The gender gap

Right now, many colleges are teetering on the dreaded 60/40 student body ratio. That is, 60 girls for every 40 boys. The only schools which are holding their own are engineering schools such as Carnegie Mellon, or big sports schools like Duke. The 60/40 level is dreaded, because once you hit that, your school becomes perceived as a girls' school, which further discourages male applications.

What is even more scary is this: many schools are positively discriminating in favor of boys. In other words, boys can get in with lower grades, lower test scores, lower activity levels (such as the high school newspaper or running a food shelf) than can girls. Even with that discrimination, boys still aren't showing up on campus.

Here's Richard Whitmore from the "Why Boys Fail" blog:

No hard numbers will ever emerge on the college admissions preferences private, four-year colleges grant men, but simple math suggests it has to be larger than anything ever mounted to draw minorities into college. If that rug ever got pulled — which people such as Tom Mortenson argue should happen — gender gaps would become an explosive issue in this country.

Steve says: Six girls for every four guys? I can see an up side...