms care about how they make it harder for people to connect but if they did I still am unsure that they have any answers of how to help people connect better.
I have read articles over the past few years that the biggest predictor of family size is the educational level of women, regardless of country. If that’s true then the lack of college educated men isn’t the problem.
Your comments ignore the failure of our public school system. Your linear thinking about the benefits of college perpetuates the myth that it is necessary. You cite the scalability of Facebook & Apple but don’t mention that neither Zuckerberg, Jobs or Bates graduated from college. What young men are missing in high school is vocational training. Who is going to install all those electric car chargers when the culture (especially Obama) is telling our young men getting your hands dirty working is a bad thing?
Our schools have worked hard to strip the testosterone from our young men by degenderizing everything. The lack of male role models in our single parent households makes it near impossible to counter what is happening in our schools. It is small wonder boys are disciplined more when they are square pegs being jammed into round holes. Is that why Vo-Tech has been cancelled? Because it isn’t preferred by women? That may be part of it, but in reality, we have become an elitist culture (Obama again) that needs a continuous stream of testosterone laden men crossing the border to do the work we have bred out of our own sons.
When will the country wake up to the self inflicted damage it is doing? Surprisingly, it might just be all those immigrants who will assert themselves and say ‘This is not good enough for our children.’
Single income households (mostly women) are the elephants in the room that few media will or liberal politicians will acknowledge. Lower income families and missing role models (mostly men) equates to more poverty and less male mentoring for all children, followed by less disciplined education, drug use, higher violent crime and comtinued urban troubled culture.
So to feed their arrogant political greed, they ignore the elephant while blaming everyday violence on guns – not the fingers on the triggers – and demographic inequities on racism – not missing healthy structured family conditions. Then mail another pathetic monthly government check to pander and insure their next vote.
Hi Scott/ Prof. G
I enjoyed the post. I personally witness every day with my family the effects of social media is having on my teenage daughter. It’s a requirement to fit in these days to be on IG and SC if you wish fit in socially. I think at this time in history we have a moment where technology has been unleashed faster and faster without questions being asked as to what it’s doing to society. Lonely poor men don’t go outside or have a great social life for a variety of reasons, but hey that’s when they turn to social media….. No reason to have a social outlet when you don’t have to do anything other than have an internet connection! Meanwhile many of your posts involve social media giants that depend on the usage to sell services and advertising. AI/ML is already a reality, and so is IoB. Lot’s of profit to be made there but hey maybe people won’t see a need to breed any longer as we go! My brain has just gone to full Terminator dystopia!
Scott as all liberals believe grading and admission to college should use criteria other than merit ( grades , tests, exceptional other contributions ) but should be based according to the ethnic back-round . I wonder if Scott looking for medical help requests a doctor trained under the “acceptance” criteria or one of exceptionalism ? We all know that answer but Scott et.al. will dishonestly claim other wise . Typical of ” intellectual progressives “
You can’t even spell “background,” right. But please, do tell us more.
I’m a huge fan of Scott, but regret how political bias affects his thinking. The January march on Washington was wrong, but paled compared to the Portland type riots in size, property damage, and lives lost. Scott had no problem with those, they were peaceful? The vice president of the United States smilingly approved those horrible riots and predicted they would continue. This plague of liberalism is destroying the country at a faster clip than falling birth rates could ever do.
The Portland type riots were a bunch of disjointed actors lashing out in anger and caused damage despite the urging of leaders on both sides of the aisle for peaceful, nondestructive demonstrations. The January 6th riot was a concerted political effort pushed by people in power and is now being defended by many in power as a legitimate use of violence. This is not to speak at all about the political underpinnings and goals of the January 6th rioters.
Yes political, 1/6, but what person in a party said attack? I could go on and on, and I’m no conspiracy nut… It’s strange that the reaction was to essentially have 15k troops guarding with fences for months…. Talk about reaction to a small riot where nobody was armed, and a ‘rioter’ was shot dead by an armed police officer (with no warning). Imagine if that amount of force would have been used in the Summer of Love (especially with the whole COVID scare….).
We have a morality crisis.
Younger generations of women are overwhelmingly incapable of self-reflection. Women are showered with accolades by society for their merits solely because of their gender, and what is often seen as an incredible feat for a young women is a non-event for her male counterpart. Yet, most of these women are almost entirely incapable of self-reflection and use their sexuality and men’s vulnerability to inflate their egos and manipulate their odds of success at will.
You will find most young women on dating apps are solely their for self-affirmation and most young women are disgusted by even non-abrasive attention from men they do not want to acknowledge exist, even though they post highly sexualized content on their social media accounts, wear three inch heels and a tight dress into the office or go to the coffee shop in daisy dukes.
They want to be desired, to create lust, but they do not want to be chased and they do not want to settle. Instead they only consent to sex when their inhibitions are down or they’re feeling self-pity and are only use relationships as a “home base” while continuing to avoid confronting the reality of the man she may be with.
