Welcome back everyone! Interim is underway and activity is beginning to pick up on campus. I hope everyone had a good relaxing month since I last posted!
Today, I am posting this story from the Journal-Sentinel about women in college. Enrollment and graduation rates for women are much higher than that for men in Wisconsin, as it is on our own campus. I don't remember the exact figures, but there is clearly a spread between men and women here.
It is part of a theme that has stretched back since the beginning of the blog.
Here I am in 2005, referencing U.S. Today.
Here is the NYTimes in 2006.
Here is a post from 2007.
(Wow, I have been at this for a while!!)
Nothing is really being done about the stagnation of male participation rates in college, although we have been aware of the gap for years. I am still not convinced that it is a problem, but perhaps we should intervene before it does become one. But how?!?
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Someone may want to go to our Institutional Research guys to see if they will release the data pubicly, but as I recall the numbers from a chart I saw last year, females graduate from here at about a 60% rate, while for men the rate is in the 30s.
Could we/should we respond to this? I think so, but maybe this will happen down the road after the campus has its Voluntary Visible data Report (yes, I know I am getting the name wrong, but you know what I am talking about). One hopes that after data are available, the data will be used to improve the institution.
Yet another problem that falls under the heading of "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."
NOTHING you or I do will compel people to graduate college if they do not have the the determination to do it. We cannot pick them up and carry them. We can not shanghai them at gunpoint. The ball is in THEIR court.
Rather than wringing our hands in agitation and fretting that we must "do something!" to fix this problem, it would be well to remember the words of Reinhold Niebuhr: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference." These kind of things fall under Clause 1.
Ask anyone involved with 12-step programs, etc. You can't HELP a person with a problem like alcoholism or drug addiction until he or she is personally ready to do what it takes. Getting through college is the same. Until a person WANTS to be educated, you are casting pearls before swine.
lammers said: "You can't HELP a person with a problem like alcoholism or drug addiction until he or she is personally ready to do what it takes".
your wrong!!
Ive been in recovery for 25 years.
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