McGowan: Where Are the Men?
by Richard McGowan, Ph.D.
When I taught business ethics at Butler (1993-2018), Butler was consistently over 60 percent female, once hitting a 65+ percent female population. Inasmuch as any applied ethics course must deal with “real world” data, the data were given to students when we addressed affirmative action policies. That triggered several of my male students to visit my office and offer me stories about how they were treated at Butler.
I made sure they knew that in the disparity, Butler was not unique and that the hostility they said they felt was not isolated to Butler, that some schools had female professors who barred men from taking their classes.
The young men felt marginalized. If colleges are to be a success, young men have to feel welcome on campus and in class. Again, Butler is not unique. Campuses across America have women’s studies programs and women’s centers with no analog for men. Is it any wonder the Chronicle of Higher Education has articles on the precipitous decline in males attending schools of higher education? The pattern, though, was established in the early1980s, for it has been that long ago that female undergrads outnumbered men with institutions showing little or no regard for disparities that favor women. As well, the cultural pattern of snubbing boys and men occurred in the 1980s. Sara Ruddick’s “Maternal Thinking” stated that anyone who took care of the children was a mother no matter what the sex, thereby insulting to male care providers. Andrea Dworkin’s comment that any woman who has given birth has been raped twice, once at conception and then at the birth of the child, was denigrating to both men and women.
The kind of toxicity those two feminists showed characterized much of popular culture and were tolerated by institutions of higher education. Shortly before I retired, a committee was formed to implement a “social justice” component in the curriculum. My ethics course, which included a critical appraisal of various positions on distributive justice, did not qualify to satisfy the requirement. The committee assigned to design the ‘social justice’ component was composed of nine women and two men, none of whom had an advanced degree in philosophy, the discipline where matters of justice are critically appraised.
As a side note, the widely used and well-respected Stanford Encyclopedia has no entry for ‘social justice’ nor does it have an entry for “equity,” inasmuch as those terms presume a preferred position on distributive justice. That encyclopedia treats the matter of justice philosophically, as an open question.
Thus, it is no surprise to me that men are not attending college. When we discussed affirmative action in class, I pointed out that people who are excluded lose incentive to try to get a job or a position (it’s an argument for affirmative action on behalf of the excluded). Inasmuch as boys and men are not the preferred sex, or perhaps more accurately, the wrong sex, per enrollment numbers and per affirmative action policy, they can be expected to show less interest in college.
Schools should work harder at removing toxic behavior regarding all groups, even men. Until that happens, the national disparity regarding the sexes, will continue. It is currently 59 percent female undergraduates to 41 percent males, growing over the last several years. The graduate population is even more dramatic: 39.0 percent of enrolled graduate students are male, 61.0 percent are female, according to the Education Data Initiative.
Butler and Indiana schools would also do well to recognize the importance of all faiths. In my years at Butler, no one was not allowed to belittle Muslim beliefs and so on. In my years there, Butler had a performance by a comedienne (to use old spelling) whose schtick was making fun of the Pope.
Institutionally, professorial candidates from schools affiliated with religion were and are woefully underrepresented in the faculty ranks. Of 300+ professors at Butler in 2015, only three held a Ph.D. from a Catholic university (and one was not in a tenure-track position). I called the situation to the attention of a dean by pointing out that about 30 percent of Butler professors held a Ph.D. from a Big Ten school, contrary to the call for diversity. He said “that’s because there are a lot of Big Ten schools in the Midwest.” Need I point out the number of Catholic universities in the Midwest that offer Ph.D. programs? I can list at least half a dozen Ph.D.-granting schools in the Midwest off the top of my head.
Butler and Indiana schools would do well to be inclusive of viewpoint diversity by the faiths of its faculty. Then more students would feel at home.
Again, I note that Butler and Indiana schools are typical. Across the country, religiously affiliated Ph.D.-holding professors are underrepresented. As one scholarly article put it, “Sociologists of religion suggest that this neglect can be explained by the unusual irreligiosity of academia.”
Butler and Indiana schools could be more welcoming by broadening their understanding of diversity. When I taught ethics classes, I asked my American students how many of them had a parent born outside the United States. Of the thousands of students in my classes, a mere handful were first-generation Americans. I loved having foreign students for the diversity of thinking they brought to others, similar to the way my mother, born in Germany, brought ideas to her children.
I also asked them, “How many of you were raised primarily by your father?” Only three students ever responded affirmatively. Those students are very diverse, as are my children (I was the primary care-provider for my sons). They look at the world differently and have ideas and experiences that help other students open their minds to what is possible.
I bet that in all my years at Butler, I was the only professor who could speak to the challenges that a’ “stay-at-home” father faced and too often still face. My personal experiences, relevant to an ethics class that discussed gender issues related to work, helped young men and women see what is possible.
Finally, colleges should teach hope. I told my students that I had three female professors in 12 years of higher education — and one of those three was on a Fulbright from Norway. The world tilts to improvement and “the arc of the universe bends towards justice.”
It will be a better day when colleges and universities bring “students who felt excluded from higher education back into the fold.” These days, that means men.
Richard McGowan, Ph.D., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, has taught philosophy and ethics cores for more than 40 years, most recently at Butler University. (Notes and citations are included in the web version at www.inpolicy.org.)
Sources
Yale U. newspaper: https://thepolitic.org/where-are-the-men-the-college-enrollment-crisis/
https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics
- 42.7% of enrolled undergraduate students are male; 57.3% are female.
- 78.4% of male and 76.5% of female college students attend public institutions.
- Among college students enrolled in public schools, 56.7% are female.
- 39.0% of enrolled graduate students are male; 61.0% are female.
- Among all postsecondary students, graduate and undergraduate, 42.1% are male and 57.9% are female.
Value-Conditioned Interest”: Secularity, Institutional Support, and the Sociology of Religion in Graduate Departments
Matthew Blanton a,*, Daniel Krasnicki Social Q, 2025 PMID: 38836114
“Although religion once played a central role in sociological inquiry, today it has fallen from prominence and now occupies a marginal space in the field. Sociologists of religion suggest that this neglect can be explained by the unusual irreligiosity of academia.”
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