Not all women mind you.
Hi Scott, thank you for your article. In few instances it felt you have taken the data that is easier to prove your point without considering the counter weight for thise arguments. For example, 1. has costlier education and healthcare led to lower child birth in the years corresponding to the decline. 2. Not all countries obviously are having similar rate of decline as the average is seven.What is the social scenario that is different that hopefully US adopts before the reverse and unfavorable adoption takes place.
Will be happy to get your thoughts on this.
if I have children someday,
for the sake of the child I will hope it’s a daughter. I have little doubt in my mind that a daughter will have an easier, more emotionally rewarding life and more social mobility than a son born today would in the years to come (here in the usa).
I don’t think you can argue without deviating from what data suggests pertaining to wealth, education and general happiness if you are considering the realities of social mobility and well-being.
The baby thing. What does eternal growth look like then, given the state of the world. Eternal growth is not sustainable, and this is just as true for human population as it is for carbon emissions as it is for anything else that depends on eternal growth. Like capitalism.
Finally, where I live (Quebec) people have stopped getting married. Pretty much. It’s often odd in certain settings to hear people talk about their spouses (as opposed to their partners). Our society hasn’t collapsed. Not that I’ve noticed. Then again, I’ve been inside a lot for the past 18 months.
While I agree with the foundational argument, it ignores a bigger question: what is the goal of college.
1. Most people shouldn’t need a four year degree—if high schools actually taught what they claim to.
2. College admissions have exploded since you were a kid (though elite colleges haven’t). Today, you would be tracked into California’s second tier college system to do remedial work before transferring into UCLA. Skills training options have expanded and you’re ignoring that.
3. Military, union and guild training tracks have become less practical after forty years of peace and deregulation.
The question to ask is why has the economic potential of males proportionally decreased while the potential of others increased…and it’s because real growth (not stock equity and housing stock growth) slowed to a crawl.
This is causing us to slice the pie thinner, instead of fighting over a new one.
Wow! This one was all over the place. Much of which I agree with but some, not so much. Progressives/Left still don’t understand Trump and the people that voted for him. And the current WH Administration? God help ALL of us.
You are absolutely right. The Democrats still have absolutely no idea how to approach Trumpism and are allowing themselves to be constantly derailed by perpetuating the noxious virtue signaling culture we have.
Instead of wondering how to accommodate more moderates and open themselves up to the silent majority of liberal voters they keep telling us how inadequate we are.
“Women are particularly concerned with the earning potential of future mates, across cultures and over time. A 1989 study found that in 37 countries and sub-groups, women consistently value the financial capacity of a potential partner more than men do. In the U.S., financial prospects were nearly 30% more important to women than to men. In a 2017 survey, 71% of American women said it’s “very important” for a man to support his family financially. Only 25% of men said the same about a woman. In sum, women mate (socioeconomically) horizontally and up, and men do it horizontally and down.”
If this were reversed, all kinds of iniquity would be read into it. Does this entrenched bias make women unpalatably materialistic? Does it mean that they’re disposed to seeking mates from a greedy, shallow, morally questionable position? Actually, yes it does, if we disregard the genetic predispositions that have made them that way. Fine and dandy, as long as we equally regard as perfectly anodyne most of those male characteristics that so exercise ideological feminists. Or is gender bias in the workplace more important than gender bias in choosing a mate by a calculated assessment of his potential – when it is a him – to give a woman the materially advantaged life that she expects the target man mainly to provide? (I use the term ‘ideological feminist’ following the usage of it by Katherine Young & Paul Nathanson, authors of the quartet Spreading Misandry, Legalizing Misandry, Sanctifying Misandry and Replacing Misandry, all from McGill-Queens University Press over the span of several years.)
“So what? America spent its first 300 years treating women as second-class citizens — what’s wrong with young men getting the short end of the stick for a while?”
Men have been expected to sacrifice themselves in war, by doing by far the most dangerous jobs and dying from those jobs in droves to this day, by receiving much greater severity in prison terms for exactly the same crimes as women and, Warren Farrell’s favourite example, by being required by the mores of a misandrist society to accept without scruple that women and children should get preferential treatment when the lifeboats are needed.
That is, the fact that this rather revolting question can even be asked so nonchalantly, and without any need for reassuring condemnation, is in stark contrast to what would be needed – genuflection and virtue signalling – if a commentator asked “So what?” about any of the myriad issues that women raise indicating bias shown to them, or disadvantages they face on account of their gender. And that’s true even in the case of asking the question only rhetorically.
“Men are already more likely than women to believe in conspiracy theories. Increased frustration about their lack of life choices and greater jealousy stoked by the images of success they see on their screens will push underachieving men further toward conspiracy theories, radicalization, and nihilist politics. I say “will” because I’m focused on the future, but a preview of that future is already here. Of the 620 people charged so far in the January 6 riot, 86% are men”
As you point out, women demand that a man’s ability to provide for them materially is central to them in determining whether he may be a suitable mate. Have any serious commentators ever addressed the moral dimension of this somewhat disgusting bias? The men in the lower reaches of the pyramid you mention have been stripped of almost all of their post-war means of earning a decent living, have been widely excoriated qua men since the late 1960s, and have even had their ‘male’ hormone, testosterone, abhorred across virtually all media, popular and scholarly. Have you ever heard anyone in the chattering class question this abhorrence with the distaste it ought to engender? Have you ever heard of anyone from that class pointing out that without their share of testosterone, women would be roughly as active as manatees or sloths? In what sense are these men “underachieving”? In the main, they aren’t. In the main, their class has been destroyed and their opportunities with it? Remember class? Apparently not with much interest.
More importantly, have you ever heard anyone from the chattering class point out that when you double the available labour pool by making it equally open to both genders, you virtually guarantee that these men will see their income reduced to the trickle that has so predictably resulted from the trickledown economic madness? And of course that’s exactly not going to help them win a mate, as you point out. Economically, men from the lower reaches of the pyramid have suffered proportionately much more than women have from the neoliberal economics that is virtually unmentioned in your analysis as possibly the driver for most of the social discontent felt by men. Granted, the dependant women whose mates these men are suffer with them. (Yes, I’m aware that women entered the pool with their gender being a detriment to advancement and an equal wage. But the men I’m speaking about were, and are, in the overwhelming majority of those who have been economically destroyed by neo-liberalism. To my knowledge, no respected economist has dared to address the elephant in this particular room; namely, the deleterious social and economic effects on our entire society that have arisen mainly by doubling the available labour pool, thus enabling the oligarchs who control our economic lives to become oligarchs in the first place.)
“Third, while the forces of technology and social change are taking much from young men, it’s unlikely they will lose their political power. This may be the dark heart of the matter.”
Dark heart? This rather obviously misandrist statement, along with the soft misandry of your entire post, are what prompted this lengthy reply to the latter. Dark heart? Let me offer an example of the presumably unconscious misandry of the post. The purported need to dismantle the male majority in universities has been obviated by what has become a female majority. This reversal has been painted by the chattering class as a triumph, instead of the morally repugnant societal failure it was supposed to have been when men were in that way in the ascendant. Has anyone of any repute in the social sciences dissected this equally morally repugnant turn of events? Where is the incessant clamour in support of redressing the balance this time? In this context, your “So what?” isn’t exactly the pinnacle of moral or gender even-handedness. I imagine you meant it only rhetorically. But did you feel any need to genuflect to appease a likely demonization if you didn’t? I doubt it.
My old friend Professor Steven Goldberg (ret’d), author of The Inevitability of Patriarchy, commented in one of his many articles that after each time he defended the book in colloquia and such, male social scientists would approach him quietly after he spoke and aver that they actually mainly agreed with his analysis. This after having prodded him publicly with somewhat hostile questions and comments. They would then invariably say that they hadn’t dared to agree with him publicly for fear of losing their jobs and their academic respectability. Steven’s closing observation in the piece was: “We used to call this lying.”
It’s easy enough to get a college degree. They suck. So do the bullshit jobs they funnel you towards. Jumping through college hoops just so I can date? Lmao. Try again.
Maybe scaling market caps quicker than necessary evolutionary traits is the problem. We are exceeding the organic limits, growing the bank accounts of very few while others are lost. Also growing bank account does not ensure good sex as most of these guys gross out women
Staring at the symptoms while ignoring the disease. Long on the shoulds and short on everything else. Disaffected young men are a consequence of empire. If the elites can’t eliminate them, then the empire will fall and humans get to try again. Same as it ever was. Humans have always had power law distributions of income. Nothing here changes that. And if we get back on the exponential population growth curve, in a few decades the entire planet would be paved with people, farms, and cities and roads… and not much else. Your choice is war or population decline. Choose or a choice will be made for you.
Incoherent article at best, a collection of independent factoids.
Nice, well reasoned article even if a bit spread out.
So, it seems that someone had sex with you, after all😁🤢
Great insight but you glossed over impacts to the BIPOC cohort. Perhaps colleges are discriminating against people of colour which is why the incremental increases are so small (just a thought)
There is nothing wrong with chastity either, maybe people are realizing the “hook up” culture is not all that it’s cracked up to be and are waiting for the right partner. The workforce is shifting and when Boomers fully exit there will be a massive gaping hole for every employer around the world.
Sad to see someone as intellectually provocative as Mr. Galloway still be caught as a prisoner in the moment to the ramblings of the New York City / higher education echo chamber.
Women as second class citizens in the last 300 years? Really? Were men “first class citizens” when they were marched off to war time and time again? Or to work statistically much more longer and dangerous jobs in the name of providing for their families? Or as a whole to have little access to literacy, healthcare, educational opportunities etc during the bulk of that time? Unfortunately we likely can’t have this conversation, but if you were to ask her grand mother – and even better her grand mother – if they viewed themselves as second class citizens chained down by the patriarchy they would likely laugh in return.
Yes times change and what it means to be “fair” of “equal” changes and will always continue to change. But don’t view the standards of today to the lives of yesteryear and try to force our modern values into those in the past and assume that because there’s a gap that there was some horrible oppression going on. Perpetuating this nonsense is only continuing the gender war dynamic that makes trying to solve the problems you talk about so difficult. For as intelligent as you and your peers believe yourself to be, you still can’t see past your noses far enough to not partake in a “who has it worse” pissing contest.
Yes, men went to war and worked hard jobs. At the same time, women could not vote, own property, apply for most jobs, earned less when they worked, and we’re afforded significantly few opportunities much of those 300 years. There’s nothing nostalgic about that.
Again, falling for the same mistake. When you are married at 21 you are a family unit that makes money, that owns property, that votes. Apples and oranges to our lives today
Just dropping by to say that I really enjoy all your articles (this one is particularly good) and congrats on your future show on CNN+!
Phew! What an insightful article. Though your examples and data are US-centric, I think the insights you’ve brought out are probably applicable across many countries !
Wow! 🤔
Scott….. I enjoy your work. I especially enjoy how you express your ideas. So many in your field are worried about the backlash they could receive from big Corporations. (At times I notice Kara “goes easy” on Corporations like Facebook). Anyway…..keep going!!!!
What makes UCLA a “better” school? Most people equate a low acceptance rate as an indicator of quality. After years in Higher Ed I can say that is an erroneous conclusion and is part of the reason so many young adults start their adult life with huge and unnecessary debt.
Insightful post. This spans beyond the US I feel and is global.
+1 on the “love your stuff but tired of your blaming Trump.”
Always amazes me how liberals consider themselves so smart but act so stupid. Your January 6, 2021 was our summer of 2020: riots, looting and murder. If you “believe science” then you should be able to do the simple math as to what the more destructive ideology is.
“Your January 6,2021 was our Summer of 2020.” Was one of the most ignorant statements I have seen in awhile. If you can not see the difference, you need to get your head checked out. Seriously……..
You are right. One group was over the course of weeks, far more violent, far more deadly, far more destructive than the other
And both accomplished nothing
Do the math Tom. The numbers are readily available. As for the ad hominem attacks you basically prove my point.
Wow……what a total clueless statement. Did listening to Trump drone on and on over nothing for 4 years render you Brain-dead?
“Declining birth rates are toxic for economic health.” Perhaps. But population growth is the fundamental factor underpinning virtually every force contributing to climate change. Until humanity figures out an economic alternative to mandatory infinite growth, the planet will continue to strike back more and more mercilessly.
But at least the TV cable will work 😉
Multiply by the hundreds of thousands of un- and under-employed young men in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Eh, there’s some truth that uneducated incel boys are turning violent, nasty and dangerous, but dudes STILL have it better than women. Women MUST have MASTERS degrees to even ENTER many female-dominated fields — librarians, teachers, social workers, etc, which, when they finally get in, pay shit. Dudes who are high school dropouts with a little raw muscle can still have comfortable careers as plumbers, construction workers, landscapers, boat captains, etc w a fraction of the barrier-to-entry. The more and more I think about it, every problem on Earth goes back to capitalism (the few taking from the masses) and male domination — burning thru natural resources, burdening kids with loans, greedy people owning multiple houses while many cannot afford even one, etc., and men resorting to brute force whenever they don’t get their way, whether that’s a lone wolf incel or a gigantic military. What a backwards way to see the world — that the reason to have kids is to keep the (intangible, destructive) economy going.
A man entering college is a victim in waiting. He will be assaulted verbally by effeminate male and angry female professors from day one, especially if he is white and straight. He may awkwardly attempt to have a social live, but no doubt will trip over at least one messed up woman in waiting. Say the wrong thing or *gasp* touch that women and you could see your life ruined. The rules from Obama administration allowed women/girls to claim assault without providing any evidence. There is no legal system trial, just the ruling of an administrator. You are branded. Cannot get into another college, you are a criminal with no parole. Sadly, this was a reality for many boys. Results were a spade of suicides on one end and multi-million dollar law suits on the other. Yet another reason why the radical left is eating the higher ed system. Boy are just the first to go.
It’s only going to get worse.
wow and here I was feeling pretty good about new treatments for COVID. If we truly believe in the evil lurking within the hearts of disaffected young men can we perhaps stop the incessant drumbeat of negativism and fearmongering amongst ourselves?
Question:
Can you provide us with the data (or a graph) behind this statement – “For example, 80% of kindergartener parents expect their girls to attend college, while 77% of parents expect their boys to. But such small differences expand over time. The disparity in parental expectations grows by 10 percentage points by fifth grade. ” Thanks.
I fear that the expectations for college attendance drop as kids age, but I’d be very interested to know how.
The first linked source, page 13.
Have you considered video games and online porn?
People reading this might also be interested in this article. Scott, I think you’d appreciate the comparison it makes.
https://unherd.com/2020/06/incels-could-become-the-new-vikings/
I think that much of the discourse around angry young men is unhelpful. The language of liberals has become about checking collective privileges, but young white men from disadvantaged backgrounds listen to that thinking “what privilege?”. So much is written about the white protest vote, reflexively fighting for the last of their privileges. But that discourse ignores the fact that white households have been at the sharp end of the erosion of the middle class. Just because you have it slightly better than the poor minority guy/girl standing next to you doesnt mean you have it great. Liberal doctrine makes it sound like the world is the oyster of every white man with a popular. The gulf between that and reality works against our common interest.
As a privileged white liberal I hear it endlessly from my friends, that these men are some latent Jim Crowe immune response, but we can’t stop these guys from turning away from us if we don’t offer them a hand too.
*every white man with a pulse.
Thank you Scott. Your observations on the majority of young men match up with my lived experience working with them. Furthermore, there are a group of men, of which I am part of, who are college-educated, are raising a family while, taking care of aging parents. In my case, I have a low functioning autistic adult that we also take care of. My neurotypical child doesn’t want to have kids and is completely turned off when it comes to marriage I love my family, but the stress of it all, and a stalled career, means no sex, no money, and no confidence in any future opportunities. I feel we are going to continue to fail our kids if we live in a society where we are failing each other.
The only…and I mean ONLY…negative outcome of reducing the rate of growth is that it will torpedo the ponzi scheme that is our artificial economy (where it only succeeds if the pie keeps getting larger). My mom grew up in the rural (and poor) south during the depression, which she tells me was pretty unaffected by the depression. When everything they had was what they provided for themselves, it didn’t matter what happened on Wall Street. They traded and bartered for anything they couldn’t make themselves…Just like Adam Smith’s observations of a free market economy. With this one exception, there is not a problem in the world that would not be substantially reduced if the population were to be cut in half tomorrow.
Dude, you can move to the outback and grow your own beans any time. The rest of us would rather have luxuries like media, antibiotics, and the occasional trip to Paris.
Of course you like your luxuries. That’s why everything has to crash first. No one in their right mind would give up their unsustainable, but more comfortable, way of living unless they didn’t have a choice. Enjoy it while you can.
A very bleak outlook that if it comes to pass means George Orwell’s 1984 is not too far away. People will elect politicians who will want power by implementing policies to enslave the voters. Woke is the beginning.
Scott, a brilliant insight of a long term problem for most of the countries of the world.
That is why the world is going back from civilization to barbarie.
The way to solve it, is making real universality, free, and obligatory, all the educational system phases from kindergarten to college, inclusive.
To become a citizen, people must have education at the high level.
Old Greek philosophers as Plato in his book “The Republic” and others, visualized it, more than 2 thousand years ago, with very less population and “city nations”.
And it continues to be fundamental, with “country states” with a world of close to 8 thousand million people, more than 300 million in USA, 1.4 thousand million in China and also in India.
Finally, that is why the more robust societies in democracy and human rights are in the last 70 years in the Nordic countries, they univerzalized Education in all the system levels, with high rates of college fulfillment for both sexes, and any sexual orientation.
Let’s see what the humanity random walk will produce in the next future.
The under representation of men among college students is the responsibility of primary and secondary schools. For decades normal male behavior has been demonized. Competition has been replaced by cooperation.
Is it really surprising that young men leave the academy, which indoctrinates its young about “Toxic Masculinity “?
Oh, and, is it possible to make without making a reference to DJT? That topic is a bore.
It seemed more like you wanted to make your own point than to reply to the article. Toxic masculinity is demonstrably the bigger problem here. Where we might find some common ground is in the chucking out of all masculinity in the process. You have to bring up DJT, because he was a devastating externality of the trends being discussed, and a potential sign of things to come.
The ‘toxic masculinity’ meme is just insecure and neurotic men who cannot get a date. They honestly believe that women want men to be passive, dismissive, and effeminate. That belief lasts up to but not after the first time a girl blows them off for being a ‘wimp’.
Thanks for this post. May I recommend the book “The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It.” by Warren Farrell to you and anyone else who wants to learn more about the disparities and challenges of young men.
Since you (and so many of your Democrat4Evers) love to hate, and you simply must stick a finger in the eye of the strawman out there (antler wearing rubes of Jan 6) I just gotta get this out there… if you all refuse to even acknowledge the existence of the worldview of the “geographic majority” of this country (not the popular vote majority, obviously), well, then you will just be so unnecessarily stunned the rest of your lives when you are confronted by the radical, wild, conspiracy-believing, bible reading, traditionalists out there – those few people who for instance do the farming, feed the country, fix the plumbing, start the businesses… just the few proud engines of our economy… and who may well be working on a plan for soft or hard secession, in FL, in TX… away from Chicago, away from Cali, away from all those dark blue dumpsterfires… and I will come around to the point on disappearing males I promise.
Trumpism is the topic for the Dem4Ever peeps it’s dingdong the witch is dead let us dance upon his grave – and fine, have your fun but recognize in truth the country is really close to 50/50 —- so call it whatever you want but IT is not dead and won’t be dying soon – here are three key aspects the deplorables who I really hope will keep fighting against the radical ideological incursion racing across this country: 1. IT is a large middle finger aimed at the coastal elites who know best for me but not for thee—who seize authoritarian power with relish and run their districts straight into the ground; these people want to return to the American legacy promises a) all men created equal – judge by character and fruit, not by color of skin; b) limited government; c) life liberty pursuit of happiness and d) leave me the f* alone – we all have the same laws and opportunities. 2. Let us try the name “RAND-ism” (ayn rand paul / however you slice it) = a nation of laws with minimal winner-picking, where hardworking law abiding people who respect each other’s rights are able to do their business in peace and not have some bs shoved down their throat in schools or via woke policy du jour. Scoreboard: Where are the lines to get into socialist paradises versus the lines to get into the USA (they want the OLD ‘Merica not the new & improved one by the way). 3. h/t’s to prior commenter re traditional values (Alex) because, yeah, Hollywood and the left (but I repeat myself) have helped win the war aimed at destruction of the family culture over the past few decades with the dull male idiot role models and the rejection of the core traditional family and the mandatory celebration of everything else (feminism, gayism, all those things lifted up come at a price). Let there be no shock or surprise that the war on men is succeeding.
I weep for my sons and the country they are inheriting. I am for women having more opportunities. I’m for my boys as mixed-race kids having a way easier time than they would have a generation ago. It’s not that I lack awareness that inputs and outcomes are not equal, it’s that I have the intellectual honesty to admit that government is not the instrument to resolve that unless you wish to make everyone the same level of miserable. The track record of MASS rising, MASSIVE wealth creation, it’s firmly on the side of our American experiment as it has been not the 1619 self hating style but the 1776 let us learn our full history and keep it intact not to celebrate the dark moments but to understand it’s nuance and to not be destined to repeat the mistakes… So we have a republic – If we can keep it!
Yeah, the foundational assumptions of your framework is problematic… Your concerns are certainly valid, but they still reflect the framework that we need to keep working to retire. Your data may also indicate that toxic masculinity and white male entitlement may also be on the decline. Younger folks are being put on a new path in talking about Masculinity. As the parent of a teen girl at a progressive private school that has robust sex and relationship education as part of health ed, there is a completely different kind of conversation getting tee-ed up for kids these days, one that puts taking control and responsibility of one’s own sexuality at the center. And these conversations are very much born of the consent issues that have been so traumatizing for former generations in multiple contexts. Your kids are still on the young side, so hopefully you’ll see the new reality once they get to high school. Though you are in Florida… Remember Aziz Ansari and his whole “bad date” debacle? Hopefully, given how enlightened you are, you’ll put all these pieces in an even broader context. Historical ways of being are not the best model for Toxic Masculinity. Boys and Men need new aspirational paradigms. That means everything needs to change. Girls/women have long talked about how economic empowerment is tied to gender dynamics. The other side is true, too. Sex and conquest does not need to be the currency for relationships. Even marriage does not have to be a given for happiness, though healthy, meaningful relationships could be. The specialized trades are hurting for skilled labor which is translating into higher and higher incomes for these professions, without a college degree. You’ve outlined data that shows the world and human behavior are changing. That doesn’t mean the change is negative. You can help boys/men “conspire” to make this moment an inflection point toward a healthier society, to shape a new paradigm for their identities with new metrics.
You say “… 70% of prisoners didn’t complete high school” but you don’t address the more relevant question: As a percentage how many college graduates have been arrested, tried, convicted and incarerated for a felony?
It’s hard for a college man to hook up if they have to wear a mask and/or are taking online classes far from campus.
We need better funding of colleges to accept more people at lower cost.
Scott, what about doing a B2B marketing sprint?
I’m curious how this analysis would play out in China. I believe they have an excess of males to females of almost 50 million people due to selective abortion.
This is a weird article that seems to miss a lot of key underlying causes and trends (and also gives off incel vibes. Men aren’t having sex? Can’t blame them for storming the capital).
I feel like there’s a real missed opportunity to address why people are putting off forming families or why financial stability is so important. There’s so much to be said about the US’s lack of social safety nets, the cost of childcare, and the negative impact on earnings that women typically face after having a child that will result in lower rates of family formation.
It also seems odd to not ask the question whether or not college is worth it for the men that are opting out of college. Per the source linked, the earnings differential by educational attainment are based on a survey from 2004. So much has changed in terms of the cost of college, the job market, college alternatives (i.e., coding bootcamps), and employers dropping bachelor degree requirements that it seems worth exploring whether a historical correlation will remain strong. It could very well be that men skipping college, depending on their career path, are making a good decision in 2021.
I get why Prof G would want to draw attention men’s declining interest in attending college, I certainly see how that matters, but it’s hard to read this article and walk away contemplating that issue. I’m far too distracted by the framing of the article – it feels very MRA, incel-ish, and “boys will be boys, girls will be expected to be women”. Perhaps Prof G will write this off as being a “wokeistan” thing but I think if he wants people to see this as a real issue and take his opinion seriously on the matter he needs to reconsider how he writes about. This was a very cringe-y article.
I think we need to talk about male problems (of which incels are a huuuuge one) in a constructive context, rather than simply saying “damn them all”. Circumstance and access to success are huge contributors to the growing number of angry young men, and simply telling them to be better doesn’t seem to be working.
I think your comment shows an aversion to feeling any sympathy to these guys, and I get that, but I think we need this kind of thinking to reach them and bring them back from the dark side.
Please don’t take this example too far, but in Saudi Arabia, they de-radicalise young men by marrying them. Good lord I know that’s problematic, but the point is – the anger that drives radicalisation is in large part dispelled by the simple comforts that we have evolved to value – a home, a partner, and the ability to provide.
I think you’re right to call out incels, but I think the premise in which you do it is telling of a way of thinking that won’t help us stem the rise of angry young men.
Kate,
I couldn’t agree with you more. I find the timing problematic too. With the changes in Afghanistan and girls are now not able to attend school and two-thirds of all women there are being told not to return to work. I’m starting to get a Handmaiden vibe here too. If young men during a pandemic are having less sex, what is the percentage of girls that are having sex? That statistic would have more meaning if they were both included. As a woman, this is sending off alarm bells for me too. Are we being teed up as scapegoats? All the world’s problems will be solved if we can just get women back home and ignorant?
Cheri, you just had to come here and help make the prof’s point. It’s not always about women. The point is we have been doing that for decades and now young men are at a severe and growing disadvantage, creating very real problems for society.
Thanks Katie for doing the same thing in an even more heavy handed, intolerant fashion.
Educated women around the world are having fewer, if any, children, and the reasons are hardly surprising. It costs a fortune to have and then raise a child and the economic burden, via time out of a career and missed opportunities for advancement and salary, are borne exclusively by women. Get your senators to establish some policies around 1) healthcare costs to birth a child 2) daycare costs to mind/teach a child and 3) legislated guarantees that having a child will not derail your career trajectory or reduce your networth, and you’ll start to see more interest in birthing babies from women. And, of course, women rate mates based on their ability to provide. If you were incapacitated by pregnancy and childbirth/raising for several years, followed by significant hurdles returning to work at your previous salary with all options for advancement intact, would you not want a partner who could financially maintain the household status? Really, it’s not rocket science.
Don’t you think it possible that one outcome of the higher rate of women attending college is that the ratio of women looking for financial prospects in a potential mate will lower/come more into balance? Seems fairly obvious that up until relatively recently (I mean past 50 years or so) women didn’t have a lot of options but to look for someone with good financial prospects since once married, they didn’t typically have any earning options. In today’s world they can look to themselves for financial security.
Textbook case of cognitive dissonance. You support a political party which has embraced the DEI/CRT ideology that all white men are privileged racist enemies who should be discriminated against, and now you complain that they are falling behind. Marriage and fertility rates will continue to decline because overeducated women cannot find eligible men who are at our above their socioeconomic status. That is what they are hard wired to do, no matter how much modern feminism tries to rationalize it away. Thanks to anti-family leftist policies, the ranks of frustrated spinsters and incels will continue to grow. You made your bed now lie in it.
Married people are happier? who wants to be married to someone who is sour? … , a more educated society should raise the collective good of a country…yet it seems that the current system is rigged to provide education to separate the haves vs have-nots. This separation drives nations apart as we loath, build distrust and grow to be jealous of each other. Is it any wonder that countries who want to lift themselves up focus on education for girls and women,,,, while other countries who are mired in stagnation – remove education to keep their population controlled….
Yeah I am also puzzled by this statistic. What I have read is that married MEN are happiest, followed by single women, single men, and married women, in that order.
Scott…You gotta make a movie about this!!! Please?
Interesting reading. While I’m tempted to say that men – who rule the world – brought this to themselves, I expected that you would mention the rates for divorce in this country (55%?) and I’m curious about your take on the reasons for the high number since you wrote that being married is a step towards nirvana. Maybe women wised up against a contract that benefits one part only, went to college, found out they could bear children by themselves, and are not looking back.
The rates of women on anti depressants and anti anxiety medication would disagree with your thesis. But hey, keep trying to replace maternal instincts by getting an 8 pound dog instead of an 8 pound baby, and see how long that will keep your life fulfilled
Yes. Agree. However you want the incoming freshman to succeed once there and those who do not get a degree, for whatever reason, to have access to a fulfilling life. K-12 Education is the key to both. And that’s what needs to be fixed first.
Thanks for this. I have a term, ‘the fascist ease’, to describe how quickly people, mainly men who have nothing to stand on, can ‘transform’ to violent beings, equally as individual bullies or as the army ranks of a dictatorship. If I have not developed the ability to imagine and create and I want to make my name or some sort of name in the world, all that is left to me is my power to hurt and destroy. I am not a US citizen and I know Barack did deeds in the developing world that I absolutely do not support, but in America, he represented everything a disadvantaged bigot, whose only real entitlement is his prejudices, would have to hate. Every heckle from Bill Maher was a vote for Trump. The dropped microphone was a ton of votes. Trump was no surprise. Trump has not gone anywhere too far. Why?
Leftists spend 2 decades destroying family values and propaganding male discriminations, now what? Unhappy? Crocodile tears?
As a dad whose kid just started college, I can testify from a personal standpoint that the barriers to a higher education even for a well-established middle-class family are significant. My student is attending a top-ranked public university, and the costs are around $25k per year. We only have one student. Imagine if we had two or three?
A previous poster said that solutions were out of their hands – “who among the readers are provosts, dean’s or other officials that can expand college admissions.”
Well, I cannot. But the people that I vote for can. States used to fund the majority of public university funding, but this has been decreasing for decades. In 2012, nationwide, all state sources of revenue for universities fell below revenue from tuition for the first time.
These are GOVERNMENTA CHOICES that reflect the priorities of the people in office, and WE CHOOSE THE PEOPLE IN OFFICE.
In my state, FL, one FL legislator wanted to severely curtail our state’s leading scholarship program. But the citizens, including myself, banded together, got smart, exerted pressure, and stopped the bill.
So yes, you ARE in a position to make a difference.
If you take no action, you are conceding to these disastrous trends.
While I don’t disagree with many of your points – some no one can as the numbers are the numbers – I have to admit I rolled my eyes a few times. Having survived a truly horrific and dangerous sociopathic relationship (never saw it coming – he was executive level in Silicon Valley) I am HERE FOR WOMEN RISING. Yes, fewer babies, blah blah blah – but these snowflake men are no one’s prize. Aren’t there more women in America than men? Things won’t change unless and until women truly rise up and vote in forward-thinking WOMEN! Incels loaded with guns and ammunition is a true threat to us all – so a reckoning there is needed also. So many problems to chase – patriarchal false religions, gun control, jail reform, term limits on ALL politicians (must happen), and and and. College enrollment is but one problem – it certainly isn’t the biggest is all.
The issue is not male college enrolments but meaningful opportunities for young men. Saying tough luck to these ‘snowflakes’ s what is wrong with society and why we have no progress. It’s the same attitude of Trumpers except on the other side of the political spectrum.
So good.
A lot of themes with this piece and the book The Calm Before the Storm
I agree that this is a problem – but the solutions offered are too broad (who among the readers are provosts, dean’s or other officials that can expand college admissions).
There seems to be a clear opportunity here to both nurture and encourage this shadow generation of men – in more practical ways like coaching, providing job support/skills etc (as the other comment notes – there is a huge skill gap in the trades that are great careers). Any recommendations for organizations working towards this?
I like to think men are wising up to the college debt scam and simply working in trades more. The earnings potential difference for trades vs college ed is probably nil
A regulated trade license (plumbing/heating/electrical etc…) is the best job security one can want. I became a cop in the 80’s and had my plumbing/heating license in my back pocket when I hired on in ’82. In my academy class (NYPD) that year I met other guys like me, but also guys w/ law degrees and BION one guy w/an MD. We all wanted to give it a whirl b/c we didn’t want to be that old fart in his 50’s saying ‘I wish I did it’.
When the excitement of the lights & sirens wore off and we saw just how useless a job it was we had somewhere else to go.
LOL I remember in my ‘separation interview’ at 1 Police Plaza a Captain couldn’t understand why I would leave such a job. I wasn’t in trouble, I just stopped enjoying the work. He asked me ‘What else can you do w/ your life, man?’
I told him that my part time job paid me more than the City paid him. He was doing about $55K/year and that year I pulled in about $60K in my part time plumbing biz.
He was honest enough to say he envied me.
So yeah- any young man who’s not college bound, shut up and get a trade. If you’re not sure what you want to do, join the Marines for 4 years to figure that out.
DO NOT, NOT NOT marry too young or knock someone up and the world’s yours.